Conquering our first fourteener...or not!

So Heather filled you in about our time in Chicago, now I’ll get you all up to speed about our adventures since then.
The two days after were pretty bland, so bare with me while I quickly report about them (feel free to skip to the next paragraph). We left Chicago on Canada Day and our big celebration consisted of driving 7 hours to a random campground in western Iowa called Prairie Rose State Park. We caught some shut-eye and left early the next day for some more driving. We stopped in Lincoln along the way, a pretty cool little city of 200,000 but with a football stadium bigger than any stadium in Canada (you gotta love the US). We grabbed some coffee and internet access at a coffee shop there in order to figure out where we were going to stay for the night. We decided on a campsite just outside Sterling, a small town in eastern Colorado. After a quick but tasty lunch in Lincoln we were off for some more driving, and about 6 hours later we were at our new home, definitely the worst campsite we’ve been at yet. It was basically a giant field with no trees, but it gave us a place to sleep for the night! The next morning we were off to Boulder, where we were able to book a pretty swanky hotel for a really cheap price.
Now, onto the GOOD STUFF!

We got to Boulder at about lunchtime. Some would compare Boulder to Canmore -- a mountain city, with an outdoorsy culture. Driving in you definitely got that sense from it. Within 5 minutes of being within city limits I had already seen about a hundred cyclists, all on thousand dollar road bikes. We were both starving so we headed for lunch at this sub place called Half Fast Subs. Conveniently, the Wimbledon final was playing so we were able to catch Djokovic’s victory. After a quick hike up Mount Sanitas (a small little mountain that gave a good view of Boulder, see photo), we went and checked into our hotel. That evening we explored downtown Boulder, a long pedestrian restaurant and shopping street. Downtown Boulder is famous for their “Happy Hour” specials, and we found this one place with half priced appetizers and $2.50 pints. Needless to say, I was ready to stay there for a while but Heather was keen to continue to explore what the rest of downtown Boulder had to offer. After a lot of exploring we ended up at a nice Mexican restaurant. After a gazillion fajitas we were both pretty tired so we walked back to the hotel, watched some tube and went to sleep.



The place we were heading to next was Longs Peak Campground, part of Rocky Mountain National Park. The campground has 26 campsites available on a first come first serve basis and we wanted to make sure we got one so we left Boulder at about 7:30am. We were in luck and managed to find an amazing campsite buried in the mountains. Our main goal of this part of the trip was to hike “Longs Peak” - at 14256 ft it is the highest in the park (collectively all mountains in Colorado over 14000 ft are called fourteeners). After we pitched our tent we went to talk to the ranger about the hike. Unfortunately, until about July 15th the climb is rated technical (aka you need crampons, rope, ice axes etc…) to get to the top due to the snowy and icy conditions. We asked him if there was another comparable option and he gave us two options, Mt. Lady Washington, or the harder Mt. Meeker. We decided on the latter but it did not have a route but the Ranger gave us directions (it turns out we should have listened a little harder) and assured us that unlike Longs Peak if we slipped and fell it wouldn’t be to our death (see the picture of Mt. Meeker, the peak on the left, below).



After talking with the Ranger we headed into RMNP and did a nice warm up hike to get our legs ready for the challenge the next day. We hiked 5.4 miles; the top of which was Loch Vale and it gave us a great view of the mountains.



That night we hit the hay early as we were to get up at 5am the next morning so that we could finish our climb of Mt Meeker before the afternoon thunderstorms rolled in (and believe me they do as I have never seen so much thunder and lightning in my life!)

We both set our alarms for 5am, but Heather accidently set her watch to 5pm and I somehow turned my alarm off without realizing it, but luckily at about 5:15 Heather woke up on her own and poked me and said we had to go!
So, after a quick oatmeal breakfast we set off on our journey at about 5:45. The first 3.5 miles of the hike was hard, but routine. We followed a nice windy trail (windy is good as it makes the elevation gain less strenuous) through the trees and then came out into the rocky part. As we hiked we past this one hiker who asked us what our destination was. When we said “Mt. Meeker” he replied in an ominous tone “good luck.” At that point we both got a little nervous. Things got a little sketchier when a came to this traverse, a narrow snowy walkway where, if you slipped, you might be in trouble (see picture below).



We still felt reasonably good about things though and continued onwards. The next part of the hike basically was like hiking up a big ski steep ski hill. You couldn’t just walk up it, as you would just keep sliding down the snow, so each step I would have to kick in the snow until I would have a place to position my foot. I did this over and over again literally creating our own ladder up the hill. We were looking for a place called “the ramp” which would take us off the snow and give us a nice (snowless) walk up to the top. However, in the distance we thought we saw another climber and we saw other footprints so we continued towards that. This route, unbeknownst to us at the time, took us past “the ramp” on towards a steeper, icier part of the mountain. We both started to get nervous. We got to one rocky section of the mountain and we looked right and left and both saw scarily steep and icy terrain. We then realized that we were basically ice climbing without ropes and decided to head back. We started the descent in the icy steep part of the mountain we had stupidly climbed to. Directly below about 15ft was a group of rocks. I slipped and fell into them, but I braced myself on a big one and was completely fine. The next 20m or so of our climb down we took extra care and once we got out of that portion it was basically a heel run down a snowy hill – we were in the clear! We got back to our campsite at about 2pm and I have never been so tired in my life. We spent the rest of the day in our tent, reading and napping. Have no fear family and friends we promise that was the limit of our stupidity and we will be more cautious in the future. See the pictures below of Heather slogging it up the snow and ice.



Today, we drove into a different part of RMNP and we did another smallish hike and then we headed to a coffee shop to get on the internet and catch up with our lives.

Tomorrow we leave for Moab, Utah. We will spend the next week exploring the national parks of Utah, and we will also go down to Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. We will stop into Page, Arizona where apparently there is a really cool rock formation called “The Wave”. That will take us to July 15th where we will take a break from Nature and experience something completely different by spending two nights in Vegas! Well, sorry for the novel. Writing blogs is hard! You can look forward to the next entry where the more experienced blogger will take over once again!
We hope everything is going great, and we miss you all!!

Love,
Matt and Heather