Bus Trip ‘Oh Ten: Episode Thirteen: Blame it on the altitude.

July 1st

We woke up at five in the morning, per Josh’s request. He said if we didn’t get an early start on our hike, we were likely to get caught in an afternoon thunderstorm, and having been threatened by rain on every single hike we’d been on during the trip, we took his advice.

So those of us that were going–Tyler, Pual, Michelle, Stephanie, and I– reluctantly got out of our bunks before sunrise, got our gear ready, and walked across the Target parking lot, to meet Josh at the “clubhouse”. Ben and Saray stayed behind (what a surprise) so Ben could get more work done. I was disappointed that Ben would be missing out on the fourteen thousand foot hike (even though he dismisses the sort of spiritual high I derive from such an expedition as “modern Nashville-style Christianity) because I think it’s a shame to spend as much time as we are in Colorado Springs, and not see its most famous inhabitant.

So we rode in Josh’s death-machine Jeep Cherokee (that he’s had since before I knew him) at seventy-five miles per hour out to the trail head, a good forty-five minute drive from his place. The six of us packed into his five passenger Jeep, leaving me to ride in the very back with auto-supplies and old boots. Nothing had changed since the first time I climbed into his vehicle. There was the handle from a plunger or something that held up the back hatch, and there was the milk-crate box full of everything he could possibly need if his Jeep broke down because unlike most of my other friends, Josh is someone whom I regard as a real man, wise and prepared.

We drove through sleepy mountain foot suburbia in the shadow of the towering, ancient monster, around to the western side of the mountain, where the trail head was. Starting on the western side meant a steeper and harder, but faster hike. Although we weren’t starting at the very bottom, we could still take pride in the fact that our hike was more strenuous, and therefore just as valid.

The road up to the trail head was a serpentine dirt road, but Josh showed no intention of letting off the gas. We bounced and swerved beneath a thick green canopy, and I just smiled. Josh is a wild man at heart, crazy in a blue-eyed Kansas way. He drove like mad up the mountain, waking my groggy-eyed friends to their senses, now white-knuckled, but hey, I trust Josh with no reservation. Most of my friends are wild. There is a certain magnetism in our souls that draws wild-men together. But Josh’s wildness is calm and calculated; he possesses a responsible spontaneity that can put one at ease.

We parked the jeep in a small dusty parking lot and stumbled out into the crisp air, wondering where exactly the mountain was. The woods are dense at the trail head; there is something to be said for not seeing the mountain for the trees.

We paid our fee and spoke briefly with the caretaker, a bearded mountain man who lives in a trailer near the parking lot (an envious position), and then we were on our way in the cold Colorado dawn, making long strides up the trail. Not thirty minutes into the hike, Pual tells us to go on without him, that he can’t keep up with our pace. Josh, always understanding, gives him a few directions and where to meet us at the top, but I know I won’t be seeing Pual again on the hike.

The altitude is a monster. Sure, we’ve been gradually gaining elevation since we left Kerrville, ears popping along the way, but we’re all sea-level dwellers and we just aren’t used to being this close to space. Josh has been living in Colorado Springs for almost a year and has had plenty of time to get acclimated. He sure is hard to keep up with.

Just before we hit the tree-line, Tyler speaks up: “I can’t keep going at this pace, guys.”

We take a break on a rock to talk it over. We’re all winded, but Tyler, with his hurt knee and a rather-red faced Michelle can’t keep up with Steph and I, having a little more experience, and certainly not with Josh, who is a mountain-man anyhow.

Josh is quick to tell them that splitting up is an option, the only stipulation being that we head back down the mountain by twelve to avoid the storms. Everyone agrees, and after our break, Steph and I trudge on with Josh, leaving Michelle and Tyler to go at their own pace.

“You two were the first ones ready to go this morning, and now you’re the last ones here with me. Figures,” Josh says with a chuckle.

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Once we were above the tree-line, and could see above the thick, green forest, we were in a grassy, flower dotted field that reminded me of my time in the Swiss Alps. The green, cascading hills gave way to far off snow-capped mountains. I expected to hear the ringing of cow-bells, but instead only the pervading silence of isolation. For a panoramic moment, I lost myself in it.

