Blanca Hawks

Pic taken from the car window near Blanca, CO

In October of 2017, I got an email that really rocked my world. A small group of folks in the Lawrence Trail Hawks were planning a trip to Colorado in August of 2018 to climb Blanca Peak, which at 14,345 feet is the 4th highest peak in the great state of Colorado, and they were inviting me to come along!

When discussing (pleading) with Deanna whether I should (could) take my first non spouse/family vacation since my 1999 trip with the dudes to Cooperstown, the best reason I could come up with was "It took 53 years before someone invited me to go climb a mountain with them, I may be too old next time".  Not the most convincing argument in retrospect, but it didn't get a solid "No" either. So............I'm in!

The only thing that I knew about camping/hiking at that point was that I know nothing at all about camping/hiking. I did spend many summer nights as a kid sleeping in tents, but the tents were set up in backyards. We didn't have to worry about bears, and if we got hungry or needed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, the house was 20 feet away. So, I managed to borrow some of the expensive stuff (pack, sleeping bag, and pad), bought a few items (tent, down jacket, bear spray), and searched for a few others (boots, bucket hat, etc.) that I knew I had somewhere. We had a "practice" camp out at Clinton Lake about a month before the actual trip to test out the gear. We did that, and we went on a hike while wearing our loaded packs to see how hard it would be to hike with 30-40 lbs of gear (not too bad on flat ground), but mainly we drank beer, played bean bags, and told stories. Truthfully, aside from the bean bags, this was pretty applicable training.

So came the morning of Monday, August 6th. I drove to the Free State High parking lot in Lawrence at 6:00 AM to meet Al, Gary, and Paul. We would pick up Jeff in Colby. All went according to plan until we were going through Colorado Springs. We'd noticed some dark clouds going through the area, but a check of the radar on our phones looked like we'd miss the worst of it. As it turned out, we didn't miss it by much. After going through town on Highway 24 some pea-sized hail started to come down just as were entering the on-ramp to I-25. A few miles down the road we started to notice that cars were pulled over onto the shoulders in both the northbound and southbound lanes. In our southbound lane the cars rear windows were blown completely out by the hail, in the northbound lane, the windshields were blown out. We noticed some people walking in the ditches and taking pictures of the baseball sized hail. We felt really bad for the folks stranded roadside, but we didn't see anyone that was hurt, and emergency vehicles were coming onto the scene, so we continued on. If we'd been just a few minutes earlier, the trip would've likely been ruined, changed to a search for rental cars, glass repair shops and talking to insurance agents on the phone. We decided that the extra time we'd spent earlier that afternoon taking pictures next to the dinosaur at the Sinclair station provided just enough delay to avoid the worst of the storm. Always stop to smell the roses and selfie with the 'saurs, it may just save your trip.

Selfie with the Sinclair dinosaur in Limon, CO. Photobombing by Paul

We spent that night and the next at an AirBNB house in Alamosa named the Casa Azul. It was perfect, everyone had their own room, and we spent the time gathering the last of our supplies, reconning Lake Como Road (official Worst Road in Colorado), and attacking the buffet at Calvillo's Mexican Restaurant. During the recon mission, we found that Gary's truck could get our fully loaded packs up the road from 7,800 feet to approximately 10,000 feet. So, we would only have to hike with our fully loaded packs (around 40 lbs) less than a mile and a half, from 10,00 feet to 11,700 feet. It was still a challenging hike, but made so much easier by Gary's truck Lil' Red.

So, early on Wednesday morning, there we were hiking up Lake Como Road in front of Lil' Red, enjoying the mountain air and being thankful that we weren't lugging our packs (yet). Once we reached Lil' Red's limits (you should've seen the tricked out vehicles that were venturing further up the road, which got progressivley worse/scarier), we grabbed our packs out of the back and started hiking for real. Even though we're all runners, we were doing some real huffing and puffing up that steep winding road in the thin mountain air.

 Lil' Red on the "easy" part of Lake Como Road

Loaded up and ready to hike! (l-r Jeff, Al, Gary, Paul, Me)

Beautiful Lake Como, CO

We arrived at Lake Como a few hours later and were simply stunned by its beauty. Looking out across the lake, the view is ringed by a mountain ridge that includes Little Bear peak (14,035 feet) with only pine trees visible behind us. The only facilities provided were a few poles with pulley/cables attached to hoist your food out of the reach of any bears that might be close enough to smell it. The bear stories that I'd read from a few years back at Lake Como definitely got my attention. The first question that I had for any hiker that we met was "See any bears?". Luckily, everyone's answer was that they had seen no signs of bear anywhere in the area. We took every precaution that we could anyway (hanging food out of reach, using bear cannisters to hold the food, and burning/washing anything that might smell of food). Since we arrived midweek, we had our pick of the best places to setup our tents, as it got closer to the weekend, there were fewer spots available.

