Back at Base Camp of Quandary Peak. This is near Keystone, CO (the ski resort).
Quandary Peak, 14,265'. I'm holding the "sign in tube" which holds a piece of paper where you can sign. Needless to say, I didn't bother signing in that day. It was amazing to be on top. We had lunch there.
The 2 tallest twin peaks in the distance are Grays (14,270) and Torreys (14,267) peaks, the 2 first 14ers I summited. This was taken from Quandary.
Corey Dobson (a med school peer) and myself atop Quandary. We're smiling because when your O2 saturation is 60% you're too stupid to realize how much it hurts and that you shouldn't be so happy to be dying. For what it's worth, Corey beat me to the summit by about 20 minutes. He's an animal. Note on high altitude stupidity: the chump who took the picture has his fingers in front of the lens. Oh well. They had come from Texas for the third time to summit this mountain, because they failed to make it the first 2 tries. That really put it into perspective for me.
This is Avery the dog. Avery couldn't take the 50mph winds at 13,000 feet, so she "quit". She was obviously thinking more clearly than the rest of us. Note: there was a loco dog we met on the mountain named "Quandary the Dog". Quandary (yellow lab) lives with his family at the base of the mountain and summits with a group every day. Every day. That dog has more 14er summits than any human. I guess that he is a late sleeper b/c he was going up w/ a group when we were going down.
Corey Dobson atop Quandary
Grays and Torreys peaks. These are cool mountains b/c you can climb them both in a day. You connect them via the "saddle" bx them. My 1st 2 fourteener summits.
View from Pikes (14,110) peak ascent.
Even though atop Pikes peak we were frozen w/ 60 mph winds, on the way down it thawed right nice. 12 mile hike. We left at 4:00 AM to summit.
View near top of Pikes Peak (near Colorado Springs). The really depressing thing w/ Pikes is that you can DRIVE to the top. So right there I was standing on the shoulder of a road where a bunch of blue haired retired gerries were heading up in their '96 Lincoln Continentals w/ the heater on full blast, jamming to Marty Robbins and the Sons of the Pioneers. Needless to say, we didn't take the road. We were just crossing it. But when we get on top to the gift shop, the AARP members all want to know why we are all tuckered out.
Luke Helland, Corey Dobson, Nate Gebhard going for the final summit push. If I remember correctly (which I often don't at that elevation) the actual peak is the small peak you see just to the right of the guy in the middle.
It's always a white Christmas in Coeur d'Alene, but this year we traveled to my home town only to find it BURIED in snow! Coeur d'Alene beat some kind of 1955 snow record for the most snow in 24 hours sometime during the middle of December. It was lovely to look at, a pain to drive in, and Brent had way to much fun snow-shoeing around the neighboring hills.
