Note: this is the finisher-of-sorts (for the moment, anyway) write-up I used as a script/visual accompaniment to Of Mice and Mountaineers, my podcast about my personal peakbagging travails. As one might expect for a series that totaled over 250,000 (yes, that is the correct number of zeroes) words in length, this finale (for the moment, etc.) is, uh, a good one to save for when you have a whole weekend at your disposal.

In hindsight, it seemed fitting that my madness…uh, adherence to Colorado checklists should end where it began: within The List of random-to-all-but-the-most-checklist-devoted Front Range thirteeners. 

After all, the mountain that first alerted me to peakbagging and summits as not just a goal but THE goal had been James Peak, which, at a mere 13,272’, was of significance to approximately no one besides those who held the “gotta check ‘em all!” attitude toward even the hundreds of thirteeners littering the high Rockies…and also my dad and me, who had been “exploring” the Rollins/Corona Pass region ever since discovering the old road that had once connected the Fraser/Winter Park side of the Continental Divide where we spent a lot of free time in my childhood to Boulder. James Peak would’ve been the literal high point of our microregional explorations, had we actually summited it when we first attempted to do so back when I was in middle school before the turn of the millennium.

The fact that it was a mere attempt rather than a success resulted in yet another mere attempt as well as just enough susceptibility to peer pressure for us to also attempt Pikes shortly after I graduated high school, then finally summit something with Bierstadt during the summer I was home following my first year in college. 

Our success-at-last on James arrived the summer after that – whether before or after our success-at-last on Pikes, I no longer recall – and turned out to be far less of a story than that of the struggles and wrong turns accumulated during those first summitless tries; while reaching James’ highest prominence did turn out to be slightly more of an adventure than was absolutely necessary when we pushed our luck a little too hard with timing and thus wound up tucking our heads as best we could under hoods and hats to protect ourselves from an afternoon hailstorm while we were still above treeline, followed by my dad chastising my accompanying then-boyfriend and me for tucking tail and running so thoroughly that we’d lost sight of him while we were attempting to make like the trees we were aiming for and get out of the storm, James largely had nothing on its elevation superiors Pikes and Bierstadt in terms of eventfulness…and would be hardcore surpassed in storytelling value by other Front Range big siblings Blue Sky and especially Longs a few years down the road. 

But with those first sights set on a summit it would take me years to see, the dominoes had unintentionally been set in motion that would lead me toward a not-so-grand prize, an afterthought, really, to that of finishing the fourteeners: finishing all the Front Range Bicentennials (or 200 Highest Peaks in Colorado, for those not nearly so obsessed), whether ranked or unranked, named or unnamed, loved or unloved. Because of course in the process of ditching thirteeners (or so I thought at the time) to chase after their bigger, badder brothers…sisters…ahhh, let me just go with siblings in self-designated nonbinary solidarity, alliteration be damned!…I couldn’t help but pick up a few more relative nothingburgers on the way of such small value (not to knock on their size relative to the fourteeners, of course) as to be more like Nothing Sliders with a Happy Meal toy that wasn’t even, like, a collectible or anything to non-collectors, if I may be permitted to really abuse a metaphor. 

That was largely all right by me, however. After all, part of what had me reluctantly motivated to go close out a list that likely baffles even the most dedicated of peakbaggers, probably prompting them to wonder why bother with such a small subset if I’m not going for the full List of Bicentennials or even overall Front Range thirteeners, was that it did appear to be so relatively trifling in number as well as generally easy in technicality. 

Hell, I’d rather unintentionally tagged my first of them while in pursuit of bigger, badder Blue Sky back in 2012: the standard route did (and still does) call for hikers to ascend up its eastern flanks from Summit Lake (although I went all the way from Echo Lake at the base of the pay-to-drive road leading up it), then follow the ridge crest – such as it is – up and over a bump or several to reach Mount Spalding before continuing along said crest to the saddle with Blue Sky before the final push upward. I’d been aware at the time I’d first done it (then re-done it properly, or without hitchhiking down the road, a week or two later) with my then-best friend from high school that it was a high thirteener – perhaps the term “Centennial,” or member of Colorado’s hundred highest peaks, had been thrown in, though even the highest non-fourteeners were not on Jimmy’s or my radar at the time, and anyway, Spalding’s saddle with Blue Sky is too high for the thirteener to truly count as a Cent – but since I wasn’t even on 14ers.com at the time and thus hadn’t begun filling out any peak checklists yet, I surely pooh-poohed the achievement of reaching the unranked summit in favor of despairing over how much descending and then re-ascending was still to be done in order to summit what I considered the truly worthy goal for the day.

Although Blue Sky would start off at the bottom of my Worst Ever list (though with only six fourteener summits to my name by the end of 2012, that wasn’t so much to be ashamed of), it would be slowly supplanted as I worked my way through the steepest of the Sawatch, then begin picking my way through the Sangres and San Juans. By the time 2019 rolled around, however, I was determined to finish out the fourteeners no matter how miserable they made me, and apparently I was just as determined to keep up my acclimation and overall fitness even on days when the weather wasn’t so conducive to fourteenering. 

At least, that’s the only explanation I can think of for what inspired me to drive a few miles past the exit for now-Blue Sky and instead take the one for Georgetown and ultimately Guanella Pass to drive a few feet up the road from my beloved Bierstadt trailhead and instead park at the start of the Square Top Lakes trail, from which one can fairly easily continue upward along the ridge to Square Top Mountain. 

Lacking any remaining traces of the Instagram account I had at the time, I can only hazard a guess as to just which summit pictures I used and what my caption had to say about them, but I have no doubt I took several of readily visible Bierstadt and do seem to recall making some commentary on how, at an elevation just under 13,800’, the Bicentennial that I had climbed more for its proximity to Denver and technical non-diffficulty than anything related to its place on its own List was only a couple hundred feet less annoying than the more popular peak across Guanella Pass, but it had made for a less-crowded, decent training hike.   

In addition to my growing fondness (or at least decreasing resentment) for Blue Sky as the 2010s wore on, I would eventually come to appreciate the accessibility of the mountain and the smaller peaks clustered around it, especially once I figured out that I could use my National Parks pass for free access to the road and the parking areas alongside it in those wistfully nostalgic pre-COVID-and-also-pre-timed-entry/reservation days. Once the first hints of winter had started dusting the highest country for the remainder of year in 2019, thus effectively – in my view – barring me from safely attempting the more-climbing-than-hiking-required Class 3 and 4 fourteeners I had yet to check off, I turned my attention to some of those “lesser” peaks wonderfully close to home, returning to the not-actually-at-a-Summit Lake in October for a return trip up Spalding as a springboard for somehow-ranked Bicentennial Gray Wolf.

