view from the top

Mt. Shavano aka "100 Ways to Die"

From the time we we're invited to Colorado for a family vaction, we planned to climb a mountain.  Shavano became that mountain.  We been talking about it and looking forward to the climb.  It was going to be fun.

It only took about 15 minutes to remember how "fun" mountain climbing was.  It's like child birth, you forget so quickly.

It didn't help that there was no easy part of this hike.  At least, not easy to us.  Jason kept telling me that the mountain was labeled beginner to intermediate.  But I told him I was sticking with beginner mountains only from now on.

The only other mountain I'd climbed had somewhat of an enjoyable hike to treeline.  On Shavano, we felt like we were going straight up from the beginning.  We really thought it couldn't be much steeper on the top.  Instead we encountered snow.  And not just little patches.  Rather, long stretches of slippery snow that promised a 100 ft fall down the mountain slope if you missed your step.

Believe it or not, the worst was still yet to come.  When we hit a huge patch of snow that covered our trail, we decided we were done with trudging through the snow and headed up another direction.  We could see the peak, but no path to get there.  I spent the next 1 1/2 hours climbing, basically on hands and feet up the side of a mountain.  Every time I looked back, I knew I didn't want to go back down the same way we came.
We almost turned back when all we could see was boulders in front of us.  However, from the top of the mountain, we saw a head poke over the cliff and we knew we were close.  The funny thing about mountians is that you have no sense of distance.  Everything looks closer than it is.  Everything.  I knew I didn't want to go back down the way I had just come up, so the only options were to keep going or stay where I was.  Staying where I was was very tempting, but my dad reminded me that Amos and Silas were waiting for me at home.

I don't know if I can say the view from the top was worth it, but it was spectacular.

We quickly found out that the "path" down that we missed going up, wasn't much easier.  I "grannied" it all the way down, while my husband took off running.  I had to keep reminding him of our children that would be fatherless if he fell.

The snow patches seemed worse and longer on the way down.  We kept thinking we were out of the snow, and then we would come across another patch.  Making it to the treeline wasn't much better.  Going down hurts.  The only good part about going down is that your lunges are no longer burning, so you don't have to stop as much.  Which is good, because if you stop for long, you don't want to get back up.

The trail down seems never ending.  Everything seems longer than it did on the way up.  We were never more excited to see the CR-V.

I'm glad I did it, but it will probably take another three years for me to think climbing a mountain sound "fun."