Spotlight on Sarah Thompson!

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Q: What was your first fourteener, and when did you climb it?
My first 14er was Grays Peak (how original) on August 17^th, 2003.  In the preceding years I had been a total couch potato and never did anything physical.  A few weeks prior, a colleague of mine somehow managed to convince me to hike to Arapaho Lakes with him.  Even though it was hard work, I was absolutely awestruck by the wildflowers, waterfalls, lakes, and mountains that I saw.  It was like I had stumbled into a whole new magical world.  It also made me remember what it was like when I was a kid in western NY, spending most of my time on “adventures”, mostly just getting lost in the woods.  After that I starting browsing the web and discovered that hiking 14ers was the thing to do.  As some sort of “test” to see if I was ready to undertake such a feat, I climbed Mt. Audubon with a friend.  While my friend had some altitude issues, I seemed to thrive in the thin air!  It went fairly well so we climbed Grays the next weekend.  It was overcast and sprinkling when we got to the trailhead, but we decided to give it a shot – I was determined to make it to the top!  Part way up it started snowing and blowing – I was wearing jean shorts and a wind breaker.  My legs were cold as heck, but we made it.  I learned a good lesson that day – since then I’ve never left the trailhead with only shorts.  The next weekend it was off to Longs Peak which really kicked my butt but also made me discover how much I liked scrambling.  The next weekend we traversed the Sawtooth between Bierstadt and Evans. 

Q: At what point did you commit to finishing them all?
I remember buying Roach’s book early on and browsing through it.  It seemed like there were endless 14ers to be climbed.  I spent the summer of 2004 climbing class 2 and 3 routes with my friend Estelle.  Ah, the good old cottoneering days!  We had a ton of fun!  At that point I didn’t really envision climbing them all – the 4^th class ones seemed out of reach and I never even gave them much thought.  In early 2005 Estelle and I had a revelation – we could keep climbing in the winter!  This advanced our hiking career a lot – we went out and spent a bunch of money on gear and gave up our cottoneering ways.  That summer my peak bagging addiction kind of exploded and I started thinking bigger.  I think I can pinpoint when I realized I could climb all the 14ers – after spending a weekend at Crater Lake in July 2005.  I climbed S. Maroon first since it had a nasty reputation but was still 3^rd class.  That went very well so I decided to try my first 4^th class peak – Pyramid.  I had no idea what to expect.  There was only one way to find out though – give it a try.  After that I was ready to take on any of them!

Q: What is your favorite fourteener route?
This is a tough question.  Its easier to recall my least favorite route – the standard route up Princeton.  To me, it seemed like the talus hopping dragged on forever and there wasn’t anything too interesting to look at in the meantime.  I guess my all time favorite 14er route would have to be up the NW face of Little Bear, traverse to Blanca, on to Ellingwood still on top of the ridge, and down Ellingwood’s SW ridge.  That was one awesome day and I loved every minute of it!  I can’t think of any other 14er route that has more scrambling than that!
 

Q: What was your most delightful moment on a 14er?
This is another tough one.  I’m always surprised when I look back at all of my old 14er photos.  In my summit shots, I usually have a huge smile on my face.  I’ve never looked so consistently happy in pictures before in my life!  One 14er I remember being particularly happy on was S. Maroon.  Before the climb I was so apprehensive and worried that I was getting in over my head.  It was the first 14er I really had doubts about.  I was ecstatic when I reached the summit.  Not only had I made it, but it had felt so easy!

Q: What was your most terrifying moment on a 14er?
OK, this is kind of an embarrassing story.  I’ve had a few spooky moments on 13ers but only one on a 14er.  Well, it actually happened shortly after the hike but was a direct result of my actions during the hike.  If you recall, over Labor Day weekend in 2004 the San Juans got dumped on.  The day after the storm was beautifully sunny so Estelle and I, who were in Lake City at the time, bought some gaiters and set off for Redcloud and Sunshine.  We had never hiked in the snow.  We decided that we didn’t want to have raccoon eyes the next day so we left our sunglasses in the car.  The hike went well.  We ate at Pokers Alice after that and were wondering why our vision seemed a little cloudy.  Not thinking much of it, we drove up to the Grizzly Gulch trailhead so we could climb Handies the next day.  After a few short hours of sleep I woke up – in slight discomfort.  My eyes were watering and were very irritated, kind of like they had sand in them.  We were sleeping in the car and when I sat up to look at the clock on the dash it blinded me!  I had to look away immediately.  I suffered all night – it kept getting worse and worse (I later found out this was because with all of my blinking I was tearing apart my corneas!)  Estelle somehow managed to sleep and didn’t seem to be having it so bad.  When it started to get light out, the pain got a lot worse.  Estelle was starting to be in a lot of pain too.  We were terrified.  What had we done?  Were we going to go blind?!  At this point I could not open my eyes because the light hurt way too much.  In fact, I had to put a towel over my head!  Estelle was getting worse by the minute as she continued to blink, tearing her corneas too.  She somehow drove us to the Gunnison ER.  She had a towel over her head too and was peaking out – kind of scary on the shelf road!  We got a bunch of Vicodin which didn’t really help but put us in a slightly better mood.  They gave us some sort of numbing eye drops which were great but only worked for a few minutes and they cut us off after two doses.  Estelle was screaming and they gave her two shots of Demoral in her butt – I said no thanks!  The hospital folks tried to get us to get a hotel room but we were broke so we slept in our car in the parking lot.  After a couple of hours we managed to drive the few blocks to Sonic where we got some food and hung out until nightfall.  I can say that, without a doubt, this was the most extreme pain I’ve ever been in.  Luckily, there was no permanent damage.  Lesson learned the hard way!

Q: Do you have any plans for future mountain lists?
Do I really have to answer that?  I want to climb all of the ranked and/or named summits in Indian Peaks Wilderness as well as all of Colorado’s 13ers.  I’ll be busy for a while.  Those San Juan mountains sure are far away and the weather down there doesn’t seem to be too cooperative either. 

Q: What 14er did you climb last? Did you intentionally save it for last or is it a 14er that previously eluded you?
My last 14er was Tabeguache.  I had originally intended to climb it in June 2005 when I climbed Shavano, but conditions were horrible and it was quite an achievement just making it up Shavano.  There was no way we could continue on to Tabeguache.  I didn’t give it any more thought after that since there was more interesting 14ers to be climbed.  As of the beginning of summer 2006 I only had a few 14ers remaining: Tabeguache, Culebra, Snowmass, Capitol, and the Wilson group.  I spent most of the summer doing a lot of scrambling and didn’t want to “waste” a perfectly good weekend on Tabeguache.  I figured it would have to wait until the snow fell.  Last weekend was the perfect opportunity.  So, I guess in a way I saved it for last.

Q: What is the single most important piece of advice that you would give to someone just starting out?
My advice?  Think big.  You’ll be amazed at what you’re capable of.