Today was both fabulous and terrible. Fabulous because we’re back in the mountains! Terrible because not everyone was mentally/emotionally prepared for the challenge that faced us which made for a very long day of hiking. We woke up at 5 this morning, with the intention of being on the Mt. Elbert trail by 6. We missed our goal by about 20 minutes, so we’ll have to adjust for our next hike. The real trouble started though about 10 steps onto the trail and continued about every 10 steps thereafter. At the pace we were moving there really was no way we were going to make the summit.
You can view our track and some pictures here to see just how far we went and close we came.
We actually ended up making it much further than I thought we would, but at 12:30, with at least another 45 minutes in front of us, it was clearly too late in the day to continue on. I think we were all a bit disappointed that we needed to stop so close to the end. For me though, the biggest disappointment was that no one took the time to appreciate the beautiful view around us and our accomplishment of making it to 13,000 feet before turning back around to begin the descent. What we did today was no small feat – I think it was a big win in many ways. Hopefully next time the first 2 miles of the mountain will go more smoothly so that we can make that last 600 foot push.