“Your head still spinning?”

“Yup.”

“Should we stop?”

“Nope.”

Megan had been checking on me regularly for the past couple of minutes. Thanks for that, by the way.

We were about 500 feet from the summit and everyone was feeling the altitude. We continued at the brutal pace of 5 minutes climbing & 2 minutes rest.

Regardless, there was no stopping us. We were going to crest Vasquez Peak.

Being the “lowlander,” I was particularly headstrong. “I didn’t come all the way out to Colorado to just hike most of this mountain. I’m standing on that peak.”

Looking back, it was easier said than done, but rewarding in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

Altitude Sickness

My first sign of altitude sickness came in the car ride up. I don’t normally get car sick, but this was different.

Our drive started in Denver at 5,000 ft elevation and finished at the 9,000 ft trailhead.  The farther we traveled, the tighter my stomach twisted.

Getting out of the car was literally a breath of fresh air. For those of you that get motion sickness, I sympathize.

The first few miles of the hike we followed a path that switchbacked through a dense evergreen forest.

Being from New England, it felt very familiar until the sights of vast mountain range ahead peaked through the trees.

We carried on this path for a while, slowly gaining altitude.  With my pack and my breath growing heavier, I realized how quickly I was becoming exhausted.

My excitement slowly gave way to concern. Am I going to make this? I can’t even see the peak yet.

Call it determination or luck, but my feelings of doubt quickly faded as our heading steadied and the tree line broke.

The view was humbling.

As far as we could see, Megan, Matt, Alex and I were the only people in the world. We were small dots standing near the top of the earth.

My feelings of concern melted away. We were going to do this.

The Road Less Traveled

Our path continued for a mile or two hugging the edge of the mountain.

Vasquez Peak isn’t exactly a well-marked trail. Actually, it’s not a marked trail at all.

Vasquez Peak is a 12,300-acre area of national forest that happens to have some trails that run through it. Over the course of our trek, we crossed over multiple including the 3,100 mile long Continental Divide trail.

I bring this up because, at this point, we’re on the edge of being lost.

We weren’t freaking out. Maybe we should have been, but we knew we had a decision to make.

• Option A: We could turn around and retrace our steps back. We had already done a pretty serious hike and as you can see from the photos above, it’s not like we missed the view.
• Option B: We could continue on the trail we were on which wrapped around the peak and hopefully crested on the backside.  Only issue is this was the “long way,” and we were quickly running out of time.
• Option C: We could turn straight up the mountain and make a straight shot up to the peak. We knew this was no easy climb.

We chose Option C: 1,000ft of steep incline to the peak.

“I didn’t come all the way out to Colorado to just hike most of this mountain. I’m standing on that peak.”

As these stories always seem to go, we vastly underestimated what we had gotten ourselves into it.

The next hour was one of the most difficult climbs of my life.

I’d like to say we’re all in decent shape, but looking back at the photos I took, it’s clear. We struggled.

“Your head still spinning?”

“Yup.”

“Should we stop?”

“Nope.”

About a dozen stops for rest and water later, we crested the peak. We had made it.

I can’t quite put words to what it was like, but we were on top of the world and we had earned it.

Moment of Clarity

At this moment, the world, including all of my about it questions and misgivings about my place in it, melted away. I felt something that I haven’t felt in a long time: peace. With this peace came complete clarity.

If you know me well, you know that recently I’ve been struggling to understand my path in life. The long and short of it: my desire to tell stories visually has come into conflict with voices (some internal, some external) telling me that it wasn’t my path.

The mountains stripped me of the burdens of those voices, leaving me only with what was true in my heart.

My purpose is to help remarkable people tell their stories. I won’t let anything get in the way of that.

While these words and pictures describe a hike with friends, in my heart, it’s decidedly the prologue to my story.

It’s funny. We always hear people looking back talking about the moments that define them.

Standing atop that peak, I’m not sure how I knew, but one day I’ll look back smiling because I did.

 

Thanks for reading,

Kyle