The Hike

"Many climbers become writers because of the misconceptions about climbing."
-Jonathan Waterman

One of the views from our hike

This weekend several of my friends and I celebrated fall break by driving a total of 36 hours in order to spend 36 hours in the mountains. You see, my uncle Steve owns a lovely piece of property up the road from White Pine, Colorado (don't bother looking it up...even Google can't find White Pine). To us college students, so ready for a break, the mountains sounded like a grand idea, and hey, what's 36 hours of driving? So, we all piled into a car (or an airplane...several lucky people flew, I was not one of them), trekked across the Oklahoma Panhandle, and arrived at White Pine without too much hassle. After a night's sleep, a delicious breakfast (that took way too long to prepare), plus a 'everyone gather around the fire and share your deepest secrets and cry about it' session, we decided to go on a hike up the mountain.

It wasn't my idea.

From my experiences of spending a summer at White Pine several years ago, I suggested (with much digress) that we hike up Tomichi Pass. "It's not long," I guaranteed them, "I know it's been two years since I've been up there, and never mind the fact that I drove it last time, but I'm positive that we'll be able to do it in an afternoon!" I honestly think the apple cider from that morning's meal may have sat in the car just a bit too long...

After grabbing multiple bottles of water, making peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and peeing several times each (we were drinking lots of water...the altitude you know, it shrinks one's bladder), we were off up the pass. After about three steps, I was out of breath. After about six steps, I could feel the fat on my body start to melt away. This was going to be good! Then I looked down.

I was wearing Converse.

Have you ever tried to climb a mountain in Converse shoes? Don't. It does funny things to your legs. Besides the fact that they have no support, so even if you are a tiny bit fat you'll be dying from lack of air in several seconds. (It's easy to blame one's lack of physical ability on the shoes. Try it. That's why I still haven't bought a good pair of running shoes.) Anyway, we hiked for several hours, and try as I might, I still couldn't find the peak we were aiming towards. I kept reassuring everyone that it was just beyond that next mountain, but soon we were looking back at the snow covered peaks we had just passed, wondering how in the world we were surviving in the frozen tundra above the tree line of the Rocky Mountains.

I tried to keep up the motivation. "Hey guys! At least we still have peanut butter and honey sandwiches!" I gasped between half hour breathing breaks. "Oh! And we also packed clementines!" So, we sat down to eat. Then we decorated a Christmas tree with the clementine peels (that's our version of 'leave no trace' - 'make it look better than it did before with tropical fruit peels that would never be found on the top of a mountain'). After the lunch break, everyone decided to give up finding the original peak, and just run up to the top of one of the nearby mountains. I sat on a rock and watched.

Two hours later, I was interrupted from catching snowflakes on my tongue by the exhausted mountain climbers returning from their jaunt to the summit. I waved goodbye to my new baby bear friends and trekked back down the mountain, only to realize that Kristiana wanted to go swimming in the alpine lake up the road...

Maybe Colorado wasn't such a good idea.
-Matthias

P.S. If you ever happen to find yourself not able to fall asleep because you are more sore than you have ever been in your whole entire life, take Ibuprofen before you toss around for hours. You will thank yourself in the morning.

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