Early Saturday morning, really early Saturday morning, pre-sunrise Saturday morning, we were driving west into the mountains.

The blue moon was slowly setting in front of us. The travel coffee mug I clung to as though it contained the elixir of life itself (which, let’s face it, it pretty much did) warmed my fingers. We were on a mission.

A few days prior to this, Dan somehow managed to coerce me into climbing a fourteener. He asked, and I said, “Sure.” The fiend.

A fourteener is a mountain peak in Colorado that measures 14,000 feet in elevation or more. There are over 50 of them in Colorado. And is wont to happen when such natural phenomena exist, it has become a common pastime to summit them. Common enough that as a Colorado native, people are often rather surprised I have never climbed one myself.

So, because they are there and because we had time and because I needed to defend my honor as a Colorado native, we went for it.

The mountain nearly won.

More accurately, the mountain-s nearly won. Gray’s Peak and Torreys Peak exist right next to each other, connected by a saddle-like ridge between them. Gray’s measures in at 14, 270 feet; Torreys, just three feet shorter at 14,267 feet. Because they are so close, people often attempt to summit them both in one advance. They are right there, so why not? Right?

Right.

As we did set out at such a horrid hour (which I should mention is necessary when climbing these peaks as dangerous storms tend to come in around noon; storms that produce rain, wind and lightning, not something you want to contend with when you’re on top of the highest thing around), we were able to view the moonset and the sunrise in one go.

Our worthy adversaries: Gray’s on the left, Torreys on the right.

My peak climbing compatriot.

We headed up the slope en route to conquer Gray’s first. You start off at about 11,280 feet, which means you have just shy of 3,000 feet to climb to reach the top. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s a lot of feet. A lot of very steep feet. It begins at a very manageable incline, nothing too strenuous. But then you start going up. And up and up. And up.

Before long you have to stop every five minutes or so to catch your breath, drink some water, and plead with the heavens to grant you a small mercy and create a rock slide beneath your toes that will conveniently sweep you back down the mountain and to the door of your waiting vehicle.

Sadly, we had no such luck.

So, we did the only thing you can…kept walking.

And we made it. It was windy, cold, sunny and spectacular being 14, 270 feet in the air. You can see on forever. The Rocky Mountains never looked better than from that vantage point. One that you labored for over the past couple of hours.

My legs felt wobbly, my heart pounded hard, but we had done it. We had achieved this physical feat that felt so impossible thirty minutes before while on the one of seemingly hundreds of steep switchbacks.

We huddled down in a little crevice to shield ourselves from the wind and ate some much needed snacks. Torreys beckoned to us off to our left. Dan knew from the beginning that he wanted to attempt them both; me, well, I wasn’t so sure if I could do that twice in one day.

But, after our little break, and fortified by trail mix, beef jerky, granola bars, and the elation of surviving thus far…we went for it. I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up when it felt like we’d only come halfway.

You can barely make them out, but there are the tiniest of specks at the peak up there. That was our destination. Those specks were our comrades in climbing.

An intense stubbornness overtakes you. You’re very high up, battling altitude and exhaustion, with legs more like jelly than firm muscle supporting you, but you can’t admit defeat. You have to press on.

Now, this seems a suitable time to mention that Gray’s and Torreys are two of the easier fourteeners in this state. I’ll admit it! There are others that take much more technical climbing prowess, and a lot more time. For instance, some can take as many as nine hours just to reach the top. But, for someone like me, who yes, is not in the finest physical shape, this first attempt at a fourteener – let alone two – was a massive amount of work.

But, once again, we made it. Two fourteeners, one day. Triumph!

Let the celebration commence!

OK, maybe not like that. Kids, don’t try this at home.

Or this.

Now we’re talking! Sitting is much more my style. That’s the kind of celebration I was going for.

This is my peak climbing compatriot once again. Looking ahead to the descent. Sadly, there’s no elevator to whisk you back down to the bottom. (Why they haven’t installed such a device is beyond me. Or a coffee/doughnut hut. But that’s a conversation for another time.) What goes up, must come down after all. And while going down is seventeen times better than going up, it still takes time and effort.

In order, Gray’s and Torreys.

All told, it took us just shy of six hours to get to the top of both and all the way back down.

To sum up the experience, allow me to paraphrase a Jack Kerouac quote:

“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that mountain.”