Sabbatical blog - day 23; my first "fourteener"

I had no clue what I was getting myself into today when my friend Neil and I decided we would hike up to the top of Quandary Peak which is 14,265 feet at its highest point. I went to one web site, read about it and it said it was about a 3 hour roundtrip hike. Yeah, not so much. At least not for a rookie hiker such as myself. It took me 3 and a half hours to get to the top.

Still quite the fool at this point that we were almost there

I figured once we made it past the treeline, we were probably halfway there. Nope, not even close as downward hikers let us know. The 'fun' was just getting started as we began the rocky climb on our way to the summit. It was about this time when I started asking what I had gotten myself into as the pauses became more and more frequent. I kept reminding myself that this was indeed a marathon and not a sprint and took the advice of some OU Sooners we ran into on the way up (also first-timers) who gave us the simple advice of setting small goals for ourselves as we climbed.

Mama and baby mountain goat looked a lot less tired than me at this point

Once we made it to the ridgeline before the final pitch, which was probably still another 1000 feet and pretty steep, we were telling ourselves that we could do this. We started the final pitch, which was even more rocky than what we experienced prior to the ridgeline, and soon found ourselves stopping every 40 or 50 steps. We stopped asking the people coming down how much further we had to go, as it had become a bit demoralizing. As we kept going up, I had lost sight of the summit and kept finding myself looking at false summits. I wised up and stopped looking up.

At this point we're at 13,000+ feet, which is the part where the air really starts feeling thin. I had honestly thought about throwing in the towel here, but as I was resting, some dude was coming down and told me we only had about 700 feet to go. That was all the motivation I needed. I made up mind then that I wasn't giving up and I was getting to the top no matter how long it took me.

About 30 minutes later, I was there. Probably one of the most rewarding things I've ever done because the view from the top was amazing. The pictures I took don't do it justice. It was also some of the most powerful wind gusts I have ever experienced. When I was standing taking pictures, I thought I was going to be blown off the mountain.

My favorite pic from the top

The way down took about two hours and my legs felt like jello coming down the rocky terrain until we hit the treeline. As we were descending and wondering when we would hit the trailhead, I kept thinking there's no way we just hiked up all of this. Also, one other interesting highlight from the way down, a few snowflakes fell upon us. First time I've ever seen snow fall in July.

As I write this blog, I'm sore, tired but feeling good that I didn't give up.