I had an uneventfully lovely time being able to stroll at my own pace thanks to the unperturbed blue of the sky above the peak that would someday be renamed in its unperturbed honor. I took a picture of some animal’s clearly long-deceased skeleton, wondering at how it had met its fate so far above the trees when it appeared to be far larger than a marmot or any of the tiny mountain rodents more typical of the alpine environment surrounding its final resting place, then made that macabre picture my 14ers.com avatar once I got home to commemorate my parallel but usually not quite-as-conjoined interests in horror and the mountains in between capital-I Incidents flirting with the ultimate horror – death – in the mountains. 

Since I had gotten on board with the .com and its checklists by that point, I also upped my summit count for Spalding and added a brand-new tick mark for Gray Wolf, but I still didn’t think that highly, so to speak, of either – Centennials had appeared on my distant horizons with my earlier-that-summer summit of Culebra’s neighbor Red Mountain, but at least Red is ranked (or, for those still yet to be initiated into the madness, possessing that almighty 300’ of prominence from the saddle with its higher neighbor), and Bicentennials? Meh, so far off the nothingburger menu, I’m not even sure they were in the same restaurant!

I would earn a non-14k checkmark I considered bragworthy with a summit of ranked Centennial Mt. Silverheels in November 2019. Despite the foretelling of winter making itself increasingly known throughout the Rockies, what I mostly remember about this outing with a group from the Colorado Mountain Club was the seemingly innumerable ups and downs between our trailhead at Hoosier Pass and the summit…and meeting my future Pyramid partner Eric Sheffey. 

I would also later recall, upon looking through my pictures of that outing to refresh my memory of this lead-up to our successful-for-him-but-not-me attempt at Castle and Conundrum when I went to finally write about that nearly five years after it took place, that I had forgotten my trekking poles in my own car when I’d piled in to my carpool driver’s and had been thankful to borrow her ice axe to shore up my sketchy sense of balance (and also make me look that much more badass in my summit photo). Still a nothingburger, then, but perhaps one with a flake or two of pepper added for spice.

I would continue the theme of meeting future fourteener partners while hiking high Front Range thirteeners when I happily accepted an invitation to hike I-70-adjacent Mt. Parnassus in early 2020, just one week before the world would near literally shut down, with a group that included my future Crestone Needle partner MaryinColorado. This also, as foretold in the title, turned out to be a nothingburger; so delightful was it in terms of both company and scenery that I didn’t even bother recording my hiking stats (mileage, elevation gain, exact trailhead departure and summit times) the way I usually do – and how quickly it seemed to pass compared to the fourteeners I’d gotten into and would be facing down (noteworthy perhaps only to me that Google Docs’ autocomplete initially inserted “falling” down there, although that verb wouldn’t actually take place for another year and change still)! 

Really, the most worthy note about Parnassus under my usual standards of writing as lamentation of lousy life choices was that it was the only summit to date that I attained the day after having attained another summit; as I usually need at least two days of rest between peaks, it was a unique situation for me to have back-to-back summits, even if the preceding day’s had been mere Mt. Sherman (albeit with the added “fun” factor of doing it in snowy, icy, higher-trailhead-inaccessible calendar winter); in other words, still a nothingburger, but one unusual for being consumed the day after I’d paired a bigger one with an also-bigger frozen treat.

For all the unprecedented-in-my-lifetime’s badness that was 2020, at least it had been a passable hiking season for me despite the wildfires that filled those once-blue skies with smoke during a time when it was already alarming to have developed a cough. TallGrass and I were becoming closer friends, and I would try to remind myself of the flattery I’d felt when he’d asked me, as relatively inexperienced and unskilled as I was with hardcore mountain sufferfests compared to him, if I’d like to partner with him for a godawful sufferfest loop of epic proportions that he had planned to get closer to the end of his own fourteener as well as Centennial checklisting in a big way. 

According to this plan, we’d stash bikes in the woods off the access road to Grays and Torreys, then drive Booger, my long-suffering Subaru Outback from 2015 to 2022, up to the Leavenworth Creek trailhead a couple miles from the bottom of the Georgetown side of Guanella Pass, hike up the dirt road marking the trail up to Argentine Pass (although we would happily accept a ride in a four-wheeler, and I would even more happily continue upward with them to treeline while my friend jumped out at 10,700’ or so to make sure he got his vaunted minimum 3,000’ of continuous elevation gain for all the peaks he had planned that day), hike Bicentennial Argentine Peak, sidehill from our return to the pass over to unranked Bicent McClellan Mountain, continue onto ranked Centennial Mt. Edwards, traverse the ridgeline to Grays Peak…and then my Kansan partner would continue onto Torreys after I insisted that I’d had more than enough “fun” for one day and already had summits of both fourteeners anyway no matter how many times he urged me to get a fifth summit – which would’ve been a personal record number of peaks summited in a single day for me – “for the ‘gram,” social media he didn’t even have himself anyway. 

Once we did meet up again at the summer trailhead for G/T, we walked down the road to retrieve our bikes (after which I continued walking down with mine, explaining that I can barely ride a bike on flat pavement in broad daylight, but by the time we were rapidly descending the rutted-out, practically-4WD dirt road, the sun had already set), then we both rode the delightfully paved frontage road from Bakerville to Georgetown, where I was perfectly happy to wait with all the gear besides TG’s bike as he pedaled it back up to the start of Guanella Pass to retrieve poor Booger. More than the series of nothingsliders I had become accustomed to from my Front Range sub-fourteenering, in other words; perhaps these were the upscale sliders at some fancy new hipster establishment also offering plenty of craft-brewed IPAs on tap and with a bill presented at the end making clear that at least half the total tab comes from The Experience(™)…but at least you do have said experience to lean on in the future, if for no other reason than as a reminder not to get drawn into it or anything similar ever again.

As 2020 went on and then turned over to 2021, it was time to do a deep-dive into the harder, higher peaks in the farther-flung-from-Denver ranges…a literal deep-dive, once July 6th of the latter year saw yet another attempt of yet another Elk fourteener that was far, FAR more successful for Silverheels partner Eric than it was for me. 

I spent too much of the rest of that year yearning for the sweet simplicity of not even my home (on the?) range’s highest thirteeners; I considered it an accomplishment akin to my earliest fourteener summits – nay, some of my more recent ones of the likes of Snowmass, Capitol, and Little Bear – when I was able to hobble up and back down low-tier, only-100-feet-and-change-into-being-a-thirteener “Cupid” from nearly-12k’ Loveland Pass without adult supervision at the end of November that year. 

But having successfully limped up that nub of a peak (as well as heartier-by-comparison-but-group-supervised Bierstadt with the Winter Welcomer crew earlier that fall…er, autumn), I felt I was ready to amp up my process of getting back on my feet and getting those feet on more solid ground, to literalize a cliche sandwich. 

