How quickly we can forget details of realities experienced. Sunday night at 10pm, I was alone and perched at 13,200' on a small ledge having climbed 800 hundred feet from the safety of a jeep road up a very steep slope of small to medium unstable talus and was sitting on a flat rock in a storm, wearing every layer of clothing I had. Backpack was on top of my feet, with rocks carefully positioned as windbreaks around my exposed ankles, trying to be as small a lighting target as possible...knees to chest, arms around knees and head between them, looking at the ground and alternating shaking uncontrollably and occasionally dozing from the exhaustion of being up since 3am on Friday, less one 30 minute fitful nap. I'd been in this position for over 90 minutes and still had about another 30 to go before the lightning, rain, snow and wind gave way to wind and mostly clear skies. 10 hours later, home, safe, eating hot food...questions and thoroughly mixed emotions flooded in. They began with undisturbed relief, then mixing with now released fear, doubt, then disappointment, confusion, passing regret for all that had been invested only to not reach the goal.
One week later, Jennifer and I began to verbalize what we'd been mulling over...what modifications to our approach might lead to success. We also realized that if I had completed the line that night, in 70+ hours, we probably would be feeling some disappointment that I didn't do it in under 60 hours. It's perhaps tantalizingly possible with some changes to the approach.
Here's how it went down...
had a very slim chance of success, as I hadn't scouted the entire line and really had an incomplete grasp of how big and how immense of a challenge this was. Plus, it's a rare feat for anyone to complete the line on their first attempt. Been done, but exceedingly rare. It did show me that there was a chance I could actually do it, though. But I needed a different approach. This time, I recruited John Paul Ogden "JP", who brought added enthusiasm, mountain and ultra-marathon experience, and an overall great attitude to the project.
Jennifer laid out a schedule for us to scout the entire Nolan's line over every peak in two three-day weekends in July, with a backup weekend, just in case weather or life didn't cooperate. In these weekends, we hit the trails anywhere from 1:30-4:30am and put in 8-15 hour days. It gave JP and I a great opportunity to spend many hours together in the mountains and, of course, to get our feet on the entire line. Meanwhile, Jennifer and JP's wife Jaime, shuttled our cars around the mountain roads to meet us at the finishes of our long days and then take care of re-fueling us for the next day. It is the unglorious, but necessary job that this project cannot be done without. I so appreciate what they sacrificed in order to cart us around and care for us during the scouting.
I'm sure none of us will forget the thunderstorms we got caught in above treeline on Mts Yale and Elbert, but we sure did enjoy some amazing big mountain beauty along the way.
And, of course, there's the days of packing and organizing and list making and checking that Jennifer orchestrates.
We had several possible weekends blocked out for our attempt and would go with the first one that had an acceptable weather forecast. We'd make a go/no-go decision by Tuesday of the week and August 24 looked acceptable. I was anxious to get started because the weather in the mountains would be changing to colder and higher chance of snow every week that passed. One final problem was getting JP to the start at the Fish Hatchery in Leadville, as Jaime is a teacher and had to work that Thursday and Friday. No way out of it. Fortunately, Matt Ozanic stepped in and not only drove JP, but put him up in his car-top tent for the night. Matt, you are a true gentleman and friend and we're not sure how we would have done this without you!
And at 5:03am on August 24th, we were off...I'll let Jennifer's posts tell a lot of the story. She just nailed it along the way, all the while crewing, cheering and kicking our asses when needed, along the way. This was quite the endurance event for her too!
I felt good about tagging #1 Mt Massive's (14,421') empty summit at 7:51am. JP hit the SPOT "OK-I'm on a Summit" button and off we were down the mountain.
Comments inspired by our light gear and our hurried pace from other hikers are sometimes funny. One guy said, "
After getting down and crossing Halfmoon Creek, we took the Wade's Way shortcut over to intersect the jeep road to our turnoff to access our Mt Elbert ascent rib. Wade Gardner is known for his many shortcuts, his generosity for sharing his navigational concoctions and as being a
I can't tell you how many silly rib jokes that our ascent on the northern of the two main ribs on Mt
Elbert's west face inspired, but I can say that either rib will serve as a sharp shot to the ribs for any climber attempting to ascend their ~3000' in ~1 mile. It's friggin' steep and relentless.
