Eleven p.m., Friday- I lie in bed next to my wife. My legs are twitching, my mind is racing, and the math my brain won't stop doing tells me I have less than five hours to sleep. Judy tells me to slowly breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth.
Three forty-five a.m., Saturday- I rub the stubborn sleep from my eyes and stumble to the night stand to shut off the insistent alarm. I try to quickly and quietly put on my hiking clothes. The mountain is supposed to be cold up top, and the forecast calls for a possibility of snow. I slip on my poly fleece under layer. I've been told cotton kills. Actually, after hiking Mt. Bierstadt in June with my cotton Star Wars t-shirt as an under layer, I not only confirmed that a soaked cotton t-shirt can be dangerous to the point of hypothermia, but I had had recurring nightmares of the silk-screened, retro Darth Vader choking me to death. I pick up my pack and head for the door. The pack seems a little heavier than last time.
Four o'five a.m. - I'm speeding west on Woodmen towards the interstate. As I crank up the Journey on my wife's car stereo and start eating the three 100 calorie granola cookie bars I bogarted from Rita's pantry, I notice with moderate uneasiness that I've just blown a red light. Fortunately, I've caught a break as there are no police around. Rita is my buddy Steve's mom; she is my second mom. I'm feeling very happy that I have friends in the Springs; otherwise, this little rodeo would have started at two fifteen.
Four thirty-five a.m. - I finish signing in and pick up my bib for the hike and start looking for my friend, Mick. We'd been planning this hike for over a month. Mick had also climbed Bierstadt with me in June. I hadn't even heard of the Pikes Peak Challenge until three months ago. It was a few weeks after Bierstadt. I saw a flier at the grocery store, and I knew immediately that I would be doing the hike. I'd been hiking regularly for the previous four months and had taken to it to the point of obsession. Mick and I had already hiked together twice before Bierstadt and found ourselves compatible hiking partners. I enjoy his near encyclopedic knowledge of the local flora, and he doesn't strenuously object to the fact that hiking, among a host of other things, makes me fart.
I'd been training for Pikes, one of the most taxing fourteeners at thirteen miles and 7500 feet of elevation gain, by doing fourteen to fifteen mile hikes in Boulder's Open Space Mountain Park trail system. Though challenging, these had one feature Pikes does not; a descent. Pikes would be uphill at all times. Mick had been training by simply being Mick. Mick is a lean, athletic looking man. His tan, rawhide features etched by a life of well wrought adventure and honest toil, make him look as though he were born to walk uneventfully up mountains.
I see a wiry, bearded figure in a rakish hat (something between Indiana Jones' fedora and a casual cowboy hat) through the predawn blackness, and I know instantly that it's Mick. We board the shuttle to a parking slighted trailhead. Mick's in the back, and I ride shotgun due to the fact that I've brought a pack that I could have comfortably fit Mick into should need have arose.
Four fifty a.m.- We take our first steps onto Barr Trail, illuminated only by the headlamp that radiates light from a point somewhere slightly above my brow. By the time the sun has broached the horizon, we will have done the worst part of the first half of the hike. Nearly eighty percent of the elevation gain we will do before reaching Barr Camp will be done in the first hour or hour and a half that we will spend in the early morning darkness. I think back to when I hiked up to Barr Camp three weeks prior for a dry run with my new pack and boots. The same happy thought came back to me; it's probably a good thing that we started early enough not to see more than ten feet in front of us. Had we seen the nearly never ending and constantly ascending switchbacks or noticed how incredibly far away the Pikes Peak summit looked to be, we very well may have turned around and went back to bed.
Seven thirty a.m. - Mick and I stride confidently into Barr Camp. I step inside the main cabin and I'm greeted by the smell of freshly griddled hot cakes.
"Wow. That smells great!" I say. "Are those for anyone?"
"Sorry, hon. These are just for our overnight guests," the kindly matron informs me.
"How much is it to stay here?" I ask.
"Twenty-eight dollars, and that includes the breakfast."
I seriously consider handing her thirty bucks and telling her to pretend that I spent the night. Instead, I remove my pack and dig out three granola bars, two bananas and the makings of two peanut butter sandwiches. I start pounding down my grub and enjoy the atmosphere of the cabin while Mick remains outside doing Mick-type things. More than likely, he has struck up conversations with fellow hikers. Mick has an easy charm that most people find engaging, and he can usually find something to be interested about in anyone he meets. If Mick can't find something in you to care about, you are, very likely, an enormous a-hole. To his credit, he seems to like me anyway.
