Qaundary

I was sitting on a white van heading west out of Colorado Springs.  I felt like I was on a fifth grade field trip to the history museum in Denver or the zoo.  I was on a field trip, but with other adults to do a mans job; climb a fourteener.  It was still dark on that February morning.  It was quiet in the bus; most of the other passengers were asleep, their hats resting on windows, headrests, or other peoples shoulders.  A few of us were whispering important questions to each other, were we going to stop at the Doughnut Mill? What about the Subway near South Park?  Were we going to stop at the burrito place in Hartsel on our way back? What about the Doughnut Mill?  And the most important question, how much coffee did you drink and will we have to stop in Woodland Park because of your rookie mistake?  We would end up stopping at all of those places.  The sun was up by the time we turned onto highway nine towards Breckenridge. The conversation had moved to aliens and the space landing.  This would become a recurring line of conversation whenever one Robert Mitchell was leading the group.  Mt. Quandary moves in and out of view; people on the bus keep pointing at random mountains and saying, "that's it," but only three people actually have a notion, Robert, Jim, and our instructor Julie.  Julie is a wild woman who climbs mountains, rocks, ice, whatever at the drop of a hat.  She's in her forties and is the single most athletic person in the bus.  Robert is a mountain man, built like a tank and strong enough to haul an adult with a seventy pound pack off of the mountain.  Jim is a world traveler who had bagged several of the 8000 meter peaks.  The other twelve of us were complete neophytes.  This would be my first time climbing a mountain.  The parking lot for our trail head sat near the bottom of the twisting Hoosier pass.  There was too much snow to get to the parking lot proper so Julie parked us along the side of the road.  We all piled out of the van, scrambling for gear; there was excitement in the air and mistakes were being made.  Somebody grabbed one glove instead of two, another grabbed the wrong backpack.  After we all sorted out whose gear was whose we would put our snowshoes on.  Another first for me.  The morning was perfect.  There was no snow or fog in the air, it was decently warm at the trail head, I was comfortable in a fleece pullover.  The air was clean and crisp and cold. So much that it burned the lungs for the first few breaths.  I looked into the spruce forest, it was immaculate.  Trees soared a hundred feet in the air, their dark green needles highlighted by the ever present snow which hung in the needle clusters.  After a few practice steps the snowshoes felt normal to me.  I had to wait a few more minutes for the rest of the stragglers to figure theirs out.  And then we were off.  Julie led the fast group and about half the class quickly disappeared.  Jim led the slow group and Robert brought up the tail, all three leaders were equipped with walkie talkies. 

The trail up Quandary is a long and sinuous affair, weaving through the trees and out over the tundra, it rarely turns sharp until the false summit.  As we left the safety of tree line the wind picked up, dramatically.  Hard, old snow was blown across us, raking exposed skin and freezing into our clothes on one side.  We pushed on until we reached the Abyss Lake overlook.  A frosted turquoise gem lay three thousand feet below us on a nearly sheer drop off.  While the trail doesn't narrow it does play a head game and makes you keenly aware of the exposure and the howling wind.  One of our group was a Virginian who had left his home state for the west for much the same reason that others had centuries earlier; adventure.  He was wearing predominately cotton and had layered somewhat poorly.  He also only had one glove.  His nose, cheeks, and the fingers of his right hand were crimson with edges of blue tinged white creeping into the red.  Robert coined his nickname, "Captain Cotton" and ordered that he would turn back before he had frostbite.  A few others turned around too, including a girl whose new, unbroken boots had blistered her feet so badly she couldn't walk.  Robert tossed her overfull bag over his shoulder and carried her with his other arm.  His response at the end of the day was something like, "at least she was tiny, only a buck thirty, maybe.  Imagine if it had been you."  Jim led the rest of across the ledge, where the trail kicks up sharply.  The summit hove into view and we talked excitedly between huffs and puffs of thin, frozen air.  Jim turned to us and told us not to get excited it wasn't the summit, just a marker that the trail was going to get really steep for the last mile or two.  His words didn't effect us until we got to the liars point.  I groaned, this was tough work and it was only getting colder and windier. 

Zastrugi wind forms flowed down the face of the mountain.  I focused on them and their unique designs as we turned upwards.  The fast group descended past us yelling encouragement and taking rest of our group down with them.  It was just Jim and I left.  We pressed on, Jim yelling instruction for better, faster climbing technique over the banshee wind.  I collapsed in the snow, I simply sank to my knees and knelt over backwards, staring up into what had become a sky filled with wispy grey clouds.  Jim looked at me and said something one of two things that I have never forgotten, "My five year old did this climb last week.  You wanna turn back?" I rose and pressed forward.  We reached the summit about a half an hour later, it was so windy that we had to crawl and couldn't talk to each other, just use the best hand signals we could.  I opened a vanilla crisp Powerbar, which had completely frozen and was inedible.  So I tried a Clif, which was even more frozen.  The Milky Way was the least frozen and it was the best thing I have ever eaten.  To this day I rarely leave home without one hidden away somewhere.  Jim signaled it was time to go.  And so we quickly abandoned the top and made our way back.  

After about 200 feet Jim signaled for me to stop.  He asked me if I remembered how to get down, I surely did.  So he opened his pack and pulled out the two pieces of a snowboard, he clipped them together and ripped down the mountain.  I watched him carving into the mountain, leaping over small hillocks of snow until he hit treeline and disappeared in the mass of grey trunks and viridian needles  I walked in silence, the wind grew quieter and drove the snow less and less.  The mountain reigned supreme here, it had allowed us to visit but had made us earn that privilege.  After reentering treeline I stopped and viewed the ridge of peaks, from deep inside an orange glow lit the very tops of the mountains, a farewell from Mt. Quandary. 

Once back on the bus we swapped stories of the experience, each persons a little different which created a rich mosaic of a shared trip.  Captain Cotton did not get frost bite, but nearly so, Robert was in high spirits and ready for buffalo burritos, but we were missing someone.  Jim had missed the bus and had ridden to the parking lot.  We waited about ten minutes before he walked in waving his board over his head.  It was dark in Hartsel, and we all sat around a table laughing boisterously and telling tall tales of other adventures.  Robert asked me how if that burrito was the best thing I had ever eaten, I lied and said yes.