Just after noon, I arrived at the Elbert summit, joining about a couple dozen other hikers.
On these first two peaks, I was feeling fresh and strong on the climbs, with what JP called "Hundo Legs", having accrued the adaptations from the
in late June and resting a lot since. My body was ready to go hard again. I know how deflating it can feel to not keep up, so I was trying to manage that with my desire to capitalize on my early speed and not be a bummer on JP's spirits. I know that with teams, we each will have our ebbs and flows. And we did.
Next was ridge and sidehill traverse over to Bull Hill, then down into Echo Canyon past the Golden Fleece Mine and the 2 mile run on Rt 82 to Jennifer awaiting our arrival at the La Plata Trailhead.
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| A Word from Jennifer |
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Jenn's Aid Setup for JP
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| My Craft Services-Level Aid Setup |
At this point just over 9.5 hours in, we'd traveled over 21 miles and climbed almost 9000'. After 10 minutes, we were off again with Jennifer joining us for a few miles up La Plata. I wish she could join me on more full segments, but unfortunately, she's been stuck single-handedly shuttling the truck and getting ready for us at each aid. Tough work she shoulders in these events!
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| La Plata Approach |
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| Climbing La Plata and a Sea of Rocky Mountains to the North |
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| #3 Summit at 5:20pm |
The route up and down the other side of La Plata into Winfield is all on trail, although it does get tricky up on the broad, rocky summit. I made a navigational error coming off the mountain, when we scouted it, so didn't let my guard down this time and in a bit more than 2 hours from the summit, we met up with Jennifer again at the Winfield Ghost Town.
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| Next Target, Mt Huron - Winfield Down Below |
Here we'd take a bit longer aid stop to refuel, take our bigger packs for the next 20 hours, including an overnight, before we'd see Jennifer again, and for JP to tend to the hotspots on his foot.
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Arriving at Winfield Aid
Photo cr: JP Ogden |
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| Jenn's Post and The Aid Stations She Meticulously Laid Out for Us |
We took 30 minutes at Winfield, but we really should've been moving again in 20. We knew we didn't have much, if any, slack time to play with if we had any chance of completing the line in under 60 hours.
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| JP Winfield Aid |
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| Craft Service-Level Aid for Me-Just Get Down What You Can in 20 Minutes! |
Huron to Avalanche Aid
Jenn headed out with us again, as we headed out in our headlamps just after 8:00pm toward Huron Peak. The night segments are always hard and I headed out a bit stressed, knowing that Jenn's words urging us to move more quickly through aid, although difficult to swallow, were true. The reality that we would likely have no time for naps was hitting hard. Beyond 42 hours awake would be a new record for me and we'd have to do 60 or more.
We touched the summit of Huron (14,001') just before 11pm.
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JP Hitting the "I"m On a Summit" Button on the SPOT
Photo cr: JP Ogden |
We then backtracked to the descent gully and took the plunge. This is an extremely steep and loose descent and in the dark, our headlamps can't penetrate the darkness to the bottom 3000' below, so it's like taking a leap of faith into the rocky darkness.
At the bottom is a stretch of large boulder-hopping and complicated route-finding, which is way more difficult in the dark.We were fortunate to have a mostly full moon, low winds and mild temps throughout the night. After a couple hours, we were at Clohesy Lake, stopped to eat, then began the long climb up Missouri Mountain (14,067'). Remember the ebbs and flows? This is where JP flowed and I ebbed. He kicked my ass on this climb, which just seems to go on FOR-EVER.
