5:30 AM: JJ complained he barely slept and Nick claimed he had his best sleep. I told them it was because Nick slept in the middle, but they didn’t believe. We decided to not break down camp until after the hike so we could get an early start. It was a busy trailhead at 5:30, pretty much everyone was participating in dawn patrol and there were even more people driving up the valley. We loaded up on water from Kite Lake and headed for our first peak, Mt. Democrat. I told Nick that hiking in the West would be very different than in the East. Instead of hiking up and being surrounded by trees the entire time, we would be able to see our end destination and get awesome views on the way up. This hike did not disappoint. Don’t get me wrong it was hard as shit AKA 2000 ft elevation gain over 2 miles. None of us were completely acclimated to the altitude so we were huffing and puffing pretty good. Nick was actually crushing the hike, setting a grueling pace. It was a pretty rocky trail (makes sense being in the Rocky Mountains), but the views made it very worth it. We got a bunch of pics, so check them out. Mt. Democrat was pretty tough, but we pushed on knowing that we had to bag all 3 of these peaks. Next up with Mt. Cameron. This wasn’t as bad as Democrat but still pretty tough. The exposure was a little unnerving at certain points. Hiking on a trail with a 2,ooo ft drop-off next to you serves for cool pictures, but you have to stay focused no matter how fatigued you are feeling.
I have climbed one 14er before and the total elevation gain was 2600’. This hike had 3300’ gain and most of it was above 13,000’. Therefore this one was tough, but I could feel the training that I have done paying off. Mt. Cameron peak was pretty rounded so it wasn’t as sweet of a payoff, but we could see Mt. Lincoln and that looked daunting in the distance. On the way we got to do one of my favorite mountain climbing pastimes…glissading. Basically, find a snowfield, put your pack on your stomach, sit your ass in the snow and sled down. We found a good 150 ft snowfield that was perfect. It was Nick and JJ’s first glissade experience and they loved it. We even started a little trend. The party that was hiking behind us saw how much fun we had and decided to give it a try. I think they became fans immediately.
It was time to take our wet butts and make the final summit push for Mt. Lincoln. It involved some scrambling, which made it feel pretty ULTRA to bag the third and final peak. We got some awesome pictures from there and decided that we should start our descent. Now usually descents aren’t that bad, but since this was a loop, we weren’t really sure what the conditions of the descent would be. Well to be quite frank, they sucked. It was nothing but scree field the whole way down. (Scree is small, loose rock that is very easy to lose your footing on.) This proved to be pretty tough for all of us especially since we were tired from all the upward hiking we had done. It got to a point where I was just pissed off and wanted to be done. I know JJ felt the same way. Once we finally got done with the miserable and grueling descent, I went straight to the tent to clean it up and get going. Usually I like to bask in the glory of my accomplishment, but this time I just wanted to get some food. We drove back out the dirt road and made a much needed Wendy’s stop before we headed off for Moab.
I was interested in this drive because I wanted to see the change from Rocky Mountains to desert. It was pretty cool actually. All the mountains started turning into mesas and slowly gave way to just flat desert. Since I was navigator for this section, I directed JJ to take a “scenic route.” This route was very scenic. It was through a canyon composed entirely of red rock with the Colorado River carving it’s way through. It was pretty awesome to start the morning at 12,000’ in the Rockies and now we were in a desert canyon. We finally got to Moab, which turned out to be a pretty cool town. First thing we did at the hotel was jump in the pool. The pool was overrun by a clan of Eastern Europeans. This would prove to be a recurring theme over the next few days. We spent about 10 minutes in the pool before heading back to the room to shower and head out for dinner. Our original plan for dinner was the Moab Brewery, but that was packed so we settled for a Mexican restaurant. JJ was excited, but we were scared. Not about the food, but about the fallout that JJ would have after eating Mexican. After dinner it was back to the hotel room to crash after a long, tough, but awesome day. ULTRA day 8/39: COMPLETE
JM
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