Love song to Mount Elbert

I can't remember the last time I felt ill (and exhilarated and cleansed by) physical exertion, but as of Saturday my memory has been refreshed. The adventure began Friday night when I met Truman, Paul and Kevin in Golden from whence we headed to Jeremy's place in Silverthorne: the jumping off point for our winter ascent of Mount Elbert.

After collectively sleeping poorly, we headed out at 5:19am through the 19F air. One of the guys commented that we were one minute past our departure time for every degree above zero on the thermometer. Truman lamented our not running 40 minutes late. Indeed.

We left the parking lot at 7am to hike to the trail head. Two miles and a few layers later, we strapped on snowshoes and hit the trail. All was well until Kevin, who was breaking trail, stopped in a grove of Aspen trees and suggested that we were no longer on trail. The four guys put their heads together as I, admitting my propensity for getting lost, remained silent until spoken to.

(It was a few hours later that Truman also admitted his propensity for getting lost. Whether in denial about following into the wilderness in the snow one who so easily goes astray [me] or understanding his propensity for modesty [Kevin, Jeremy and Paul?], the lot of us ignored Truman's declaration and the guys continued to include him in the route planning. Given that we lived through the experience, following the directions of the self-professed directionally challenged one wasn't a bad decision, but one might question doing so again.)

My favorite part of the trip, as gauged by how much I laughed, was the, as Truman phrased it, impromptu luge we created down the slope of the Ridge-to-the-north-of-Elbert-we-think. If only there had a been a video camera at the bottom... I haven't laughed so hard in ages. It felt really good.

Considering the tacitly agreed upon aim of the outing -- to summit the mountain -- one might consider it a failure. Fortunately we (I say 'we' because I've already read Truman's account of the experience) had subgoals that were met. I aimed to snowshoe (check), enjoy myself (check) and meet cute, available boys (notice the lack of 'check'). Two outta three, and surviving a trip that made me physically ill, ain't bad.

Photo: Aspen trees with what is probably not Mount Elbert in the background. Sadly, I did not follow through on my instinct to charge the camera battery before leaving Friday, thus you're looking at one of three photos I took on this trip. The other two are here. But here are Truman's photos which do an excellent job of capturing the 'je ne sais quoi' of the trip. Although he did (mercifully) leave this one off...