Oh, the places you’ll go!

Before I sat down to start writing I had to check and see what day it actually was. To say the last week has been a blur is the understatement of the year. From working on Echo up until the day we left for Colorado, to moving and shaking since we pulled out of our driveway Wednesday night, we’ve done a lot of stuff in such a short amount of time. I’m currently sprawled out in my good friends guest bedroom in Colorado Springs recapping the last few days before we start making our way north to Wyoming.

I don’t think I relaxed once on the drive out to Colorado. Between not knowing if Echo actually had it in her to make it the 1,100 some miles trip, having a random man walk directly in front of us on I-70 (coming inches from hitting him) and the gnarly storms we continued to drive through it was hard to take a full breathe until her tires rolled over the Colorado state line. I do need to take a moment and say how absolutely amazing our friends Andrea and Geoff are for letting us crash in their beautiful home for the first night in town (and then again last night). It honestly made that 18 hour drive not seem so rough when you can look out of any window on the front side of their house and look at Pike’s Peak towering in the background.

After a good nights rest Matt and I, along with our friend Eric headed down to Buena Vista to meet up with Eric’s sister and set up camp before our Saturday trek up to Mt. Harvard. When we had originally planned this trip, we were going to turn the hike into an overnight trip, knocking out Mt. Harvard and Mt. Columbia. However, mother nature isn’t always on your side and when we saw we only had about a 10 hour window from 4 am to 2 pm to get the hike done without any thunderstorms, we quickly changed our plans. We left camp at 4 am and started walking with our headlamps on towards the 14,421 ft. peak. I spent the first bit of the trail scanning the trail sides with my head lamp for bears and mountain lions since I was convinced one was going to pop up and eat me. However the only wildlife we saw were some deer and some incredibly humorous marmots we saw playing on the rock scramble at about 14,000 ft. To say that it was one of the most awe inspiring hikes I’ve ever done would be true. To say that the last 1,000 ft. of elevation was the hardest thing I’ve ever done would also be true.  We passed someone who told us there is no such thing as an easy 14’er and he was not lying. I am so happy that I was able to experience my first 14,000 ft. trek with some friends. It is definitely a memory I will hold forever.

I need to get up and get moving so we can start making our way towards Wyoming. We have a long drive ahead of us, but we have all the time in the world, so who knows where we will end up stopping?