Ah, but what is a burger, even a nothingburger, if not a sandwich with thicker meat (even of cliche patty) and bread to arguably substantiate it? Such was what TallGrass proposed when he visited Colorado early in 2022, mostly to ski but also to get some winter summits in. With his own list of Cents – which he is very insistent encompasses the fourteeners – winnowed down to but a smattering, albeit a smattering for which winter and the icy/snowy conditions it tended to bring about added obstacles intimidating even to his heightened mountaineering cred, he decided it was time to expand outward to the Bicentennials. 

Bald Mountain (formerly A; there are a few named Baldy on the Colorado thirteener list as well) is just outside Breckenridge, itself in the same county as a weekend condo my grandparents had bought back in the seventies, and with its Class 2 rating and a stormless and relatively windless forecast for an early January day, we figured it should be an adequate challenge for our averaged abilities and risk tolerances. It was, I would ultimately deem, not worthy of a full trip report but did deserve a conditions update, which I posted the day after our attempt: 

“Road is packed down to Iowa Mill. From there, most tracks continue straight up the slope, though even with the obvious prior traffic, this section is a draining slog of postholery [or sinking past your boots, for those fortunate enough to be uninitiated] if you’re naive enough to have looked at the windswept nature of the ridge from the parking lot and concluded that you’d be totally fine leaving flotation in the car. Snow is mostly inconsequential to nonexistent above the radio towers and can be avoided on steeper sections by sticking to rocks and talus. We did not make the summit (turned around just below the last false summit due to encroaching darkness, increasing winds, and a brazen dedication to, shall we say, establishing a route of our own instead of following the more direct route outlined on this site), but the last stretch looked as barren of snow as the mountain’s name would suggest. Conditions from just above treeline and down were enticing enough that we are totally bringing skis on our next time out. Pics aren’t necessarily the most reflective of conditions on the mountain; I just thought they came out pretty cool.”

It was a shame, I would later decide, that the mini trip report – the .com’s eventual equivalent of flash non-fiction – was not a feature on the .com at that time, for clearly this was a little more substantive than the average nothingburger: we had bitten off more than we could chew and consequently had to leave the leftovers, encompassing the real meat, for another day! 

But I never liked to write merely about failures anyway, preferring instead to wait to include them as prologues to my summit successes. Thus would the fuller tale of Bald – complete with the sunset pics that I still deem totally worth bragging about in the conditions update – have to wait another three years and some for this composite so that I could enhance the details about the moments leading to our shared decision to turn around. While it would seem obvious in hindsight that we were supposed to go straight up rather than around the final false summit, the fading light and our fatigue (borne from what, I can no longer say – we’d gotten a rather, shall I say, leisurely start, having decided to go all the way over Hoosier Pass to Fairplay first so my friend could see if the South Park Forest Service office had some stickers he wanted to add to his collection and so I could buy some gifts for another out-of-state friend’s new baby while we were there anyway, and of course then having to return back over the pass to our trailhead) had us both convinced that the most trail-like, packed-down-ish sequence of rock led off to the side. 

My longer-legged, less-injured friend had gotten ahead of me when the very last of last light disappeared from the sky, leaving only moon, star, and our recently pulled-out head -lights to show us the way, whatever that was. I could go no higher when, taking a pause so I could rest my justifiably protesting damaged ankle and see if I could Open Sesame an obvious path up through the mess of talus right in front of me, I glanced back over my shoulder. 

Fear of heights had always impeded my willingness to take risks in and on the mountains, and since that fateful time on Pyramid just last year when I’d decided to take a chance in spite of the thin yet plentiful air gaping below me, a chance that hadn’t worked out anywhere near as well as I’d have liked (yet still left me feeling lucky to have survived and be able to hike again nonetheless), I’d felt even more sensitive to precarious perches than ever. The steep looseness of the gully below me on Bald that seemed as if, were I to misplace my feet and/or hands on this occasion, it would let me drop with enough momentum to send me tumbling all the way into Breck, if not past…

I seem to recall being in the middle of some deep-breathing exercises, perhaps clutching shakily to the rocks most conveniently placed, when TallGrass shouted my nickname. He wanted to know if I was okay calling it for night. He started citing a breakdown of reasons for doing so that would make a Vulcan proud with their logical basis: the dark, the aforementioned stiffening breezes adding to the baseline cold, the sketch factor of our chosen route…

He certainly didn’t need to reason with me. As soon as I could take a deep enough breath, I interrupted him to eagerly declare that turning around was absolutely peachy-keen by me.

Doubtlessly TallGrass would like for me to discuss how he deployed his bothy, a tent-like portable shelter that packs down quite portably, so we could duck out of the wind for a few minutes for a welcome drink/snack/blood-sugar-tending respite once we worked back around to the main “trail,” such as it was. Otherwise, while I could have done without tripping over further talus in the dark and slogging downhill through the snow in the trees under the same, this still wasn’t quite meaty enough to launch itself fully off the nothingburger menu…although there was an irritating post-meal aperitif when I decided to keep my physical therapy appointment scheduled for the next day, figuring that if anyone could give me useful techniques for managing my newly re-hobbled ankle or even preventing it from reacquiring such gimpiness in the first place, it’d be a physical therapist, only for said PT to stare at me in horror as I recounted the events of the previous day and scold me, “Have you thought about NOT hiking?” as a presumable means of prevention before sending me away a mere five minutes into the appointment.

After that, I was largely content to stick to skiing with the exception of a winter’s revenge summit of frozen not-so-nothingburger Elbert, which had foiled Eric and me in February 2020, then revisit Grays and never-as-much-of-a-nothingburger-as-it-should-have-been Bross to make them fun through ski descents of them. Then for the remainder of 2022 and into 2023, it was back to the last ten decidedly-not-nothingburger far-flung fourteeners still yet to see me touch their tops, then after finally finishing those f—ing beasts, finalizing the fourth Front Range non-fourteener Centennial in not-so-meek Meeker…and then, at last, looking at my list once I’d checked off the second-highest officially ranked prominence in Rocky Mountain National Park and realizing I was disturbingly, tantalizingly close to filling in the gaps in the remainder of the Front Range Bicents, all of them from ranked, named, well-regarded 13,579’ Rosalie to 14,257’ unranked, unofficially unnamed, unloved “West Evans” (which really seems like it ought to have been renamed “West Blue Sky” in light of its superior’s renaming)…and off blew my dreams of retirement from Colorado checklisting for at least another year.

But even with the additional burdens I’d decided to pack on that would be easier to bear in dry conditions, I welcomed the start of snowy season and was determined to milk every moment I could out of it, enjoying plenty of lift-served and uphill-foot-access-served skiing at resorts, plus adding a few fourteener and thirteener (not Front Range Bicentennial, however) hike-to ski descents to my checklists. I did find it ironic, if perhaps only in an Alanis Morrisette sort of way, that snow season should end so much sooner in 2024, when all my remaining checklist priorities seemed straightforward enough that I could bag them while there was still lingering-yet-unskiable snow, but had let me savor it the prior year, when I had been champing at the bit to get to my remaining godawful sufferfest fourteeners without any additional complications, such as those snow would provide.

