Quandary Peak - the start

I don't know how this happens. I do SO well...and then this. It's been almost a full week since I blogged.

Ok, so I'm going back to last Wednesday and Thursday.

A few weeks ago, I put up a sign-up sheet for us to hike a 14er (a 14er is a peak in Colorado that is at least 14,000 feet high). I was supposed to orchestrate the whole thing, since this was my idea. Originally, we were going to climb Longs Peak, which is the closest to us, but also a hard one. And also a 14 mile round trip hike.

The last time I traveled 14 miles by foot was the half-marathon (and that's only 13.1 miles, but at that point, what's another mile?) I did in February. Granted, I ran it, but I had trained, I was at sea-level, and it was almost completely flat, except for the bridge.

I decided that 14 miles was a bit much considering the first 7 miles is ALL uphill and the second 7 miles is ALL downhill. Not to mention that at 14,000 feet there is only 60% of the oxygen at sea level. So I found a 6 mile roundtrip mountain. South of Breckenridge. 3 hours away.

So here's the plan I created for us:

1. Duff and I will leave the ranch around 5:30 or 6. We'll go into Ft. Collins to the library to pick up some books on 14ers and then to Wal-Mart to get water and food for the trip.
2. We'll drive to Quandary Peak, find a place to camp, and set up. The others will get there and will get there and we'll sleep.
3. We'll leave around 6 am to get a start on the mountain before the afternoon storms roll in and we're left above tree line without any protection from lightning.
4. We should be back down around noon (6 hours of hiking) and back to the ranch by supper time.

Here's how it actually played out. (Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men...)

1. Duff got back from his ride around 6:30. He still had to get all camping gear gathered up in his truck. I didn't have time to do this because I was on maintenance all day and didn't really take any breaks. While he did that, I packed my stuff as well as got all the hiking stuff we needed and made sure Cookie got everything we needed as far as food was concerned.

Duff and I left the ranch at 8 pm. With just enough time to pick up the books I *thankfully* put on reserve. We went to Wal-Mart and left Ft. Collins at 10 with 2 and a half hours left to drive.

2.

Well here's the thing. As I mentioned last week, Gordon, usually comes on Thursday, but he had mentioned wanting to go with us and we only had a few horses that needed him. So, I called to let him know we didn't need him and that we were going to be in his part of the state. (Yes, Gordon drives 2.5 hours to us every week!)

While he didn't want to join the hike (it was a bit last minute), he said we should stop by. Except it was 10pm before we left. As luck would have it, Gordon works for a guy on Wednesdays and is out late. He ended up being 5 minutes behind us by the time we got to Denver. He invited us to stay at his house that night rather than camping on the side of the road.

All 6 of us. Without asking his wife first.

I don't think she was too happy when she was awoken from a dead sleep at midnight, "Honey, some of my friends are staying here tonight."

3.

Since Duff and I got there at midnight and waited until 1 am for the others to get there (they had to stay for music night with Lars and Amy -- oh my gosh! I was going to put a link to my post about them...but I've never posted about them!!! I'll hopefully get on that soon!), we decided to start a little later. We had only an hour to drive, so we got up at 6 am.

Except everyone took a long time to get ready. Not the 15 minutes I expected.

And we got bad internet directions. By we, I mean I.

We took Hwy 285 South instead of getting on I-70 West to Hwy 9. And it probably only took us an extra half hour, but still, we got to the mountain at 9 am. A pretty late start for any 14er regardless of length.

By the time we were ready, it was 9:30 am.

Stay tuned for the pictures installment and the actual hike.