Schmeis vs. Wild: Survival at 14,433 feet

Through the first 7 months of 2012, I’ve become like a walking CrossFit advertisement.  I’ve accomplished goals around bench pressing, pull-ups, jump roping, cycling, swimming, juggling, Triathlons, and half-court shots.  Hey, it all sounds pretty impressive when I put it like that!

Unfortunately though, that’s not the full story.  Like any good ad campaign, what I said is true, but some important info has been left out.  You know, like the fact I’ve only achieved 8 of my 35 goals with less than 5 months remaining in the year.  Shit.  Seeing that in writing sucks. 

Anyway, I obviously have quite the trek in front of me.  So what do you do when you have a long way to go?  You start walking!

That’s exactly what I decided to do.  Now seemed liked the perfect time to attempt my 9^th aspiration of “climbing/hiking a mountain > 14,000 feet” as it was precisely what I needed both physically and symbolically to get back on track. 

With that decision, I booked vacation from work and headed west to visit my parents in Colorado.  On the plane, some quick research revealed there are 54 mountains in the state that reach greater than 14,000 feet above sea level.  It wasn’t hard for me to decide which to attack…I was going BIG!  I chose to attempt to reach the summit of Mt. Elbert, the tallest mountain in Colorado and 2nd highest in the US (if you don’t count Alaska which has many more). 

My attempt started the same way many of my goals have begun this year…with the annoying BEEP, BEEP, BEEP of my alarm clock.   I’m not sure what my goals will be in 2013, but please remind me not to set many that require ridiculously early 3:30am wakeup calls. 

After some quick breakfast, my parents and I hopped in the car and made the 90 minute drive to the base of Mt. Elbert.  It’s located just south of Leadville, Colorado which incidentally is the highest incorporated city in the US at an elevation of 10,152 feet. 

Anyway, at 5:15am we arrived at the trail head, checked our gear one last time, and set off on the hike in darkness.

 The adventure is ~12 miles round trip and is fairly steep the whole way.  No rope or mountain climbing gear is required, but it’s definitely not trivial.  The start of the trail is around 9500 feet above sea level with the summit almost 5000 feet higher at 14,433.

There could be bears, rattle snakes, mountain goats, steep drops, inclement weather, and a number of other potential barriers keeping me from my goal.  It was likely I would have to rely on all my Discovery Channel training to survive.  “What would Bear Grylls do?” would become the lingering question in my head as the day progressed.  

Of course, my mom and dad were hiking with me so maybe I’m slightly exaggerating the danger but shut up and let me tell the story.

One of the first things we had to do was figure out which way to go.  I remember several “Man vs. Wild” episodes where Bear used a combination of sun position, wind speed, magnetic forces, and other aspects of nature to determine his course.  I decided to just use the arrow on the sign that said Mt. Elbert was to the left.

With directions solidified, we forged ahead.  We crossed streams, climbed over rocks, hopped logs, and traversed our way up the mountain.  Check out my parents...they're true mountaineers...

Along the way, we came across some amazing views.  Luckily, all the Colorado wild fires didn’t touch the picturesque landscape surrounding Mt. Elbert so I was able to take in the scenery and truly free my mind of life’s hassles.

After a couple of hours, we reached the first significant milestone:  climbing above tree line.  As its name implies, tree line is the elevation at which trees no longer grow.   At roughly 12,000 feet, we had made it to this marker but still had another 2500 vertical feet to climb to the top.  You can see in the pic the obvious lack of trees once we cleared the ones in the background...

With no trees for cover, it got hot very quickly.  I was hiking in a t-shirt and was very warm for awhile...

With shear determination, we pressed onward and upward one painful step at a time for the next few hours.  A couple of times I thought I saw the summit but then got to the top only to realize the "real" mountain was behind what I thought was the peak.  That's not a good feeling.  

Our goal was to reach the summit before 11am.  Reaching and descending from summit before lunch is a good idea as heavy winds and thunderstorms usually hit in the afternoon.  With no trees for cover, a human is pretty much the tallest thing around which means a prime target for lightning.  Even if there is no lightning, it can get very cold with heavy rains and hail making for a miserable experience. 

Anyway, it turns out that after about 5.5 hours of hiking, I reached the summit!  Check out some pics...

Goal #9 achieved!  Nice...and don't think I forgot about the video evidence...



Of course, I hadn’t really considered that I also had to get back down which is easier said than done.  So much energy is spent getting to the top that it’s easy to forget about the roughly 4 hour hike still remaining.

This mistake almost proved costly as I was running dangerously low on water and there was still a ways to go to get down the mountain...

Thankfully, I remembered what Bear Grylls did in the desert when he was dehydrated…he simply drank his own pee.  Here is some video of me drinking my own pee to survive:

Ok, that was a joke.  I guarantee you would have watched that though.  I really should have made a video of me “filling” my water bottle and then chugging out of it.  That would have been amazing.  I really blew a fantastic opportunity with that.

Anyway, instead of taking in my bodily fluids, I decided it would probably be easier and less disgusting just to drink some of my mom’s water.  With my hydration problem solved, we continued the long journey down Elbert.

There were times of distress (ok, so I had a blister, but I count that as distressful), there were times of panic (hey, you’d panic too if you dropped your phone and thought it might have broke), and there were times where civilization seemed so far away (well, if I ignored the trail signs).

Finally, after nearly 9 hours of hiking and uncertainty of my survival, I came across a sign of life…footprints. 

I thought one final time about my Discovery Channel learnings:  

Where there are footprints, there are shoes.  Where there are shoes, there are people.  Where there are people, there are restaurants.  Where there are restaurants, there are Papa John’s...and where there are Papa John’s, there should be pizza waiting for me. 

...and with that, my survival was guaranteed.  I was going to live to tell about achieving my 9^th Schmeis35for35 goal of the year.

Schmeis