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Missouri Mountain - We Were There
Photo cr: JP Ogden |
Navigation off Missouri was a point of discussion for us for a month. Most people will scramble on the rocks and cliffs on the south face. I'd scouted this successfully, but painfully in 50 minutes with Brandt Ketterer back in 2016, but JP and I were not as efficient in our scout in July. We stayed too high and cliffed-out several times. And that was in daylight. Lacking a recent successful scout of a good south face route, I pushed for the sure thing, which is backtracking about a half mile and taking the trail down into Missouri Gulch and up to Elk Pass. This took us 1:35 to get from the summit to Elk Pass via the trail. I noted that Luke Jay, who successfully completed a S-N line did his south face traverse in 1:30 in daylight. So, all in all, I'm satisfied with our decision to take the trail. the south face scramble could be done faster, but it's riskier from navigational and injury perspectives, particularly in the dark.
Just before 6am, we topped out on Mt. Belford (14,197') and touched Mt. Oxford (14,153') across the way around sunrise at 6:44am.
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Mt. Oxford
Photo cr: JP Ogden |
Then the big descent off Oxford into what I call Purgatory...Pine Creek. The Pine Creek drainage and the prospect of Harvard, Columbia, Yale ahead sucked me in and crushed me in 2016. That wasn't going to happen this time. This I knew.
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Huge Mt. Harvard Looms Over Pine Creek
Photo cr: JP Ogden |
Route-finding from the bottom of Pine Creek to the right path up Mt. Harvard can be tricky with messy bushwhacking below treeline. We followed a more direct route that JP had found and eventually found our way onto Harvard's steep north slopes and just put our heads down and slogged and slogged up, up, up.
Jennifer actually was able to get a few hours of sleep in the camper during our overnight, since it would be around 20 hours between her seeing us at Winfield and the next spot after Mt. Columbia at Cottonwood. She was encouraged by the progress we'd made in the dark.
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| Jenn Marking Our Progress and Her Saturday Morning View |
We were wondering at what point our paths would cross, and it ended up being here that we met up with Luke Jay on his South to North attempt with his pacer, Hannes Gehring.
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| JP, Hannes, Luke, Me & More Climbing Into the Sky |
Big congratulations to Luke on becoming a Nolan's 14 finisher in 58:11...on his first attempt, no less!
Read about Luke's experience here. It's worth the read.
Harvard just keeps on giving (taking), because when the grade finally eases, there's more to come.
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| The Ivy League of Grunt Climbing |
The Harvard summit came (at 11:30am) and went along with our targeted summit time splits. Up to that point, we were clinging on a thin margin of time cushion for an under 60 hour finish. The traverse over to and then ascent and descent of Mt. Columbia was the beginning of the end of our hopes.
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| The Harvard-Columbia Traverse Goes Like This for a Long Time |
We picked our line through the boulder fields pretty well, but being 32+ hours and 55+ miles in to our attempt, we weren't moving as fast as we did in our scouting. It wasn't anything unexpected, but the boulder-hopping wore on us and wore us down. We didn't get to the summit of Columbia (14,073') until almost 3pm. We did this section in 1:10 on our July scout.
On the summit, JP realized his legs were acting funny, basically not properly executing the commands he was trying to send them and his pace slacked off dramatically. Seeing this, I decided we'd definitely take the old standard trail down, rather than bushwhack down the ridge we'd scouted. The old trail is a slippery mess, but at least there was no route-finding to further slow us.
About half way down, I hiked back up to JP and had an emotional talk with him. JP was pretty sure he was done. I knew Jennifer would be waiting at the bottom a bit down trail and we were expected around 3:00-4:00 pm. Knowing she was not tracking our SPOT beacon, since there was no cell coverage, I very much wanted to get to her. We agreed that I'd get to Jenn and tell her to contact his wife Jaime, who was at the next trailhead - Avalanche - and tell her to come pick him up at Cottonwood. Still very conflicted and emotional, I set off again.
After a short time, I saw JP making up ground coming down after me. Huh? He said that as he came down, he was getting his legs back. Must be some level of high altitude sickness maybe? That is a common issue on this line, as we spend a LOT of time up at 12-14,000'.