It was at this point, as we caught our breath and rested our aching legs, that Josh pointed out a postcard-perfect, Idyllic valley that dipped into a pristine lake, surrounded by mountains on all sides. He told us he planned on hiking down there soon, and spending about a week or so hiking and fishing and just being. I was admittedly jealous, and I’d love to stay around and do that with him, but as always, I have to keep moving.

The trail gradually became steeper and harder to traverse. We looked ahead at the incline we were about to climb, necks craning to understand the severity of the thing, and I immediately became discouraged. Josh assured us that after the hike up the ride it would get a lot easier, but I was already exhausted. We had been climbing for two and a half hours, and Michelle and Tyler were dots far behind us. Josh said we were half way there, trying to encourage us, but it didn’t really work.

But we trudged on, my legs burning, my breath short from the altitude, my stomach feeling sick. Steph and Josh were both getting ahead of me, looking behind every once in a while to make sure I hadn’t stopped. I was reeling, and as soon as I got to a place where I could steady my feet against a rock, I threw up, trying not to lose my balance. My vomit tasted like the awful coffee I’d had that morning from the club house.

“It’s just altitude sickness, man,” Josh assured me, “It happens to lots of guys”.

Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.

So we kept walking up the ride, my stomach churning and my head swimming. My legs didn’t feel like they could go on much longer, and when I looked up and saw we still had a ways to go before the ground would level out any, my distressed legs nearly gave up. But there was no turning back, and I didn’t want to look weak in front of either Steph or Josh, so I stared at my feet and took it one step at a time, not taking notice of anything else.

I found that the key to my success was to exist singularly in each moment. I didn’t think about the previous step, or the next one; I just focused on each moment as it came to me. My breath. My foot step. The wind. A rock. My breath. My foot step. The mountain. And eventually we were at the top of the ridge, precarious incline behind us.

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I’m not sure what it is that lies at the compulsion to put our bodies through such physical torture except for the innate desire to conquer. At the top of that ridge, with my legs weak and my stomach raw, I felt like a conqueror indeed. I let out a grisly howl from a cliff side that echoed three or four times off the mountain and down into the valley forever. But the primal celebration was short, we still had a ways to go.

From there we walked along a pebbly desert, with rocky hills to the south of us, where cute marmots roamed around, barking at us from time to time. Josh was right, this part of the hike was much easier, and I was already feeling much better. I realized, as my stride widened, that I was the mountain, and the mountain was me, and there was really no difference between us. Conquering this mountain would only be conquering myself, and there is a certain solace in that.

There are other ways to get to the top of Pike’s Peak than by foot. One can take a cable car from Manitou springs that rises high above the trees, above the clouds, above the earth, and sets you down safely in a gift shop. Or, one is at liberty to drive their car, or ride their motorcycle (which sounds fairly appealing) up a winding road that reaches the top. We were approaching this road, where mini-vans and SUVs, drove slowly, the passengers observing the panoramic views from behind tinted windows, comfortable in A/C and leather seating.

“How pathetic,” I muttered under my breath. But a part of me envied them as they rolled on.

It was a surreal moment as we crossed a parking lot being build to accommodate visitors when I remembered “Oh yes, civilization, society, people, these things exist”. I had been focusing so hard on the mountain, and on the task before us, and for a second it dawned on me: “I’m a real person doing real things, just like those people in their cars. This is reality” as if the mountain, or perhaps the sheer altitude, had stolen that sense of reality from me.

We were nearing the summit with only about an hour left to hike. The area was relatively flat, and the trail meandered through a field of meteor looking rocks–innumerable headstones in some cosmic graveyard. The scene was peaceful in a macabre way, and sprinkled with tiny purple and blue flowers, but I was too tired to really enjoy it.

From there it was a nearly vertical climb up red rocks to the top. We were climbing the steps to Mordor. There was no trail to speak of, just the rocks, so many damn rocks. Martial-hell rocks for about forty minutes. We could see the trail winding far beneath us as we carefully traversed the unstable incline, tip-toeing from rock to rock to rock to shaky rock *gasp* to rock, one at a time.

When we finally reached the top, planting our feet on solid, flat ground, I felt a relief so powerful it was almost sexual in nature, complete with the nausea often experienced afterwards. But here we were, fourteen thousand one hundred feet above sea-level. I felt like God Himself, in the great abyss, tired from creation, posing before the entire infinite universe in all its splendor and declaring “It is good” before collapsing into irrelevance.

