My first 14er!

I climbed my first 14er last weekend! We had a lot of fun, but it was hard. Early into the hike, we ran into snow and decided to leave the trail. We didn’t have a map, but we knew we needed to go up. We climbed on all fours over large rocks for several hours before we finally reached a ridge. There were several peaks around us, but we didn’t know which one we were supposed to climb. So we just headed across the side of the mountain towards the tallest peak we could see. As we were making our way across, we found the original trail and started to follow it. To our dismay, it took us back the other direction and the peak we were headed for wasn’t the right one. It took us about 6 hours to summit, but once we got to the top it was worth it! 14,248 feet above sea level is now the highest point I have ever been. We climbed over 4,440 vertical feet in about 4.5 miles.

On the way down, we decided to take the trail through the snow. This was probably my favorite part of the trip. I was slipping and sliding and laughing so hard I could barely see. The snow was knee to mid-thigh deep in most places, and really gave me a work out. After we were out of the snowy area, it was smooth sailing back to the campsite. It only took us 3 hours to descend so I was able to get in a good nap before everyone else arrived for the FIBArk (first in boating Arkansas River) festival.

This is the beginning of our trail, it is around 6:15am.

The water wasn't deep, but it was COLD!

Taking pictures was a good excuse for taking a breather!

This is the first time we ran into the snowy area. It was still cool enough that it was icy and very slippery.


This is at about 12,000 feet. We decided to leave the snowy / icy trail and just start climbing up. The terrain was like this for several hours.

This is Summit! I was very excited.

Summit Elevation = 14,248 feet.

We took the snowy path down and it was fun!