It was early Monday morning, October 25th 2017. I awoke on Stephens couch, cold, uncomfortable, and excited for what was to come. Our car was already packed from the night before, so we got dressed, and hopped in Stephens car. A quick stop at Oil Can Henry’s would get us going with confidence for the 12 hour car ride to come. After some McDonalds hash browns, we got on the road, with fire in our eyes. We made it to the base of the mountain in just over 12 hours. It was cold and dark. After making some food, we fell asleep in the car with dreams of our adventure to come.

I awoke cold, and cramped in the back seat. The windows were fogged, and we could see clouds not to high over us. We crawled out of the car, and got our things ready, including 5 liters of water each, for our long anticipated adventure. We got on our bikes and set out on the trail. I knew there would be some hike-a-bike involved, but starting at 10k feet with no acclimation made it much harder to ride up. Riding through the trees for about 45 minutes, we decided to start pushing our bikes as it got steep. We were breaking out of the tree line, and stopped for a snack. We scarfed down some power bars, and got back on the bikes. We broke through the tree line, and were above some of the clouds at this point.

We kept hiking our bikes up, and it only got steeper, and looser. We could see the peak, or what we thought was the peak. We ran into some hikers. It seemed people were coming from all over to hike this mountain, and were in shock that we were hiking our bikes up to only ride down. We crept over what we thought was the peak, only to find another. We kept pushing. Checking our GPS we were at about 13.5k feet.

We could feel the altitude. Pushing the bikes, and hauling them over our shoulders became much harder than it was back home. Ahead of us looked like the steepest trail we had seen on our bikes. We knew it was going to be rough. We got to the “steep” part of the trail. It was covered in snow. Stephen had gone ahead of me and I was nearing the top. It took 20 minutes to cover a quarter mile of trail in these conditions. I reached the top of the false peak, and topped out of the snow. Taking breaks as we went, it was the longest 2 miles ever. We reached yet another false peak. And trucked on yet again. At this point I was feeling the altitude. I was starting to get a headache, and it was getting worse. We came over the last false peak, and could see the true peak of Mount Elbert. There it was. We had worked so hard to get here. And we could see it. We smiled the biggest shit-eating grin ever. Even though I was smiling, I was hurting from the altitude. I was getting a bit dizzy at times and was feeling very off.

I informed Stephen of my possible altitude sickness. We concluded we had two options. We could stop here, and descend now. Or we could make a fast push for the summit, get a picture, take in the view for a second, and get the fuck off this mountain. We chose the latter. We came so far, and worked so hard. We were not going to get this close just to back out. We nearly ran our bikes up the last ridge. We poked our heads over the top, and wind whipped our heads. There we were. 14,439 feet above sea level. It was sunny and beautiful. You could see the rockies, twin lakes, and miles in any direction. Next to us was Mount Massive, which from up there, didn’t look so massive. We bumped fists, hugged, and were overwhelmed with stoke. We snapped a picture and got ready for the ride down this monster.

After a few miles of loose and chunky descending, Stephens gear gable snapped, so we fashioned a single speed set-up, and kept on going. We eventually made our way back to the tree line. This is where it got fun and fast. We blasted through winding single-track, hopping logs, and hucking drops. We made our way towards the bottom. And were riding some of the most fun and technical trail we had ever ridden. There it was. The bottom. It was so surreal how fast we descended the mountain, after taking so many hours just to get up. We had made it. We had ridden the tallest 14er in america, and the tallest mountain in colorado. We packed up our bikes, said our goodbyes to this humbling mountain, and headed home.