October 2, 2015

It seemed like a good idea: we’ll kick off the trip with a two day drive out to Colorado to meet up with my cousin and climbing partner Bob Gallagher and his long time friend Jim Gleason

and head up into the Rocky Mountains for some serious mountain climbing. The last few months of preparation for the trip however left us little time to prepare for the actual climb and on day one it hit us like a ton of bricks.

Several hours into the climb up Mt. Shavano Ann volunteered to turn around and look for the camera that I left on a rock at our last rest stop. I felt guilty as hell but she said it was probably best this way. Our first miracle happened here when Ann found the camera on the way back down to the car.

Bob, Jim and I pushed on to summit but what should have taken 6-7 hours took 13. Ouch! We took a day off to rest and set out for peak number two, Mt. Democrat, appropriately named for Ann’s first Colorado 14er.

We do not ordinarily camp with a full set of Chef’s knives or Revere-ware pots but we’re not normally this close to the truck either!

Jim stayed in camp with a few blisters the size of quarters. This day was much more civilized and the three of us summitted this 14,000 ft. peak in reasonably good time.

October 2 is pushing the envelope for high mountain climbing with the possibility of early snow storms up high. Sure enough, on the way down it began to snow lightly. By the time we returned to camp however we were soaked and camp was covered in about a half inch of the wet snow. Packing up the camp and cramming all of our wet gear into the back of the truck

the four wet hikers drove out of the mountains and to our warm dry motel room. Thus started our epic journey. Great fun, good camaraderie and we had a delicious “victory dinner” in Vail Colorado at the end.