It was nonetheless nice to have such a seamless transition (arguably more than my usual one from uphill to downhill mode on skis) to hiking season once all but the most stubborn snow patches had disappeared by mid-June. Though typical monsoonal patterns of afternoon storms were already setting in by late June, I deemed a morning enough time to knock out a simple peak right off I-70 that would also take me over an addition to the Bicentennial list that would only be revealed with LiDAR data in late 2021, and while part of me somewhat lamented the additional Morrisette-ian irony that I hadn’t, couldn’t have, even known the significance of what I was summiting when I’d climbed Parnassus for the first time in just-barely-pre-COVID-lockdown times, at least I found it pleasant enough to repeat on the way to its long-established fellow Bicent neighbor that I found it charming even with the company of the musical artists downloaded to my iTunes rather than actual human beings as I hiked my way to Bard Peak. 

In fact, I found the whole Parnassus-Bard outing to be decidedly charming (especially compared to my last brand-new peaks from 2023), as evidenced by my conditions update from June 25th, the same day of my Bicentennial bi-summit climb:

“Trail peters out at the saddle between Parnassus and Woods [a neighboring 12er]. Faint trail segments with the occasional cairn from the middle of the slope above to the summit. There is something of a continuous trail down Parnassus that hits a low point below the largest snowfield I saw all day around 180 feet below the Bard saddle, according to my GPS, after which I climbed tundra on a more or less direct approach to the summit. On the way back, I stuck closer to the ridge since the snow crossings up high were short and well-traveled, so felt pretty secure. Staying more ridge proper does mean a few more ups and downs as well as dealing with more rock-hopping than dropping below the saddle to reconnect with the sorta-trail – pick your poison, but I personally found the boulder-hopping more aggravating and therefore not worth saving the 180-ish feet of elevation re-gain so will probably drop all the way down if/when I ever do the full loop. Just these two by themselves, though, make for a pleasant day hike and of course a good way to up the Front Range Bicentennial count without running as much risk of being caught above treeline when any afternoon storms roll in if you are as slow as I am and/or disinclined to starting in the dark (a disinclination I understand, as this outing is pretty enough for being that close to I-70 that it deserves to be appreciated in daylight, imho).”

What a truly happy meal that double nothingburger was, so happy that I have nothing to retrospectively add to the text I quoted besides my uncertainty that I will ever actually get around to doing the full four-peak sufferfest loop linking these two to two more, lower thirteeners to the east! So satisfactory was it that it might well have been that same afternoon, immediately after hitting “Submit” on that update, that I started plotting out my next planned sweep that could potentially knock out ⅗ of my remaining Bicents and higher: the Sawtooth, an unranked jut between Bierstadt and Blue Sky most commonly paired with Bierstadt and often Blue Sky as well; “West Blue Sky,” or so I assumed the unofficially named, unranked, and largely unremarkable 14k’ bump along the ridge leading to Blue Sky would and will eventually be renamed; and the aforementioned ranked Rosalie Peak. 

The Big Stupid Sufferfest Loop, as I immediately nicknamed it, would also include Blue Sky itself, which I hadn’t reclimbed since the name change, and two more thirteeners – both lesser, but one ranked – that would make my planned trek from and back to Guanella Pass a six-peak personal trial by fiery blisters…but still, with the lack of any more sufferfesting in the form of too-spicy-for-my-vanilla tastes scrambling along this planned route, I could at least claim I was excited about any potential break in the monsoons for the full day I’d need to knock it out.

But of course as the summer went on and more and more pleasant days manifested themselves, I felt more and more inclined to seek out the pleasant – a.k.a., nice, truly easy, downright boring, nothingburger type – hikes I’d spend so much time fantasizing about while I was forcing down the last bites of those too-meaty-even-for-a-non-vegetarian Real Fourteeners and Thirteener(™) in the years immediately prior. Six peaks did sound like A Lot, particularly considering I was pretty sure I still had blisters hanging around after my existing single-day record from July 2023 of the five peaks – all thirteeners, and relatively low ones, at that – between Winter Park’s Riflesight Notch and Berthoud Pass that had started with the now-no-brainer James and ended with Mt. Flora, also something of a no-brainer.

As autumn started to hit the high country in early September and chased away the monsoons, I found myself merely pretending reluctance to dial back my ambitions so I could do a conditioning hike of sorts with daway8, who was and is inclined to different though occasionally overlapping sorts of sufferfests than I am, then finding even that “conditioning hike” tamped down when the forecast suggested the afternoon storms weren’t swinging quite as wide of the mountains as we would have liked or expected by that time of year. 

Instead of our original plans of hiking a Rocky Mountain National Park sufferfest, then, we’d instead tackle half of the peaks on my Guanella Pass sufferfest – “West Blue Sky,” Blue Sky, and the Sawtooth – though David also planned to drop to the saddle between Sawtooth and Bierstadt and then re-ascend to my second-favorite fourteener’s summit. Such a drop and re-ascent had never looked appealing to me from the other side, even on times when I’d ascended Bierstadt with at least half a mind to go on, so I planned to leave him to it and drop down questionably-favored Sawtooth descent route of Gomer Gully for a more direct route back to the trailhead. 

The conditions I reported on September 7th might indicate that there wasn’t anywhere near as much suffering as even only half a sufferfest loop would hint at: “Went up via drainage between Gray Wolf and Spalding thinking it would be a kinder, gentler approach. It was, in terms of pitch, but the willow-bashing was impressive on this less-established route – sometimes, the willows bashed back. Went more or less ridge direct up to West and Blue Sky. A few Class 3 moves, including a couple where I found it helpful to have a spotter, but less wussy climbers will have no problems. Blue Sky was quiet with the road closed down. We had the summit all to ourselves for about an hour before other hikers came to join us. Still nothing like the crowds one would normally expect, however. Sawtooth high point was an easy and pretty addition with the views of Abyss Lake. Descended Scott Gomer Gully in hopes of less bashing and being bashed by willows. Succeeded, but the mud wrestling was also pretty impressive (tl;dr, the mud won). Consider bringing a change of pants/socks in the car if descending in the afternoon after the mud thaws out for the day.”

But unlike my June nothingburger combo, this triple-stacker had a little extra seasoning to it, enough so that I did flirt with the notion of writing up a newly-introduced mini-trip report on the .com to expand my mini-suffering to 400 words, though I would ultimately decide that any mountain write-up efforts should be prioritized on those I already had on the mental slate, at least, for the podcast. 