The next morning (Thursday) we got up and headed out towards the summit at daylight. I believe that the route from Lake Como to Blanca Peak is approximately 6 miles roundtrip, with an elevation gain just over 4,000 feet. Much like in Colorado Springs, our luck held and we were treated for spectacular weather (I'm told) for summiting a mountain. I'd say the temps varied from the mid 50's at Lake Como to mids 40's on the peak. The best part was no rain and nearly no wind.

The climb got progressively more technical as we neared the summit. About a half mile from the summit, I was nearing the edge of my comfort zone. My trekking poles which had been so useful the day before for balancing with a heavy pack became more of a liability as we went along. I found that I wanted my hands free to grab for any handhold that I could get on the rocks, and the poles were just tying up my hands. Luckily Jeff was able to stow them for me on the outside of his pack (Jeff also rescued me the day before by loaning me his old belt to keep my shorts from falling down). Gary also found that he had no use for his trusty walking stick at this point, so he left it in the rocks to be retrieved on the way down.

Up, up we go (Al leading, then Paul, Jeff, and Gary)

After a few hours of climbing we reached the saddle between the peaks (Ellingwood Point to the left, Blanca Peak to the right). This was a little scary as you could see the ridge that we'd be climbing to the peak, which looked very steep, but on the other side of the ridge..................was nothing. Well, it was a beautiful view, but it seemed to drop straight down forever. We got two great pieces of advice from some climbers who had just come down from the peak. First, "keep the ridge to your left" (meaning stay below the ridge), and "leave your packs here" on the saddle. Even though our packs were pretty light for this outing as we were essentially only carrying water, some food, and rain gear (with all of the heavy stuff back at the camp), it felt really great to be relieved of the extra weight. I believe that it also made a big difference in keeping my balance on some of the (to me) gnarly climbing to come.

Sitting on the saddle, Blanca Peak behind (and above) us.

A look back at the valley we just hiked out of, Lake Como is just out of sight around the bend beyond the trees.

So, we dropped our packs and headed up along the ridge towards the summit. This section for me, got pretty gnarly as my only previous mountain experience was driving up Pike's Peak about 8 years ago. There are cairns (little clusters of stacked rocks, obviously stacked by humans) all along the trail to point the way, but starting a few hundred yards below the summit, there seemed to be cairns everywhere and no real good route to follow. Al was in the lead and he seemed to be making good progress, but he disappeared behind a big outcropping of rock and we didn't see him again till he appeared on the peak. Not knowing for sure which route to take, we all kind of went into trail blazer mode and started scrambling whichever direction looked safest yet also headed towards the summit. Somehow we all made it though and wow, what a feeling, what a view!

l-r Gary and Paul ascending, Jeff sitting and Al standing on the summit 

I was soaking in the moment as much as possible, but in the back of my mind, I was really worried about going down. I kinda figured it would be like climbing a tree, all fun and games till you realize how high you are and then there doesn't seem to be any way to get back down. Once we started down though, Al found the route that we should've taken up. It was still a little scary at times, but nothing like the "let's take a brief terror break" moments I had on the way up. Somehow, I'd remembered to dig the Trail Hawks flag out of my pack before leaving the saddle, so we got lots of pics repping the only club that would have us as members.

Top of the world Ma! - James Cagney

The trip back down was wonderfully uneventful, until with about a mile to get back to camp it started hailing on us. This was only pea-sized hail, but we had seen what the baseball sized stuff could do, so we all donned our raingear and hung out under a stand of pine trees for a while before heading back to camp. Fortunately our raingear held up well and our tents were dry (with a few minor exceptions), so we all kept dry and mostly napped the rest of the afternoon away. The next day, we had no plans at all, so we just kind of hung out and hiked some, except for Paul, who free-styled his way almost to the top of Little Bear before hitting a dead end. Gary followed him part way up.

Both Gary and Paul are in this pic, somewhere.

I don't know if I'll ever do anything like this again, but I am so grateful that I got the chance. And to do it with this group of folks made it so special and so much fun. I have memories to last a lifetime from this trip, but two stand out right now. The first was looking up at the stars and seeing a shooting star streaking through the night sky. The second is this view, which I had each of the three mornings we were there, while standing on a rock in the middle of a stream brushing my teeth. What a way to start the day!

Sunrise over Lake Como