The Next Step

The World Series was a massive disappointment for me. I had very high expectations that did not come to pass. I sort of outlined a couple goals for 2008 and have failed miserably in achieving them. When I finally busted out of the Bellagio Cup on July 14 I immediately drove home, dazed and morose. Getting out of Vegas didn't improve my disposition though. My friends couldn't really understand why I wasn't excited to be back home in beautiful Boulder rather than hellish Vegas.

As much as I hate Vegas, there was an opportunity for The Big Score every day and I loved waking up each day with that chance. When it was over, there was a huge letdown and I felt worthless. Not only that, but I had no idea what I was going to do the next day, the next week, the next month, and the next year. I spent nine days in emotional and organizational purgatory, then left on a five-day, five-hike, five-mountain fourteener road trip across the state with my friends Truman and Jeremy.

Truman wrote a fantastic recap of the trip on his blog.

I was planning on "getting my shit together", figuring out what I was going to do this fall and the rest of my life while tramping around the mountains. Instead, I thought about absolutely nothing for four days. Occasionally we mused about the NFL and Truman talked some about girls, but mostly all I thought about was the next step I was going to take getting up or down the mountain.

The first mountain we climbed was Mount Princeton, a large Sawatch Range 14er with a road halfway up it.
Then it was on to Colorado's finest range, the San Juans.First we knocked off Uncompahgre Peak, the highest mountain in the San Juans and (arguably) the finest easy Fourteener hike in the state.The next day was a bit more challenging as we moved a valley over and ascended Wetterhorn Peak.The top was pretty exciting.We went over Engineer Pass,

had a beer in Silverton, hit the Million Dollar Highway to Ouray, soaked in the Ouray Hot Springs, went up Yankee Boy Basin,and danced with the clouds on Mount Sneffels.We wrapped up the trip in the La Garita Wilderness on the most obscure and pleasant of Fourteeners, San Luis Peak.
On the way down we saw a herd of Bighorn Sheepand I was finally able to wrap my head around some other stuff. I came up with a solution for this fall, I think, though my history of following through on planned projects is not promising.

At home I am still walking out of stride. I can't seem to do anything right, though life is not unpleasant. A disjointed week in Boulder gave way to a cloudpacked jaunt up Airplane Gully and Navajo Peak,which featured some tense low visibility routefinding on the return.Monday we decided to step it up and go after a hard one - Pyramid Peaknear the famous Maroon Bells.

Pyramid was the steepest,

hardest,
most dangerous,most spectacular mountain of the seven, but it was also easier than it looked and tons of fun.
At home everything is off. Things are just not quite right and I am perpetually frustrated. But in the mountains, every day has been perfect.