Now that I’ve committed to adding the double-helping of BS – as David and I made frequent and enthusiastic jokes about in between groans as we fought the willows and the willows largely won at dark o’clock in the morning, then even as the willows reluctantly receded into tundra that refused to stop going uphill until we reached the summit – to this already overfull write-up, I might as well indulge in a little extra flavor, mostly in the form of the interactions with David besides our making fun of the group high point’s new initials. 

My more adventurous friend naturally decided to go ridge direct once we connected with said ridge, meaning there was perhaps more Class 3 on the way to “West Blue Sky” than I had originally bargained for, and when my friend remarked on my unexpected burst of adventurousness in choosing a route that would include that much necessary finding of handholds as well as footholds after we had tagged the subsummit and subsequently dropped down to join the standard Blue Sky Proper trail leading a hundred feet or so under the western ridge pimple somehow deemed noteworthy enough to be included on the .com as well as ListsofJohn, I replied that it did seem like a good idea to keep my scrambling skills somewhat tuned up, as at the time, I had longer-range Big Goal peaks that would involve at least a little Class 3, although I was quick to add that had I done this route solo or been the one leading instead of him, most likely I would’ve stuck to the trail until I’d been right under the western BS, then straightlined as much as possible back up and down to the mere Class 2. 

David and I exchanged a toast of sorts with our water bottles on reaching the “real” BS, joking about this being a re-finisher of sorts…it had bothered me somewhat that the name had changed only two weeks after my actual finisher, and I’d wondered out loud at the time, only half-jokingly, whether I would need to re-ascend the high point of the skyline west of the Mile High City in order to be a True and Proper Finisher(™) all over again. 

Of course the accepted wisdom states that being a TP Finisher is all about the summit coordinates rather than the name ascribed to them – after all, even right after the name change became .com official, the site still convinced me that “I climbed Mt. Blue Sky” next to a reassuringly bright-green checkmark – but David and I basked in the glow of having our bases thoroughly covered and therefore being 100% Officially Official in our statuses again all the same. 

I commented to David as we traversed tundra from the Blue Sky summit to the several potential options for the Sawtooth’s high points (of course channeling Pokemon; “gotta tag ‘em all!”) what a shame it was, in some ways, that the Front Range got dismissed for its boringness. I, personally, found the plentiful opportunities to look up and admire the scenery while still maintaining forward momentum to be perfectly lovely. Soon, I temporarily parted ways with David on the final high point option before he dropped down to the Bierstadt saddle – though I hadn’t 100% ruled out doing the same and ending the day with a revisit of my favorite Front Range fourteener, a look down, down, down at said saddle once again confirmed that I had just as little desire to deal with that much elevation loss and regain from the Sawtooth side as I’d always had contemplating it from the fourteener’s. 

So much for that pleasantness, I thought as I groaned, sometimes out loud, as I slipped and slid down the sloppy stone of Gomer Gully that marked the standard-of-sorts descent from the Sawtooth/Blue Sky side back to Guanella Pass. Any similar articulateness degraded quickly into outright cursing as I finally stumbled out of the gully, my feet only able to seize on a brief respite before it was back to Willow Hell…and, worse still, Mud Hell 2: Even Deeper into Hell than the Willows. 

I hoped the slightly stiffening afternoon breezes would dry at least some of the mud that had indeed served as the dance partner from Hell, dipping me all the way down to the ground and arguably below enough times to coat just about the entirety of my pants, though I still wondered whether I’d have enough trash bags left in poor Burrito to protect the driver’s seat. But perhaps if I were to go straight home, I could just throw the pants on the tarp in the back at the trailhead and hope there were no neighbors in any common areas when I scooted as best I could from my car into my home covered only by skivvies below the waist…?

All this had me somewhat lamenting my decision not to join David in dealing with the last 700’-or-so push up to Bierstadt following the saddle drop, particularly when I was joined by my grinning friend in the parking lot not long after my return, at least somewhat relieved that my pants had dried just enough that I felt I could sit in the car without turning its seats an irreversible shade and smell of Rocky Mountain mud. David, hungry as I was with his bonus peak and all (even if he had benefited from a proper trail leading down from it), asked if I’d like to join him for dinner. Of course I was, I explained, but my pants were hardly worthy of public viewing, and how I regretted not having brought a spare pair to change into. 

David, however, had. “Any chance you’re a size 34?”

And so it was that with his borrowed change of clothing rolled well up to my ankles seeing as how we might have compatible waist but not inseam sizes, we enjoyed a meal at the Vietnamese restaurant in Georgetown in lieu of some perhaps more appropriate, meaty not-so-nothingburgers at a brewery either there or down the road in Idaho Springs. It was, however, no BS – single or double-serving – that the pho and spring rolls were damn tasty after all that.

I had David’s pants washed, dried, and perhaps even folded for him by the time we reconvened a week later for a bluebird-forecasted day to act on our original plans from a week before: another Maybe Not That Big But Still Sorta Stupid Sufferfest loop, this time borne of David’s hopes and dreams for his own filling-in of certain Front Range high peak checkmarks. We’d go up the first 3.5 miles of the standard Longs Peak trail to Chasm Lake Junction, follow the trail to and then past Chasm Lake, go up scree slopes past a formation called Iron Gates, join the ridge above, run a shorter section of it thanks to our higher starting point on it than TallGrass and I had two years prior to get to “Meeker Ridge,” follow the route TG and I had then intended to take along the ridge linking Meeker Ridge to Meeker Proper , and drop down to the top of the Loft serving as the saddle between Meeker, then ascend our final goal of the day…one that was also The Big Goal as far as David was concerned, as we intended to celebrate his finisher of the 73 Points of 14k’ points including the 15 unranked and unnamed subsummits (“West BS” of course being another) noted by prominent fourteener guidebooks and checklists on “Southeast Longs.”

I declined to write a conditions update, figuring that such a post borne almost as much of altruism as publicized bragging rights on the .com should go to David, the super-duper Officially Official Fourteener Finisher, though he also declined to write one. He did do a write-up of “SE Longs” in a trip report as part of a ranking of the fifteen fourteener subsummits, and while I once again flirted with writing a mini-TR of my own just as I had for my other newly-ticked Front Range 14k’ subsummit, I once again decided that writing priorities should be focused on the fourteener non-sub-summits I’d yet to record for the podcast. 

Which wasn’t to say that I didn’t do any writing about the experience prior to this blathering. It was just that in this case, I’d done the existing note-taking before the big event rather than afterward. On pulling into the Longs Peak parking lot the evening before our hike so I could get a few hours of sleep in my car – a practice frowned upon by Park officials – I failed to find David’s 4Runner among the swarm of vehicles whose drivers doubtlessly had the same idea. I marveled at how much had changed in just under a decade; when I’d arrived at this same parking lot in almost this exact same time of year in 2015 much later at night for what I hoped would be a SAR-and-ER-free revenge summit of Longs to grab an equally-hoped-for but ultimately futile couple hours of sleep, I’d remembered having the lot all to myself.

