The Highest

Mount Elbert is Colorado’s tallest mountain, in that sense the premier 14er. “Go big or go home,” said Mike. Neither of us want to go home to Michigan. So we went to the top of Elbert instead.

Climbing is a kind of hiking, which is a kind of walking. Lots of different jargon and equipment get brought in but in the end it is moving around—up, down, across—using mostly feet and legs and sometimes hands.

The closest starting point up Elbert from Buena Vista is the south trailhead near Twin Lakes. Heading north toward Leadville you turn west onto highway 82 toward Independence Pass. After four or five miles, a right on CR 24.

On a midsummer dawn the parking lot is full. Not to worry—any car or truck worth its salt can handle Forest Service Road 125.1B, which leads to another trailhead in two miles or so. When you’re driving across a creek you’ll know you’re almost there.

From the upper trailhead the path winds through aspens for a time, before the varied pines, then the breakthrough above the tree-line, then the scree. All throughout passers- and passees-by, opposing traffic, will express the vague camaraderie that you will echo, for you all share the same nonsense purpose.

For exercise can be found anywhere. Mountain vistas are available from car windows and overlooks. Mountaintops from airplanes. Why put one foot in front of another all six-plus miles from the upper Elbert trailhead to the summit?

For the same reason you pick your nose, I suppose. Because you can.

The wife was more practical. She picked edible mushrooms and stopped at 13,300 feet not too long after edible growth and reasonably oxygenated air ran out. Just Mike and I for the last 1,100 feet of vertical climb.

Again, and it can’t be stressed enough, it is walking. Mountaineering films and hiking foundation PSA deliverers will make what is an appropriately big deal out of surviving a walk to the top of a mountain in adverse conditions, but on a perfect summer day it is a walk.

Among the grandest walks of your life. The tallest mountain in the state. Sore legs and a blister the size of Texas on my heel are not the same as regrets.

Whatever blows your hair back? A 14er hike sure will.

Go big or go home.