Fourth of July Weekend

day One.

The plan was to go horseback riding once I arrived to Denver, Colorado. We drove to Estes Park, Colorado but couldn’t find the exact location of the place to ride. Luckily we didn’t find it because it started downpouring! However, we managed to still enjoy ourselves. From the highway, we remembered seeing a sign “Free Samples in Estes Park.” Fortunately, it was a small town and we found Estes Park Brewery. We sampled several microbrews and out of all, I enjoyed Long’s Rasberry Peak Wheat. On the way back to car, we decided to stop by a local winery called Snowy Peaks Winery. We tried 5 wine samples for $3. Beautiful! To get a taste BBQ in Colorado, we ate dinner at Smokin Dave’s BBQ. It was absolutely wonderful. So far, so good.

Legendary BBQ

day Two.

The plan was to hike Pike’s Peak. We woke up at 5 a.m. Mountain time zone. So, that ended up being 7 am in NY so no big deal right. Well, it turned out to be a heck of a long day. We drove from Louisville, Colorado (near Boulder) to Colorado Springs. This travel time was at least an hour just to arrive at Pike’s Peak. Being already exhausted, we ventured to the popular 14er. Apparently, a 14er is a tremendous hike starting from about 7,000 feet elevation and finishing the hike at over 14,000 feet elevation.

The first sign we saw read, “8 hours to the Summit at a brisk pace.” Easy!! That was about 12 miles one way (up!). We are fit as hell and know how to “walk.” wrong. that was not enough.

there's our village out yonder

Just about everyone we saw on the trail said “good morning.” I definitely knew I was not in New York when I didn’t have to be the one initiating the “hey, how are you” kind of talk. Coloradans are really nice people. For the first phase of the hike (6 miles), there were plenty of runners chugging along the trail (insane!). Some runners, even, had their dog with them. Even, dogs had hiking etiquette by scooting their tail out of the way for us to proceed.

Nothing but the beautiful sky

The hike from the campground on, we didn’t witness any one else hiking following us or in front us to seek the Summit. Thus, our logical deduction that it takes at least 8 hours to hike one way and start early in the morning, Cassie and I were the sole warriors of the day. We found some open space and decided to jump off a cliff..several times over.

away I go!

one more attempt..

Cassie's attempt at death

We ran into a couple hikers on their way down while we were probably about 3 miles from the Summit. One of the hikers told us that there we would have to come across some icy paths to the extent that it covered the trail but that it would be ok because we could find the alternative path just like everyone else did. Well, we definitely could not find it when we finally approached death. One misstep or slide into the deep snow would have caused some severe damage. Luckily, we survived. Sorry, we didn’t have any evidence of this because we were not in the “catch  this photographic moment” frame of mind. Nothing else exciting happened the last two miles but we kept thinking that we weren’t going to reach the Summit any closer even though we could see the top. We did see  the 16 Golden Stairs except they were snow-covered and very steep!

After another mile or so, we FINALLY reached the apex! It was really an exhilarating moment of my life almost analogous to when I completed my first year of law school. They were both near-death experiences.

The Summit

We got to the Summit by about 4:30 pm. We thought briefly thought about hiking back down the Pike’s Peak but it would have been another 6-8 hours. If we were lucky, we would have reached the bottom by 11 pm this being done in the dark. And who knows if we would have reached the bottom because 1) disheartened because we just reached the top to know that we had to go straight back down, 2) out of water and food, 3) tired as hell.

So resolve this predicament, we were prepared to hitch a ride and tell our story. But we were  lucky enough to buy the last two $20 rail tickets back down. We didn’t get two seats together but we made the best use of our time. This ride took about hour and half and for that time, Cassie and I were huge celebrities. Everyone around us continued to ask questions like, “did you really hike up to the Summit?”, “did you see animals?”, “what did you eat/drink?”, “how long did it take you?”…we were prepared to sign autographs but decided our true value was priceless. We were deemed “Pikes Peak Warriors” and we were looked upon with aweeeeeee. This is not the end of celebrity status. It’s ONLY day one of adventure.

Look out for more pictures to be found on flickr.

That's right!

For another hiker’s documentation.