I
sat down shakily on a giant boulder, stretching my tight legs out in front of
me, and tried to catch my breath in the thin air. I was on the peak of Mt Eolus - the most
remote 14er in Colorado and the tallest peak in the entire San Juan mountain
range at 14,090 ft. I snapped a photo of
my boots perched over the precarious route I had slowly come up. The last few hundred feet consisted of
vertical faces, loose scree, and a narrow catwalk with thousand foot drops on
either side. It was day three of the 9th
annual Dan Hoffman Memorial Hike. This
year was a year to remember. Three days
ago I had guessed we had a 3% chance of making it to the summit, and for good
reason.
When
we had arrived in Silverton we'd had exactly 11 minutes to pack all of our
things, park our cars, print out our tickets at the depot, and walk over to the
train and board. And we didn't even know
where the depot was. Or that we had to
get our tickets printed out. To make
matters worse, Dan's back had gone out and started spazzing with extreme pain
on the drive in. Now he was walking like
a 95 year old man on a mission, yelling out curses every few steps. Bearded DHMH participants were barking out
orders, sprinting full speed down random streets, and parking illegally. I thought our best bet was probably to give
up and hope that we could catch the next day's train. Even if we made it on the train in time we couldn't
possibly do the ten mile hike to Chicago Basin from the random spot where the
train dropped us off in the wilderness; not with Dan's back like it was. But then, I wasn't counting on the sheer
stupid stubbornness of our group.
I'd
had another moment of doubt when at 2PM the next day, as I was frantically
trying to set up my tent in Chicago Basin, I started getting pelted with
hail. For a minute I didn't notice the
pain, being so engrossed in my self-preservation, but then something in my
brain shouted that rain shouldn't hurt that much and I realized that it wasn't
water driving sideways into my ribs, it was pieces of ice! If this happened the next day we couldn't
even try for the summit of Eolus. But
then, the next morning was as clear and blue as an Arizona sky and it stayed
that way past noon, which basically never happens in Colorado.
I'd
had a few doubts in the morning too in the form of glances up at the ever
steepening terrain as I climbed. Up and
up and up and up and up. My legs were
aching and my lungs were gasping and it seemed like the trail would never
end. Even if we didn't make it the trip
would still be a success. The point
wasn't really to get to the top of Mt Eolus.
It would have been worth the nine flights and 70 hours of travel even if
we had never made the train. The DHMH
isn't about the peak, and despite what Miley says, it's not really about the
climb either. It's about the hugs at the
airport, the shared bites of dehydrated food, the discussed failures of the
last year, and the overused retellings of past DHMH stories. It's about intentionally depending on your
friends and trusting that they'll be there no matter where circumstances leave
you. Not reaching the destination just
meant one more story to tell next year.
My legs kept pumping though, one after the other, almost beyond my
control and before I knew it the saddle was under my boots and there was just a
couple hundred feet left.
Maybe
after all the DHMH is also, just a little bit, about sitting on top of a
fourteen thousand foot mountain and looking out over the hundreds of jagged
peaks beneath you stretching out as far as you can see, and feeling the sense
of accomplishment that comes with conquering your own doubts. I laughed as I stood back up to start the
long journey down. The 9th annual Dan
Hoffman Memorial Hike of the San Juan National Forest; another epic
success.
