It’s Saturday afternoon, 17 July 2010, and I’m headed out to buy a new pack. In the midst of my preparations for tomorrow’s hike up Longs Peak, I’ve decided my old pack just won’t cut it— it’s too heavy and cumbersome. I wore it back in 2008 when I did Longs via the Keyhole Route and it was far from ideal, so this time it’s going to get left at home. As I head out the door, I know just the pack I want, having scoped it out on previous visits to REI. It isn’t cheap, though, and since I take my camera backpack on most of my adventures, I’m suddenly having a hard time with the thought of paying a lot of money for a day pack I’ll probably only use a couple of times a year. With a deep sigh, I point the car toward our local Walmart and resolve to “Save money. Live better.”
Later that evening, having finished loading up my new $30 “Skyline 8.0” day pack from Walmart, I set the alarm for 12:01 a.m. and crawl into bed to try and get a few hours sleep. Thinking about what lies ahead, though, I find it impossible to turn off my brain and fall asleep. And having done Longs once before, I do know what lies ahead... a long, demanding hike over difficult terrain, followed by a long, demanding descent over that same difficult terrain. The Keyhole Route up 14,259-foot tall Longs Peak is the standard “hiking route” to the summit, but it’s no picnic and after finishing it two years ago, I vowed never to do it again. So just why am I getting ready to give it another go?
Good question.
Short answer: It’s the greatest challenge I can set for myself in a place that means a great deal to me. Since moving to Colorado several years ago, I’ve come to dearly love Rocky Mountain National Park. And Longs Peak has been called the crown jewel of RMNP… it’s the northernmost 14er in Colorado, the highest summit in the park, and its massive profile is highly visible from many trails, roads, and overlooks within RMNP. To me, Longs represents all that I love best about “The Park.” In the midst of our materialistic, convenience-oriented, strip mall-centric society, it’s a truly wild, beautiful place where I can escape & explore & challenge myself to go farther in and higher up. Sir Edmund Hillary once said, “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”
To learn something about myself through accepting the challenge, to test my skills and limits… that may be the reason I’d climb a mountain the first time, but why do it a second (or third or fourth) time? Well…
Sir Edmund also famously said that, when it comes right down to it, the real reason a person climbs a mountain is quite simply “for the hell of it.”
Yep.
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