But this time, the night of September 13th, 2024 rather than September 10th, 2015, it wasn’t just the hustle and bustle of the arrivals and interactions taking place just feet from my window preventing me from settling into sleep. It was also, of course, several of the same anxieties about potential technical difficulties that had plagued me on that previous mid-September (not-so-)stealth overnight visit. All those Class 3 and 4 “real” fourteeners since then, including Capitol with its True and Proper Knife Edge, and here I was nevertheless nervous about the forecasted smattering of Class 3 moves and supposedly lesser knife edge connecting Meeker Ridge to Meeker Proper!

I decided to borrow a technique that, frankly, also hadn’t helped bring about sleep when I’d been counting down the hours to my phone’s alarm going off before my first attempt of Class 3 “Real Fourteener” Snowmass, but what the hell, the present proximity to the “real” fourteener that had brought about my first capital-I Incident seemed to be inspiring similar levels of melodrama. This time, though, I would’ve had fewer qualms about sharing the contents of the letter I wrote with its recipient, as I feel I’m about to prove by publishing the meat of the message I indirectly directed to my partner from Meeker Ridge and Meeker Proper:

“Maybe it’s just the anxiety ramping up. I haven’t been this nervous about a mountain or three since, well, probably Meeker. Of course it doesn’t help that this one also brushes uncomfortably close to Longs, being its southeast neighbor and all. But really, there’s almost no chance of a repeat of The Incident; it might be a reduced dose, but I [am] starting out with a baseline dose of insulin in my system that will last tonight and tomorrow, plus it’s not like this is my first Class 3 rodeo, so I know what to expect in terms of strenuousness.

I’m parked at the Longs TH, reclined in the driver’s seat, waiting either for sleep to beckon or David to show up – no service here, so I already have the phone in airplane mode, and we already agreed on a start time if we don’t spot each other tonight. We are of course not supposed to sleep here; car-camping isn’t allowed, and there have been rumors of rangers pounding on car hoods and windows to wake sleeping hikers. I somehow doubt that sort of thing is encouraged in training anymore, though…personal safety risk given my state’s love for [the Second Amendment] and all, and anyway, I think if they were gonna come after anyone, it’d be the overly exuberant guys playing music with their headlights blaring in the middle of the lot, asking everyone else what their plans are for tomorrow and offering them beer. You’d like them. Maybe I should take them up on it in your honor and, let’s face it, [for] my own nerves. A little buzz might take the edge off. 

Anyway, I’m in the back of the lot (autocomplete helpfully put in “backcountry”), where David says he’s successfully “slept” before, thinking ruefully that it’s not like I’d be any less nervous if I were going with you instead of him – probably more, tbqh, given how every time I go up a mountain with you, it winds up being an adventure…”

Of course I added a few insults into both the opening and closing paragraphs for good measure, as any good friend does when addressing another, then even signed before double-checking that I had indeed set my alarm and rolling over in the driver’s seat. And in fact, I can’t say that I didn’t successfully catch a few hours of zzz’s this time around.

It was a good thing I eventually recognized David’s outfit and gait, because with the only light available being that of our headlamps, we came close to missing each other at the trailhead at our appointed meeting time of dark o’clock a.m. We kept up light (heh heh) banter as we hiked up to the Eugenia Mine Junction – “the worst half-mile of the hike, except for the next seven” I huffed in reference to Longs Peak’s summit as advertised on the sign pointing in the right direction for that destination – then requested to slow down 7/10 of a mile or so from that so I could finally take a picture of The Sign for Goblins Forest Campground at which I’d had my breakdown on my first Longs summit over ten years ago, a photo I’d failed to grab just before releasing the Longs Peak episode of my podcast despite scouring the edge of the trail for it when I’d come up that way as part of a training hike that was in no small part an excuse to get said picture. 

That picture, which I had been able to find at last with David’s assistance, will, I decided, be the cover of the eventual book of my collected mountain stories that I might very well produce with some as-yet unwritten material at some point in the future. That wasn’t the only stop on the way to Chasm Lake, of course, nor after, but while I can’t say we (I) made quick work of the scree slope leading through the magnificently sweeping Iron Gates, I did pride myself on only having a “real” stop, with sitting down and taking a drink from my water bottle and all, stemming from photographing David as he made a diversion to summit the western Gate. 

I also prided myself for handling the brief move-and-a-half of Class 3 protecting the top of the scree from the ridge with a minimum of further lost dignity (not that I had any left to my name by that point anyway), then making the trudge along said ridge up to Meeker, uh, Ridge with a minimum of whining (plenty of which I had left in my system). I patted myself on the back for having had the foresight to wear the hiking pants that were just about dead anyway as I handled the knife edge the way I usually do: by the literal seat of my pants, with a maneuver those still bearing a modicum of dignity might refer to as the “pony ride” but that I continue to refer to as the “dog dislodging a dingleberry.” 

While this knife edge, like all others, had been more annoying than scary for me thanks to the security (well, not for the seat of my pants, I suppose) of having each leg on either side of the obstacle the whole way, I was still a bit disgruntled by how long it had taken…and how deader-than-dead those pants were by the end of that traverse, to judge by David’s exclamation of equal parts amusement and alarm when I briefly turned around to admire the view and do some dramatic breathing. 

I had no appreciation for much of anything as I had to spend seemingly countless minutes on the hunt for passageways past the exposed scrambling maneuvers connecting the knife edge to Meeker that my bolder and more experienced partner could surpass without a second thought. At the top of one such clumsy clamber where my friend had been waiting – for a while, I’ve no doubt – for me to catch up, he started extolling all the virtues of the day and how enthusiastic he was for the scrambling, how it was more thrilling than he’d anticipated from a mere Class 3… “But I guess you’re nowhere near as excited about all that,” he wryly concluded as I collapsed onto the nearest solid-looking boulder with a wordless high-pitched whine. 

At last, we finally reached the eastern summit candidate of Meeker’s two pointy horns, the one TallGrass and I had been fairly certain was THE summit when we’d come up nearly a year prior. Of course, no small part of the reason I’d been eager to tag along with David’s 73 Points finisher route had been his choice of this route in particular, going over Meeker as it did, because my certainty had started eroding like the rock leading past Iron Gates as I’d read other people’s trip reports for Rocky Mountain National Park’s second-highest summit in the wake of publishing my own. While I’d started out 99% certain I’d also touched – perhaps even crawled over – the other summit candidate coming from and/or going back to the main route, seeing as how “gotta touch ‘em all!” had long been a theme of potential high points once I had reached a given peak’s summit, 99% was not 100%, and besides, I had been so sure about the eastern point that I hadn’t bothered to get any photographic proof of topping the western, and how else would I be able to assuage the accusations of the Fourteener…Thirteener…Summit Police, even if only in my head, that I had truly summited not-so-meek Meeker without it?!

