While in Breckenridge, CO, for vacation we (Preston, Grace, Harrison and me) wanted to summit Quandary Peak, one of the peaks in Colorado over 14,000 feet and often considered one of the “easy” 14ers. We mapped the area, familiarized ourselves with the route on a topo map, and planned our supplies. We were ready. Then we got to Breck and noticed that Quandary Peak was covered in snow. Covered. Snow.
Several locals said we would be foolish to try. We reluctantly decided to do something else. Sad faces all around. However, as the week progressed with warm and sunny days we noticed that the mountains around us were rapidly becoming less snowy. Then the guide on a jeep tour (that’s using a jeep to tour the mountain, not a tour where you look at jeeps) told us we should be fine if we took snow shoes just in case. We decided to go for it. Happy faces all around. Scramble to find snow shoes and figure how to pack them up the mountain and we were ready to go, again.
Just to set the stage:
Above 10,000 ft the atmosphere is 50% as dense. At 14,000 it is approaching 40%. There is still the same percentage of oxygen in the air, there is just less air. It’s like the difference between 10% of a dollar and 10% of a penny, same percentage but vastly different values. Hypoxia, AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) are all possibilities at these altitudes. Best part of the whole altitude thing is you are not able to determine if you are ok, cause the first thing to go is your judgement…
We hit the trail around 7am. First thing we see is a sign that says, and I quote, “There are no easy fourteeners.”
From there it was a constant climb over rocks and rock debris. I won’t detail the whole climb here, but at one point we did use the snowshoes, but it turned out that we didn’t really need them. So we learned something that day: snowshoes are really hard to use and it was a good thing we didn’t need them cause we sucked at it.
We stopped a lot and at one of the stops I looked down and saw a very clear “3” in the lichen on a rock. I figure that was a sign. That we were supposed to be on that mountain. That we were supposed to summit.
We did summit. 14,265 ft above sea level. We saw Mountain Goats, rocks, snow and an almost unlimited view of the mountains. Mostly, we proved to ourselves that we could do it. That was worth it.