So, Jenica lent me all of her clothes, since I own zero hiking gear, and we set out at 4am Sunday morning for the peak! We started hiking around 5:45am...it was about 36 degrees out when we started, but mainly due to the lack of sunlight. Luckily for us, there was little to no wind.
The picture below...Grays is the mountain on the left. You had to hike about 2 miles to get to the base of the mountain, but this hike was gradually uphill, probably gaining 1,000 ft in elevation. (We started at 11,200 ft, and hiked up to 14,100 ft...I think)
Turns out hiking at elevation was harder than expected. We would stop to catch our breath, and then take 5 steps and immediately be out of breath again. Mostly everyone passed us, but they were all really encouraging! We met this guy named Wally, who was 74! He started climbing 14ers when he was 50, and since then has climbed 180 of them! He cruised up the mountain.....! I couldnt believe how many people a) brought their dogs, and b) practically ran up it!
The picture below: we took with about 20 steps to go to the top of the mountain! Needless to say, we were absolutely thrilled to be almost there. But also at this point, we saw a 7 year old boy quickly coming after us, so we hurried to take the picture in order to beat him up the mountain!
Once we got up there (11am), the view was beautiful! You could see forever it seemed like... Jenica and I sat up there for awhile and ate our Cheerios, but then decided to go down because the altitude was getting to us.
It took us 3 hours to get down. The snow made me really nervous. Confession: a couple times I sat down as I went down the mountain... I was really paranoid about tumbling down... Jenica may have completely fallen down...she was making me really nervous, but luckily she was in front of me :) (I told her I would come after her though....)
This is us at the bottom of the mountain! Jenica lent me her sweet boots... I got a lot of nice compliments on them!
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