I am rapt!
Tight and warm in my sleeping bag, I stare out at the night sky.
Everything is perfectly clear.
My fellow hikers are nearby and in the distance we can hear coyotes. They are neither barking nor howling, something in between. Calling to each other. Louder. LOUDER!
In the corner of my eye I can see our food in white plastic bags, hanging from a tree.
The coyotes are running. They are beating a path towards us!
My heart races and pounds with excitement and apprehension, and the effects of ascending so quickly to nine thousand feet. My head aches and I feel sick. Tomorrow we go higher.
The conifers that shelter us are twenty feet tall. Their tops dance in the wind against a backdrop of stars on a moonlit stage.
There goes a shooting star!
It is too much! My head spins.
Sleep is not easy. There is a low rumbling like distant thunder. Then – as if the whole mountain is collapsing – a gust of wind sweeps through the trees, passing us by. It sounds like a train. The gusts become stronger and more frequent as we lie on the tracks of the mainline. This is a ghost train! The trees bend while I lie rigid, waiting for the crash.
I rise with the sun.
This gives you an idea what it was like:
The hike up is long and arduous in driving winds.
This is where we camped. The Boulderfield base camp right beneath Long’s Peak itself:
The wispy cloud in the morning sky turn huge and dark. Powdery snow swirls around us, then bites into our faces. We Struggle with freezing hands to set up our tents. The slightest effort saps our strength and leaves us gasping for air. We are losing water with every breath and sweat.
“Wail winds, wail, All along, along, along, The Colorado Trail”
This is like it was when we were there in late November, 1989:
We attempt to melt snow for drinking and cooking food. It takes two hours to produce one litre. Each of us – all for of us – needs for litres a day to survive at thirteen thousand feet above sea level. Even with two stoves, it is impossible.
I have no appetite. I manage to eat something. My legs and feet are cold.
We try to get some sleep. It’s warm in our bags, but the fierce wind outside makes sleep a distant dream. My throat, mouth and lips are dry. The insides of the tent are wet with the moisture from our breath. As it freezes, it slaps us back while the blizzard that is battering us threatens to take us away at any moment.
The night is endless. I am waiting for the train to take me out of here. But it’s a ghost train that doesn’t stop. It’s an express train, speeding through to deliver the news.
We will not climb the peak. We will go down.