We made it to Jennifer over an hour+ late and as I suspected, she was getting cold and had been waiting there for 3 hours already. Unbelievable trooper she is!
Our spirits were at a low point.
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| Jennifer Tried Her Best to Raise our Spirits |
Jennifer saw that we were trashed and almost beaten. She pulled out every trick...pizza, protein shakes, signs, inspiring words of encouragement, upbeat attitude and advice shared by our respected friends posted on Facebook.
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| Trail Angel Work |
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| Perfecting the 1000 Mile Stare |
After 30 minutes of regrouping, eating some (not much was appealing at this point), drinking, resetting goals (pretty certain 60 hours was a 1 in a million shot...
so you're saying there's a chance), and going back and forth with JP about whether it was safe for him to continue, we set off across Cottonwood Creek and up one of the avalanche galleys on the north side of Mt. Yale. This one is steep, nasty and strewn with wreckage from a
Douglas C-47 that crashed in 1956.
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| Final Smiles Before Heading Up Yale |
We soldiered on up the almost 4000' climb, getting to the summit at 10:15pm. It's a convoluted summit with a lot of boulder hopping and fine navigation needed and we were tired and in the dark. The route down the East Ridge is complicated in daylight. It took us 5 hours to make it down in the dark and with 20+ mph winds. On the walk down the CO Trail at the end, we'd agreed that we were done. That descent spooked us both in the state that we were.
Arriving in the big asphalt Avalanche Trailhead parking lot at about 3am, we were greeted by our wives and a third figure standing in the darkness. What was this?
To my surprise and great pleasure, Brandt Ketterer, with whom I'd shared part of my 2016 attempt (and a lot of scouting), had come out to support us. In his quiet manner, he asked if we'd slept at all. Uh, No. He suggested taking a 20-30 minute nap and then making a final decision.
JP was done.
Avalanche to The Flanks of Antero
Largely in respect of Jennifer and Brandt, I agreed to take that nap and not make a final decision. After a fitful nap, Jenn asked what I was going to do. I said I was out. Then she asked if I'd like to at least give the next peak up, Mt. Princeton, a try. For her and grumpily, I said OK. So, at 5:18am on Sunday (48 hrs 15 minutes after we began), Jennifer and I headed out in our headlamps up the CO Trail toward Mt. Princeton East Ridge. She walked for 8 miles with me and we talked and talked. It was a good few hours after some really bad ones. It was the first time in a few days we had any meaningful time together and she had some company.
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| Early Morning on the CO Trail - Mt Yale in Background with Clouds |
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| Beautiful Morning - Princeton East Ridge in Distance |
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| Leaving the Trail and Jennifer (Hard) on Princeton East Ridge |
After 20 minutes or so bushwhacking up the steep sections of the East Ridge of Mt. Princeton, I started feeling confident again. My climbing legs were coming back, I had my music on and it was a beautiful morning.
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| Tight Bushwhacking Ripped up My Legs, but I Didn't Care |
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| Gave Way to Fun Scrambling Sections |
Around 3/4 of the way up, I texted Jennifer, asking for my scouting time splits for the rest of the peaks - Antero, Tabegauche, Shavano. I wasn't committed yet, but I was working on it.
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| And the Long Ridge to the Summit |
Reaching the Princeton Summit (14,197') at around 11:30am, I felt pretty rejuvenated and headed down the west ridge toward the gully that would drop me into Grouse Gulch and then down into the town of Alpine, where I would meet Jenn at the Antero trailhead. Amazing what a 20 minute nap and quality time with my wife can do.
Heading down Grouse Gulch, there were a few drops of rain and some thunder, but nothing much materialized, but lower down the sun came out and man was it strong! I was looking forward to the clouds coming back out! But not like they did a few hours later.
