Friday, October 10, 2008

Mt. Belford ( I think...?)



Last July, Genny and I went on a Mt. Olypmus climb for a charity called Big City Mountaineers. We met many fine people on the trip, but the two that stood out the most; the ones we knew would be long term friends were John and Rob. We never thought we would be recruiting climbing partners from Iowa, but low and behold, they were in Colorado last weekend to climb 14ers and we wanted in (or out?)! We joined them for their third hill, Mt. Belford. The whole time none of us could remember the name of it and every few minutes someone was asking what mountain we were on. Up top, Rob and then John approach the summit. They were kicking my butt the whole way up, but let me go first to take their pictures. What nice guys.







Here, Genny walks one of the few moderately steep sections. The rest of the mountain was just plain steep. It was never too terrible, but it seldom let up. I feel like it's much easier to climb mountains with hard sections and easy sections, than one that's just kinda tough the whole way up. This led to the much appreciated Vitamin I break, as you can see below.











It was slow going and the weather always looked on the verge of going sour, but it never did. Just a pretty cold and constant wind, but no rain. For the first time in a while, I underestimated a mountain and didn't bring my hardshell pants. I figured my softshell pants would be enough, but the wind was just whipping right through them. Around 13,5000, after venting a lot of heat for a while, I felt too cold to be comfortable with going higher, and I was going to turn around. John was kind enough to let me borrow his wind pants, and they warmed me back up as I continued hiking.



After that, we were on the summit in no time. We spent enough time for a quick Hero Shot on the summit, and then we're off!

2 comments:

Todd Paris said...

wow! you take really good pictures! you should be a photographer! Miss you guys!

i'm B. said...

hey, this is john's daughter, bethany (the one who was living in EP). he sent me the link to your blog to check out his latest feat! thanks for sharing it! makes me miss the mountains.