Chance Encounters
Part Three: Lightning on the Peak
The next day was to be the shortest one of our entire hike. We would go only as far as the last water before San Luis Peak, which we would ascend the day after that. The six miles between camp and that last water, however, were cardiovascularly very captivating. There were four extremely steep, essentially trailless up and downs, and, since we crossed the 13,000-foot mark twice, we weren't exactly sprinting. Still, by 11 a.m., we arrived at a lovely campsite.
Unfortunately, it was only about six inches from the trail, which, I understand, is a Forest Service regulation no-no, but that's just the way it works out sometimes. This was a spot that had obviously been used as a campsite before and, therefore, it was already impacted. The undergrowth had been smooshed and the soil was compacted. I have done a lot of journalistic research on the subject of minimum impact/Leave No Trace camping, and I know that, sometimes, Forest Service regulations that were designed to protect the environment from the inadvertent actions of otherwise well-meaning backpackers are sometimes self-defeating. The most severe negative impact to any campsite occurs the first time it is used. The second-highest amount of impact occurs the second time it is used. And so on.
I would rather break a Forest Service regulation (for mainly social reasons, you're supposed to be something like 200 feet away from the closest trail) than tromp off across the tundra and lay some new impact on a place that never before has seen a tent. The downside of this strategy, of course, is that, because several groups of hikers passed by, this wasn't the most private campsite in the world.
By the time I returned to camp with a full water bag from a close-at-hand, small snowmelt stream, Gary had transformed his part of our campsite into Home Sweet Home. I am envious of his ability to do this. My camps always end up looking like places hobos would earnestly avoid. I have stuff strewn everywhere, and my tent is usually at a 30-degree angle. This is certainly not by design. To the contrary, I've chewed my mental cud over this for years, and have even tried once or twice to make better camps. To no avail. I guess that, subconsciously, I look at campsites as the trail equivalent of interstate highway rest areas. Since I am only going to be here for 12 or 14 hours, there's no reason to get too emotionally attached to the place.
Gary's camps, on the other hand, look like they were set up by someone's grandmother. I kept expecting him to have a lawn and garden planted and a little white picket fence erected every day. Gary is adept at psychically bonding with the places where he hangs his hat for the night, and that reality is made evident by the way his camps look. He is, by nature, a nest-builder. His tent sites always look infinitely more cozy than mine, and, while in camp, he always looks more comfortable than I do, even though I carry a backpackable chair and he does not. He has routines and systems and a sense of in-camp calm orderliness that I could not develop if I dedicated the rest of my days trying. Martha Stewart would love camping with Gary; she would, on the other hand, look at my campsites as being located decidedly on the wrong side of the tracks.
There is no doubt that Gary has the camping part of trail life down better than I, while I have the trail part of camping life down better than he. This, I guess, is simply another example of our personality dissimilarities. He has lived in the same abode— which he built— in Michigan for 20-something years. In that time, I have had 34 different residences, and only in my 40th year did I buy my first house. I would call myself a nomad by nature, except that nomads are usually very adept at quickly making their campsites very homey. I guess I am more of a wanderer than a nomad.
Not surprisingly, Gary is a lot more content than I am to hang out in camp. He loves getting off the trail early in the day; I, on the other hand, start getting bored and antsy about 20 minutes after pitching my tent. Gary can sit there for hours just staring at a cliff; and, though I certainly appreciate the beauty of a cliff as well as the next man, I generally while away idle camp hours by doing something— reading, writing, repairing gear, taking short strolls or sleeping. I have trouble just sitting; I always have.
We hit the trail shortly after dawn. The Divide ridge was blocking the sun and it was very cold. The plan was to hike up to a small saddle at the head of Cochetopa Creek, drop our packs, ascend San Luis Peak, then hike as far down Cochetopa Creek as we were able. The weather, however, was looking funky. Whenever there are early morning clouds in the Colorado High Country sky, that's usually a bad sign. And today there were banks of clouds moving in from both the south and the west— double jeopardy, as it were. Ordinarily, I would have taken one look at the sky and blown off any thought of ascending a fourteener. But, as far as I know, I am the only person to have hiked the Colorado Trail end-to-end who has not ascended San Luis Peak. When I came through here on the CT five years ago, it was storming badly, and I did not consider for a moment going up. This go-round, I was going to climb the peak, no matter how ill-advised or potentially fatal my attempt might be.
If you happen to already be at the point where we dropped our packs, San Luis Peak is one of the easiest fourteeners in the state. It's only about a mile and 1,500 vertical feet to the summit. If all went well, we could be up and down in less than two hours. The rocky route is marked by cairns, and the first part of the ascent was steep and slow. But, once we achieved the summit ridge, it was a piece of cake. It was only at this point that I started thinking about the superlative shape I was in. Yesterday we went over the 200-mile mark and, by this point on any long hike, you should have your trail legs very much under you.
I did not even break stride on my way to the summit, and even Gary, who is still at constant odds with uphills, pretty much breezed his way up. As I was waiting for him at the summit, I realized this was the first time I had ever been alone atop a fourteener. Even though the wind was so strong it was blowing the taste right out of my mouth, I could not remember ever being happier. I guess if you love the tundra as much as I do, then summiting a fourteener is the ultimate experience."Closer to God" is how one friend of mine described the thrill of sitting on a summit. I have always looked at it as the exact opposite: "Farther above the rat race."
I sat for a moment and ran my fingers along the bright-red and greenish yellow lichens that decorated the rocks on the summit like haphazard paint splashes. Surely the tears I felt running down my face were caused by the incessant wind.
My solitude-based reverie was short-lived, as, within 10 minutes, a couple coming up the Stewart Creek Trail joined me. Gary arrived shortly thereafter. By this point, the wind was gusting to about 50 miles per hour, and those two cloud banks were looking nastier by the minute. We took each other's pictures and sprinted back down to the trail. Our round-trip had taken 1 hour, 45 minutes.
By the time we got down, there were 15 other people getting ready to go up San Luis. We couldn't believe it, as San Luis Peak is one of the most remote fourteeners in the state. But, fourteener-bagging has become a passion in Colorado. Type-A types spend considerable time and effort trying to "knock off" all 54 of our fourteeners, usually for athletic, rather than aesthetic, reasons.
San Luis marked my fourteenth fourteener, and, every time I ascend one, I feel a pang of guilt, because there is little doubt that the fourteener-bagging craze is causing a lot of negative environmental impact on Colorado's loftiest peaks. People like me are leaving muddy bootprints in the temple.
Lightning began to flash in the distance, and I warned the people getting ready to go up about the weather. Every single one of them looked at me quizzically. They hadn't given the weather a moment's thought and evidently didn't plan on doing so. I shook my head as I hoisted my pack. Almost every year in Colorado, people are killed by lightning while bagging fourteeners. But most people subscribe to the act-of-God theory of survival. If God has decided that your time is up, it doesn't matter if you're scaling a mountain or sitting at home watching TV; and, if God has decided that your time is not up, it matters not one iota if you're on top of a peak in the heart of a thunderstorm. Ignorance is truly bliss, right up until the moment your carcass gets fried by a lightning bolt.
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