We took an hour again in the camper. I ate, changed my shoes again and did some blister maintenance on my feet. At this point, I had blisters under most of my toenails and on other parts of my feet and several hot spots that I tended to. Then, up the Jeep road Jennifer and I went toward Antero. I knew I was going to complete the line at this point. Weather forecast was good and I felt, as Brandt advised, that once I was over Princeton, the finish line was in sight.
Jenn walked up that dusty road with me for 5 miles before turning around and heading down, getting in the truck and heading to Blanks Trailhead with champagne on ice.
What I didn't know was that the batteries on the SPOT tracker had unexpectedly died as we departed and the weather forecast was not accurate.
No more pictures from here on out, but here's what happened. 30 minutes after I left Jennifer, maybe 7pm, I continued my journey up the Antero Jeep Road, black clouds began silently traversing the sky. All kinds of odd shapes...some looked like the kind of ocean mines you'd see in WWII. Very odd...no thunder, lighting, or rain for a while. Then a few drops fell and I figured it was about to get ugly, so I stopped, took my pack off, stashed my aluminum poles quite a ways away, put on my waterproof layers and sat on a log in some cover to wait it out. Nothing happened, so after 15 minutes or so, I got moving again up the hill, eventually coming to the series of big switchbacks.
At 12,600' I left the road and went up the 15-20% grade of mixed talus toward the top of Point 13,800', knowing that I'd eventually intersect a path in the talus well below the summit of Pt 13,800', kind of like a catwalk, that would take me around to the summit ridge and the standard trail up Mt. Antero. I climbed 800' up this precarious slope as dusk descended before getting uncomfortable about the clouds I saw coming in from the west over Mt Cronin's summit ridge. Fortunately, I came across a small ledge of flat ground and this is where I decided to hunker down and wait out whatever weather was in store. Once again, I took my pack off, and this time put on every warmth and water proof layer I had...down jacket, waterproof hard shell over that, buff around my neck, fleece hat, 2 hoods, waterproof mits, hand warmers, waterproof Houdini pants over my running tights. I had everything I needed in that pack because Jennifer had unpacked and repacked for me over and over again, at every point I saw her. Considering day/night, potential weather, and time until next meeting point, she calculated exactly what I needed to carry to be safe while keeping out any excess ounces not necessary. Only exposed areas were my feet and ankles. On top of my feet I laid my pack and rain cover and put rocks around my bare ankles to shield them.
I got set up just in time. Around 8:30pm the first wave of weather hit.
I sat on a flat rock, I'd positioned in a small rock alcove to protect my back, knees to chest, arms around legs, head between knees. I fully expected this to last 20-30 minutes and give way to clear night skies. I stayed in this position to conserve heat and be a small target for lightning, more or less, for 2+ hours alternating shuddering uncontrollably from cold, dozing from exhaustion, and peeking out, careful not to let too much wind or wetness hit my face, to see horizontal rain, sleet and snow and what was coming next over the ridge. At some point, I realized Jenn would be watching my stationary SPOT dot and wonder if I'd gotten hurt and was immobilized, so I dug it out with the intention of pressing the button that would tell her I was delayed by OK. That's when I realized it was no longer working. Hmmm...the one time you really need it....
Finally, after 10:30pm, the precipitation stopped. I stood up, wiggled my body to get the blood flowing and shone my headlamp around to assess the conditions. My biggest fear was that the rocks would be snow and ice covered, but fortunately they weren't. Then I considered my only four options of Left, Right, Up or Down. Initially, I chose Up and after climbing another 100', I decided that the top of Point 13,800' was too distant, maybe I'd missed the "catwalk" after all and I was concerned that going higher I might run into icy conditions. So, after some self deliberation, I turned around and started down...very carefully. Even though I had a strong headlamp, I could not see far enough to see the road, but I knew it was there.
My main concerns on the descent were me falling and more so, rockfall on me. The talus was unstable. Some most rocks were grapefruit to melon-sized, but others were small refrigerator sized. Triggering rockfall could be a serious incident for me. Getting pinned and/or broken bones at this time of night in windy and cold conditions with absolutely no one around and no SPOT locator would be really, really bad. It was scary to think of the possibilities, but I just kept making slow progress down and eventually made it to the road somewhere around 11 or 11:30pm. Cold, but safe, my focus was to get down to Jennifer and get out of there.