Eight forty-two a.m. - We've been back on the trail for around forty five minutes. The going is slower now. We'd done the first seven miles in about two hours and forty minutes. The next six miles will end up taking around three and a half hours. The damp fog that has shrouded us all morning has taken a pea soup consistency at times. I've been a good hiker and worn non-cotton layers, but the effort of carrying my too full pack and my ability to sweat like Richard Simmons doing a workout in a bratwurst factory has drenched me past the ability of my garments to wick away the moisture.
Rest breaks are coming more frequently now. Each step is now becoming a conscious decision and a test of will. We are about nine miles in and another four feel like they might as well be fifty. We've begun playing leap frog with the pack of hikers we've fallen in with. The army wives from Team Warrior are hiking gamely on, and we are constantly exchanging pleasantries with them as we pass each other as the result of alternating rest breaks. One of the women seems to be having an issue with one of her ankles, but she hikes on.
Nine fifty-six a.m. - We are only two miles away now and have just left "Everest Base Camp". It is the second aid station since leaving Barr camp. It is a welcome opportunity to refresh our water, and this one has the added bonus of copious bags of candy. The prior station was at A-frame. A-frame was a couple of miles back. It is a first come, first served hut that is free to hikers. Exposed slightly on one side, it is merely a rumor today as the fog has kept it hidden from view. Our current station is festooned with flags and offers enough diversion to slow hikers to the point that rescue personnel can assess their condition. Sensing this, Mick and I pause only momentarily as I am afraid they will tell me to stop for a prolonged break. I had gotten this feeling at the A-frame as well. The personnel looked at me there with "holy crap" looks on their faces no doubt brought on by my sopped head and pants sweated through from the waist to the knee. If I stop now, I know I will not want to start again.
Sometime between ten thirty and eleven a.m. - We arrive at the Sixteen Golden Stairs. Though I have not researched this, I believe this is a name given to the last handful of switchbacks etched through solid rock to keep hikers motivated to finish. That and the term "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" was already taken. We hiked doggedly on. We come across the Team Warrior woman with the tweaked ankle again. She is looking rough, so I give her one of my trekking poles. She thanks me and asks me if I'm sure. I tell her to just find me up top and not to worry about it. In the distance, we can hear horns and shouts. Our pulses quicken; we are getting close.
Eleven twenty a.m. - We reach the summit. Near exhaustion, I hold back tears as a woman who is a traumatic brain injury survivor hangs a finishers' medal around my neck. It is for her and the Brain Injury Association of Colorado I have done this hike. What started out as a quest for another fourteener has become something more. Mick and I have our pictures taken at the finish line and are surprised to find we have finished 60 th and 61 st out of 450 hikers.
A volunteer looks at me with concern.
"Are you feeling alright? You look a little pale. Take your pictures, and then I'll walk you inside and we'll get you some oxygen."
"Yeah; I feel okay" I say belying the fact that the look on her face and her comment has me slightly freaked out. I'm brought inside the large trailer at the summit and sat on a cot. My pack is removed, a blanket is draped over my shoulders, an oxygen mask is put over my nose and mouth, and I'm brought a hot cup of soup. I ingest the oxygen and soup for about ten minutes and start to wonder whether they tell me when to get up, I get up on my own, or I ask them if I can get up. The eight granola bars I've ingested coming up the mountain have reconstituted in the form of a bowel movement big enough to name and send to school. Thinking this may be the reason I'm pale as I have what I assume may be a new life form growing in my colon and robbing me of oxygen, I ask if I can go.
"How do you feel?"
"Well, other than really having to go to the bathroom, I'm pretty good."
Eleven forty-five a.m. - I go to the summit house and recruit a midwife to talk me through the birth of my colonic progeny, and then decide to get something grotesquely unhealthy to eat from the Summit House Café, settling on the cheeseburger and home-fried potato chips. With something warm in my belly, I go outside and recruit a stranger to take my picture in front of the summit sign outside the Summit House, as I lost track of Mick during the oxygen incident. I hook up with Mick again and we shoot the bull for about twenty minutes before I hop a shuttle back down the mountain. Mick will be going back down with his ex-sis-in-law, so we share a man hug and I ride back down the mountain. I nod off occasionally in the shuttle, sweaty, spent, and happy.
I can't wait to do it again next year.