Shasta Explorer - Musings - Tales from Colorado, Full moon fever

One of the big attractions to Fort Collins was the many outdoors activities one could partake in, even in the dead of winter. The Front Range of the Rocky Mountain's are a postcard perfect invitation to adventure and while snow is a regular companion by mid-fall, it is of a very different consistency than what I had known in California.

In the Sierra's a hike through two or three feet of snow would mean post-holing your way through a heavy slush, similar to wet cement, or if it was particularly cold, a slurry of half-packed ice and hailstones that sent your feet in a different direction with every footstep. All things considered it was a fairly miserable experience...

Colorado on the other hand has the kind of snow you see on fake Christmas trees. It was like walking through packing peanuts instead of the California quagmire I had grown to loath. In fact Rocky Mountain snow was so dry and powdery it didn't even feel cold and you could walk through several feet of it with very little effort. This new discovery, combined with the fact that there was always somebody willing to partake in one of our hair-brained adventures, means some of my most memorable hikes were along the Front Range in the winter time.

Within a couple weeks of our arrival in Fort Collins, Chuck and I had met and gotten to know two other Colorado transplants, Kevin Miller and Ben Duemler. They were both serious cyclists and had moved there for the same reasons we had. It was the new Mecca for bike racers.

It only took a couple rides and one hike to learn that Kevin and Ben were cut from the same mold as Chuck and I. No matter how outlandish the adventure, Kevin and Ben were ready and willing. Rather than become the voice of reason to our questionable endeavors, they inspired even more radical ideas. If there was ever a 'perfect storm' for stupidity, we were it...

It was a fun but dangerous combination as we coaxed each other to new extremes. Every hike became a race to the top of a mountain and every new obstacle became an opportunity for a revolutionary and unconventional solution. With the four of us on a hike together you were guaranteed to have a lot of fun... and a lot of bruises.

One of our favorite destinations for these winter adventures was Horsetooth Mountain Park. Horsetooth was a 7,255 foot peak overlooking Fort Collins. It was a quick ride to the base of the mountain and a relatively short scramble to the top. From there you could see all of Fort Collins and halfway to Kansas. In the dead of winter we basically had the whole mountain to ourselves for whatever games we would dream up.

As competitive as we were, getting together for even an 'easy hike' frequently turned into a contest to find one another's physical and mental limits. Our outings would start out with pure intentions, but soon it was a race to the top of the mountain and then a race back down again. If we weren't racing each other we were trying something new like 'butt-surfing' one of the steep snow-laden chutes. As we grew more confident and more determined to one up each other, the things we called 'adventures' became increasingly outlandish.

Somehow we decided that while anyone could summit Horsetooth Mountain in the winter, assuming some basic gear, we could take the experience to a whole new level if we did the same with nothing but our boots and gloves! Of course as soon as the idea was hatched it was guaranteed there would be full participation... Four moons later the 'summit streakers' were born and the successful completion of our first mission produced plans for even more grandiose future exploits.

In general we were four guys of above average intelligence, that is until we were all in one place together, at which point we had the collective IQ of peanut butter. Indeed, we had become the very people that our mother's had warned us about with the immortal words; 'If so and so jumped off a bridge would you jump too'? I now know the answer is a definitive 'yes'. The right friends have that effect on you...

After looking at the photos from Horsetooth we concluded that in reality almost anybody could summit a 7,000 foot peak in the winter, even in the buff, but it would be something really special to do a 14'er. The next thing I knew we were on our way to Pike's Peak to prove it...

However we couldn't exactly hike up Pike's Peak 'Au Naturale' for a number of reasons. One, it was not nearly as deserted as Horsetooth and we didn't want to offend anyone (or embarrass ourselves... hey, it's cold on the mountain') Two, it is about a 10 hour hike round-trip. That's a lot of opportunity for the kind of sun and wind-burn that would make training on a bike afterwards very uncomfortable. Finally there was the concern that the route we planned to take, the old cog-rail, was right next to Cheyenne mountain, which happened to be one of the highest security and closely surveiled facilities in the U.S.

As ground zero for a nuclear war I am sure they would have had bigger concerns than four naked mountaineers, but even peanut butter knows not to mess with N.O.R.A.D. We opted to perform the climb like normal folks and then do a 'full moon' finish sprint at the summit...

The first several hours of the climb we clowned around and generally had fun, but by 10,000 feet the wind was starting to pick up and it was getting brutally cold. By 12,000 feet all traces of our earlier smiles were gone and each of us was engaged in a personal battle with the mountain. This was becoming an epic beyond what we had imagined...

By the summit at 14,110 feet we had the hollow looks of a holocaust survivor, only there in body, mind long since departed. (Though arguably that had happened much earlier this particular winter) The wind was howling and though I have no idea what the temperature was it was certainly one of the coldest experiences of my life. Still, we were all vigorously shivering which was a good sign...

The view was amazing, but nobody really cared, we just wanted to get off that mountain, fast! Grudgingly, the question was finally posed, so are we going to do this or not? We looked at each other in silence, but nobody budged... This was no longer a contest to see who would really go through with our ill-conceived plan, this was now a contest against the mountain...

And that day the mountain won. Four shakes of the head and we were beating a hasty retreat. Nary a word has been spoken since about the summit streakers dramatic defeat high atop Pike's Peak. The truth is we were happy to simply get off the mountain without freezing to death.

We had been pushing each other all winter, probing for one another's weaknesses and trying (unsuccessfully) to exploit them, but when the mountain finally put us to the test, we each quietly surrendered.

I now know that day solidified friendships and memories that will last a lifetime but I would also like to think we have each mellowed somewhat since then. In fact I would hope that, should we get together again, we would only make well-reasoned, testosterone free decisions that we wouldn't be embarrassed to share someday with grandkids.

I would also hope that if we did get together again someday, our collective IQ would now approach that of say... celery.

Last I heard Ben was working his way through the hallowed halls of academia while Chuck and Kevin are married to highly respectable ladies and enjoying successful careers in their respective fields of expertise. Given these circumstances it would be all too easy to deny that the summit streakers ever existed as anything more than a figment of strange imagination.

So perhaps I will wait until Kevin has become the pastor of a large congregation, Ben has become a Nobel Prize winning M.D. and Chuck is running for congress before I release my handful of fuzzy photos... to a major tabloid magazine!

This would prove once and for all that I was indeed paying attention on the mountain and while one-upping each other certainly wasn't worth dying over on a high alpine pass, it should still be worth a couple grand apiece!