David and I stood on the eastern point one at a time, as had also been necessary when I’d been up here with TallGrass the year before, and both concluded the eastern looked higher. Then David hoofed the short distance to the western point, stood atop it, and as we took proof pics of each other, declared that I looked to be on the higher point from where he was just before I responded that he still appeared to be higher from where I was. Then we decided to investigate further by switching places, passing each other at the most forgiving part of the passage. We once again took pictures of each other as we once again declared in turn that the other looked to be on the higher point. 

At least, we/I could conclude once we decided we’d had enough fun playing Musical Potential HIgh Points, we/I had 100% abso-certainly topped whichever high point was indeed the airiest rock this side of either Longs Peak in the Park (David’s map app strongly indicated it was actually the western point, for whatever that might be worth). Now it was onward and downward to the Loft, an easy-breezy hop and skip, and then further onward and upward to David’s True Fourteener Finisher. 

That last upward push sure wasn’t what I needed that far into the day, but it was un-noteworthy enough to be totally worth the joy of surprising my friend with the sparkling apple cider I’d brought along with two plastic cups so we could toast his worthy victory. Not long after deciding the drink was tasty enough that it really should be more popular than champagne and polishing it off (how much of that was due to typical alpine dehydration is a matter for debate), David decided to explore the summit’s boulders and nearby towers, an exploration that I, having once again satisfied myself that I’d stepped on everything that could possibly be THE highest point, was largely content to photograph for him. 

I didn’t really need the downward boulder hop of the highest subsummit in the Park, either, or rather, The Ankle(™) definitely didn’t. I was also unenthusiastic about descending The Loft’s initial steepness, although I was pleased that there was more of a trail than descriptions had led me to hope for. Alas that said descriptions had declined to mention the one Class 3 move to drop from one trail-ish segment to another, although perhaps the description’s writer had shared David’s 6’2” height that sure seemed from my 5’6” vantage to decrease the move’s intensity. 

There were pauses farther down as the resemblances to trail vanished into boulders and unsecured rock, punctuated by some amusement as the GPX track my partner had downloaded seemingly tried to direct us right into the sheer cliff walls not too far off to our right. When we at last rejoined the Chasm Lake Trail, which we both knew to be a proper trail the whole way down, I congratulated David again and wished him well on his run back to the trailhead, both of us nevertheless feeling the need to go through the ritual of him asking and me reassuring him I’d be just fine with such a well-constructed and -maintained path to follow, especially since this was hardly my first rodeo on it. 

Indeed I was just fine, although The Ankle(™) was cranky, and the sun had long since set by the time I got back to my car. It was too late to dine together anywhere with non-camp or car-storable food; besides, we pretty much had to go opposite directions just outside of the Park entrance, but as soon as I’d rested up, I was pleased to be able to announce David’s 73 Points completion to the .com. Still, it would have been nice to chow down on a real burger, perhaps one made of beef to reflect the increased beefiness of this outing’s also beyond-nothingburgers, though thankfully not beyond enough to have someone try to track TallGrass down to give him that one last handwritten message from me in which I may or may not have made certain allegations about his intelligence and sanity in the parts I didn’t paste here.

It was probably just as well I did not decide to write a mini-trip report about Iron Gates to “SE Longs” more immediately after completing that route, because to go by the length at which I prattled on here, with even more distinct memories brimming over, no doubt it would only have been mini by Charles Dickens’ standards. 

It was also just as well I didn’t write individual TRs about either of my last two Front Range Bicentennials, because even with their ranked, named, better-loved status despite being merely part of the 200 Highest, it seems even I likely wouldn’t have met the minimum word requirement that apparently exists for even mini(mum?) .com write-ups. Rosalie Peak, which I climbed on another lovely day on September 19th, only five after the RMNP expedition, contained arguably more info than I really needed to share in the conditions update I posted: 

“Other than some mud in the willow crossing at treeline, the whole route is doable without getting your boots wet. Leaves starting to change; some nice displays along the Tanglewood Trail and visible from the summit. Great time of year to invest in some bright orange gear if you are lacking any – I saw one hunter coming back to his truck yesterday as I was pulling into the TH. Only saw hikers on the trail and ridge, but safety consciousness is always a good idea.”

Perhaps the pictures I added were worth a thousand words; the one I included of a strange type of caterpillar I’d never seen before garnered a comment from my friend Tiff: “Here for the caterpillar content,” to which I replied that I’d also taken video and wished the .com would allow me to post that directly to my update. I also got a comment from one of the few hikers I had apparently passed that day, both of us agreeing that the day had been, in his words, “glorious,” and in mine, “gorgeous.” Not even onions on this nothingburger, in other words, and I was just peachy with leaving my caterpillar friend – the most exciting part of the day – on the side, if not entirely outside, for that meal.  

So rosy was Rosalie that, as with Crestone Peak, I do have twinges of Finisher Regret about the exact peak I chose for my own sub-14k’ Front Range finish. But Bald Mountain had made enough of an impression on that winter attempt in 2022 that I’d tried to entice TallGrass out for a winter re-attempt in 2023-2024’s snowflake season, never mind that it would be at the expense of skiing, and when he’d been too busy to make the trip to the Centennial State, would have been willing to wait another three months for the end of 2024 in order to finish in wintry style…but as someone who spends a lot of time in t-shirts and shorts in summer and sweatshirts and PJ bottoms in winter, clearly “style” isn’t a priority for me. Anyway, the forecast for September 25th, another six days after Rosalie, was far finer than a typical winter day at 13k in Colorado…or a day up there in most Colorado seasons, for that matter. 

Perhaps beefing up this one a slight bit was that, as with the busted Big Stupid Six-Peak Sufferfest Loop, I had eyes on a slightly alternate route: while TallGrass and I had first tried from the more-popular northern approach from the Breckenridge side of the Continental Divide, I’d developed an interest in parking at the French Pass trailhead on the southern side, following the trail to said pass, then following the ridgeline up and over to Bald, thus hopefully avoiding all that rock-hopping I’d come to do the opposite of relish on the north side. The route was, I believe, a good call, even if I didn’t exactly meet my goal of avoiding rock-hopping, as seen in my conditions report: 

“Sporadic, avoidable patches of snow, but to judge by the white visible on north-facing slopes, best to expect more if coming from the north/Summit Co. side. Coming from the south is a great way to avoid crowds – I saw no one on the route all day. Some annoying sidehilling on talus a ways above French Pass to take the most direct route to Bald; the sidehilling aspect might potentially be reduced if going more toward Boreas first. A pleasant route overall, though.”