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We walked straight to the visitors center to sit for a while, and I tried, unsuccessfully, to settle my sick stomach. I felt like I had just ran a marathon in space. We sat down at a booth with a window, watched the tourists step out of the cable car and pour into the visitors center to buy trinkets, and pulled out our lunches from our packs. My hands, holding the remaining half a sandwich I couldn’t eat, were swollen, and I was terribly thirsty, regretting that the only water we had was from Manitou springs, and tasted like flat soda.After I felt like I could stand, and Stephanie had eaten the better part of both our sandwiches, we went back outside to admire the views. It’s always better to see the ground from the rock than seeing the rock from the ground.

There’s not much that can be said about looking in every direction for miles upon miles. It’s something that truly has to be seen. And I truly believe, even standing there on shaky legs, stomach sore, that such a majestic view is better experienced when one actually hikes to the top. Taking the cable car, or driving up a mountain, cheapens the experience, makes it just another novelty purchased at a gift shop and taken home. When you hike up, and peer down, you’ve worked to create that moment, that view, that mountain, and it becomes yours.

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We stood around, staring into great blank Colorado for a while, and I worked up the nerve to ask Josh and Stephanie if they wanted to pray with me out on a rock that overlooked a falling precipice. I wanted badly to include them, to feel like I had a spiritual family again, but they declined, so I went out on the rock by myself to achieve Ben’s notion of “Modern Nashville” spirituality.

I sat down on the rock, my back to the visitors center, to chattering tourists. Beyond my dusty hiking shoes was sheer open air, and for the first time in so long I felt profoundly connected to it— supreme oneness with the universe, or God, or whatever. And even though I’m not always convinced that’s even attainable, at that moment I felt so immersed in beauty,consummate, uninterrupted beauty–that beauty that breeds truth, that beauty that is the closest thing to God. Or hell, maybe it was just the altitude.

I stood up from my short prayer on the rock, knowing that Josh was anxious to get back down. As we put our packs back on and started to head back, we saw Tyler and Michelle staggering up to the visitors center. They looked furious at the mountain, maybe at us, and as we ran up to greet them, to tell them how great they were for finishing, Michelle burst into tears, hugging Stephanie and cursing Pike’s Peak.

“There is no way in hell we are going to hike back down this bastard,” Tyler huffed. “We decided hours ago that we’re going to hitch hike back to Josh’s”.

We talked for a little while, exchanging stories of our ascent, and then it was time to go. We found out later that Tyler and Michelle had gotten a ride from the first people they approached, and that those people just happened to live a few blocks away from Josh’s apartment. The universe smiles again.

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So we walked back down, stumbled down, ran down, fell down the mountain. I did actually fall down once, slipping on a pebbly decline, scratching my knee, drawing blood. I always encourage my travel partners that if anyone is going to get hurt, it’s probably going to be me, so they shouldn’t worry.

Not far down the ride, we saw heavy rain clouds forming in the distance, and a storm rolling in behind us. Josh had warned us that rain was likely, and now it seemed imminent. It started to hail tiny stones as we hastened our step, and within minutes we were experiencing a steady downpour. The rocks beneath our feet became slick, but we didn’t slow down; it’s cold enough on the back side of Pike’s Peak without being soaking wet.

Stephanie was concerned that she should put on her poncho. After all, this is the exact situation that we packed them for.

“You know, if I tell you to put it on, the rain is going to stop, and if I tell you to leave it off, the rain will probably get heavier,” Josh said, matter of factly.

So Stephanie, looking like a six year old fighting a sweater, clumsily put the poncho on, and sure enough, within ten minutes, the rain and hail had stopped, and the sun came out.Soon after, as we navigated through the thick forest, it was hot enough to start pulling layers off.

When we finally got down to the jeep, three hours from when we left the visitors center, Pual was standing right there at the trail head, playing with a stick like it was a machine gun, making “Byew Byew” sounds with his mouth.

“Dude, I took two naps, ate a doughnut with the caretaker, who is actually a pretty cool guy, and smoked two bowls”, Pual mumbled. ” Not a bad day.”