Rather than go back down the 7-8 miles of road I'd come up, I decided to go up. Fortunately, I was very familiar with this area, as it is part of the
High Lonesome 100 course. I went up because I knew I'd have cell reception at the saddle between Mts. Antero and White to call Jennifer and update her. And I could then take the Little Brown's Creek trail down to the trailhead on the east side of the range. Blanks Trailhead, where Jenn was waiting was the next one south of there, albeit on rough roads for her. If I'd gone back to Alpine, I would have no cell reception.
Anyway, finally got her on the phone at 12:22 am on that cold saddle and told her I was coming down. I also received a text message that she'd sent about 3 hours earlier. It read, "
If you haven't already, I think you should turn around. None of this terrible weather was forecast."
All's well that ends well, right? Live to live another day.
After
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| *Priorities* |
I did not choke up when I finally connected through to Jennifer on the phone that night. I was firmly in survival mode. On walk out Little Browns Creek Trail (4 hrs, 7 miles), I was initially dreading the trudge, but at least early on, I had the first feelings of relief and was just happy to headed toward warmer temps, Jenn, and safety. My emotions, other than relief, largely remained in check until I saw Jenn at the TH at 4:00 am. It was the beginning of days of pop-up tears. They flowed pretty freely for most of the week for my standards.
We got home at around 6am on Monday morning, took showers and went out to breakfast. We had 4 breakfasts. I choked up at breakfast a few times. Sleep was fitful on Monday night, waking many times during the night in a panic. Had a feeling like I was suffocating, claustrophobic. Had to sit on side of bed for several minutes each time.
Tuesday I left the house to drive to Frisco for chiropractic and acupuncture treatments. Dr. John, Sarah, and Alyssa at
Chiropractic Health & Acupuncture always take great care of me and are always so kind in following our adventures. I shouldn't have been driving, as my focus was drifting.
I felt uncomfortable being out in public after being in a bubble for 4 solid days. This is unlike me. I was very emotional whenever I thought about the events of August 24-27 through probably Friday of that week.
It's mellowed out, but I still get choked up with emotions of
disappointment of not finishing,
fear,
joy at what we did accomplish,
release from fear,
relief,
love of Jennifer,
appreciation of her efforts, total commitment to the goal and love for me,
pride in our teamwork,
uncertainty of whether I could/should have gone on (my logic clearly has a different opinion),
inspiration at the natural beauty I'd seen, and just
overwhelmed by the enormity of the experience. It's a complicated stew, but it's all good and has and will continue to mold what I am and how I perceive my world.
I am proud of my physical performance and impressed with how I was able to continue to think rationally during the attempt, event 70+ hours in and in dangerous situations. Put me back in that position again, with all the same variables and I hope I'd make the same logical decisions and aborting, having summitted eleven, not fourteen of the 14,000' peaks in the line - every time.
Thank you Jennifer, my love, best friend and partner in life's adventures for everything I've managed to cram in here and what I've left out.
Thank you JP for being a strong and agreeable partner and friend on this Big Adventure. First attempt - 10 Peaks - rare air, my friend.
Thank you to Matt Ozanic for just being an ace, when we needed you. Only thing missing were the handcuffs.
Brandt, you coming out at 3am to meet me at the Avalanche trailhead got me to go further. I am touched by your support and care to come support me, period, let alone at that hour. Thank you.
Julian and Lisa Smith - Your generosity in showing me the way onto this path a couple years back is amazing. You've opened up new avenues of discovery and introduced me to so many wonderful friends.
Thank you to everyone who sent kind words along the way on Facebook and text. Jennifer relayed a lot of this to us along the way and it really helps keep me accountable, it motivates me, and touches my heart that you take time out of your day to follow along and even share some words of encouragement and love!