I can only blame my bizarre reference to Boreas, yet another sub-Bicent thirteener farther down the ridgeline along the Continental Divide than all but the most sufferfest-oriented of peakbaggers would be willing to take on in a day – maybe even look at in the same – on the fact that I typed up that report in a fit of braggadocio once I got back to Denver that night. 

But as far as details not included in the update, pretty much the only one I elected to keep to myself at the time was the chugging at my return to French Pass – the terminus of talus and return to trail – of the Coors Banquet that I had in my fridge since A-Basin’s closing day in 2024, given to me by an enthusiastic gent who’d parked next to me and had been moved to share his gratitude (or perhaps just get rid of an excess of my home state’s most famous alleged beer) for a considerate parking job at the crowded lot. It seemed fitting, in a way I don’t believe Alanis ever sang about, for me to have the type of “beer” I’d had designs on drinking after summiting my final fourteener back when I had designs on that fourteener being Wilson Peak, a.k.a. the alleged inspiration for the brew brand’s logo, on what I fully intended to be my last checkmark on a Colorado checklist, whether 14 or 13k…especially when I had been toasting myself back at French Pass with the slightest twinge of regret that I wasn’t doing so on even pleasant-er Rosalie, much as I spent so much of Crestone Peak vaguely regretting that I hadn’t picked boozy Wilson to be #58.  

But all’s well that ends well, and talus or no, I certainly couldn’t complain that my ultimate success on Bald ended not with a bang but a whimper at the taste as I downed the last of the fizzy substance that was nevertheless perhaps the perfect pairing for this particular nothingburger. Arguably, it had ended with even less of a bang than James had all those years before, seeing as how there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky that whole day, much less a flash of lightning immediately followed by attention-grabbing thunder. 

For all that I was relieved to see the last of full-length checklists that grabbed my obsession in Colorado, I of course had the question of what exactly to do with the rest of my hiking career to consider. Fellow caterpillar enthusiast Tiff had noticed how state-specific my wording was regarding the end of Colorado peakbagging, so I told her at the time how I had made something of a dent in the state high points; sure, six wasn’t a particularly large fraction of them all, but I had gotten several of the literally bigger and therefore theoretically metaphorically larger pains in the rear done, so especially if I could power through the rest of the western states’ high points, well…

Yet again, however, the end of one checklist heralded the arrival of winter in the high country, and with it, snow/ski season. And as that blissful time rolls into high gear, so do people’s tendencies to reflect, regroup, and resolve to do what needs to be done differently. A bit before 2024 rolled into 2025, a .com poster got the ball rolling on a popular end-of-year topic: goals for the next.

In prior years, I’d stated, whether out loud or, due to superstition that seemed extra-justified after the Pyramid Incident, just to myself but via hints on a new year’s goal thread, that I would really, really, REALLY like to be finally finished with those f—ing fourteeners already. “Hike for fun again” had been a stated goal when 2024 loomed; now, as 2025 lurked around the corner, it seemed time to take that seriously. 

In the 2025 Goals thread, then, I posted of my state high point aspirations: “Rethink some of my longterm mountain-related goals. I still want to get around to Kings Peak [in Utah] at some point so I’ll have finished out the Four Corners states’ high points and Rainier to round out the 14k’ state HPs (also because the idea of maybe skiing at least part of it intrigues me), but I’m becoming increasingly sure I just plain don’t want to do Gannett, Granite, Borah, Boundary, or Denali [all long, many multi-day and/or including scrambling if not outright rock climbing], not to mention all the lower-elevation ones with private property issues, so maybe, as with the CO peaks, I should keep my focus to ones I think I might enjoy.” 

Okay, so “rethinking” is a bit of a cop-out as far as a goal is concerned, an action verb that doesn’t necessarily promise action. But the more I do think about it and the more time I do take action strictly for pursuits that genuinely interest me, like skiing (including of fourteeners, thirteeners whether Bicent or lower, or just exciting-sounding lines on “lesser” peaks); hikes on nice, boring, flat trails that might or might not even be in the mountains; repeating peaks that I did find sufficiently nice and boring with friends who have yet to summit them; even summiting new peaks of equally sufficient nice/boringness no matter where their place on or off a given list with other friends interested in those summits; I find that I’ve come to appreciate having my hobbies be my hobbies rather than my chores or my obsessions.

Perhaps, then, I finally have learned something after all throughout all this time climbing and then documenting, first with the goal of conveying the message that, “If I can do it, anyone can!” to “…But, SHOULD they?” Perhaps it is even something worth passing along to others that justifies all the time I spent blathering about fourteeners and thirteeners and high points and lions, tigers, bears…oh my! Perhaps it was and is something about having fun when you’re supposed to be having fun, and if you stop having fun, stop doing it.

…or perhaps it was/is that some lessons need to be experienced and hopefully survived to be properly learned rather than imparted from someone else’s experiences of survival (sometimes just barely that). After all, can one truly appreciate what it means to avoid being burned if one hasn’t been touched by the flaming alpine sun’s rays?

Ah, but of course, no matter how deep my own scars run from self-induced third-degree burns, some of the madness nevertheless remains. I did list as another 2025 goal to complete at least one segment of the 486-mile (or 567-mile, depending on whether one chooses the East or West route through the Collegiate Peaks) Colorado Trail but hopefully more segments still in no small part because I need to get in shape for a longstanding goal finally on tap to become reality of summiting Kilimanjaro, allegedly the highest point in the world that can be simply hiked rather than technically climbed. And I do regularly check forecasts for Utah’s Kings Peak, plus I would still like to climb Rainier when I can afford a guide willing to ski what’s skiable of the glaciers with me…

So perhaps ultimately, then, the only lesson is that any lesson can be learned, but to truly absorb its import takes a skull less thick than mine. But also-perhaps again, it was that thickness that shaped me into who I am today, and perhaps who I am not in some alternate universe in which I’d quit after Pikes or maybe James is someone deeply dissatisfied, wondering “what if?” and wishing they’d had the courage to develop enough of a sufferfest tolerance to finally finish something that truly pushed them to, if not past, their limits once the last of those checklists, whether in Colorado or outside it, had finally been checked to their satisfaction. 

And if the day ever comes in this universe when I do feel I’ve absorbed The Lesson, whatever it is, and checked that final checkmark on whatever List I’m still stubbornly following, whether pre-constructed or of my own Frankenstein-esque creation, I hope I’ll have a proper drink with which to celebrate, whether it’s toasting something with seriously chewy meat or a simple, straightforward nothingburger. Perhaps a pricy, craft-brewed IPA, considering how strongly I dislike the taste of the hops, and what else would properly wash down a continued biting off of more than I may even wish to chew than further suffering?