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My husband, Jim Davies, son, Greg, and I helped Cardboard Rodney bag another fourteener, Democrat. We had considered doing the Decalibron earlier in the summer, but hadn't gotten around to it. Then, C. Rodney was visiting us, anyway, to bag Quandary with Greg's Boy Scout troop the next Saturday. So we decided to take him on the Decalibron Labor Day weekend. We checked the weather forecast, and Saturday didn't look good. Saturday night, Sunday didn't look good, but Monday did.
Since we weren't hiking Saturday, C. Rodney attended the Colorado Springs Balloon Classic, but the balloons didn't launch because of the wind, although four inflated on the ground. Unfortunately for C. Rodney, the only day that the balloons were able to launch this year was Monday, the day that he was hiking.
We parked below Kite Lake. Having a lowly passenger car, we never park in the parking lot, but the usual bend in the road was already full when we arrived, so we were farther down the road than usual. Hiking up the road took ten minutes, so if we were going at our usual grueling pace of two miles per hour, it was about a third of a mile, maybe half a mile as we were fresh and the grade was not intense.
I counted cars as we passed. 36 were parked below the lot, 32 in the lot, and 10 to 15 more by the camp sites. C. Rodney did the Decalibron with a few hundred of his closest friends.
The weather was great the entire day. It started perfectly clear and stayed that way longer than usual. A few clouds eventually appeared, and when we were on our way down for the last time, a cloud managed to cover the sun for a while. The temperature after noon was in the upper forties, according to the cheap thermometer hanging on Greg's backpack. (The thermometer on my backpack, the same kind, read upper thirties at the same time.) I hiked in shorts, t-shirt, and mittens (Jim noted that some of the photos had an inexplicable fuzzy blue edge), with a jacket off and on as the wind dictated.
The mountains had snow, not fresh, but one or two days old, and up to six inches deep where it had drifted (Break out the snowshoes!). What was really interesting, though, was the frost. Frost covered one side of some of the rocks. The frost had formed in spikes. Some of the spikes were several inches long. The wind must have been intense when the frost was forming, because the spikes hung sideways. Even at the end of the day, the rocks still had frost, although throughout the day we saw frost dropping. We'd see something move among the rocks, look over expecting a pika or something interesting, and realize it was only falling frost. Many pikas were out and about. They were not very shy, either. Several came within a few feet of us.
We started hiking, from the car, at 8:30. Jim had suggested hiking the mountains in the reverse order, as starting from Kite Lake did not gain the requisite 3000 feet (although we did start below the lake), so that by the time C. Rodney reached the summit of Democrat, he would have gained 3000 feet. But prudence prevailed, and we went for Democrat, the one that C. Rodney hadn't as yet bagged, first. I suggested that we could do Democrat first, then the rest, then come back to Democrat again, being both prudent and meticulous. But sanity prevailed, and we didn't.
We reached the saddle between Democrat and Cameron at 9:45, then the summit of Democrat at 10:30. Even before the saddle, we found ourselves posing the question that one often finds oneself asking when hiking a fourteener: "O.K., which one is the right trail?" But we followed the line of people and eventually managed to find the summit.
A few other people were on the summit with us, and noticed C. Rodney. This included the rugby team from Regis University. They were taking a group photo, and invited C. Rodney to join them. They said that it was definitely a photo for their newsletter. Hiking fourteeners early in the school year must be the thing to do for college students. I also noticed a group from Colorado State, and our daughter, who is in her first year at Colorado School of Mines, was supposed to go with a group to Grays and Torreys on Saturday, although they canceled because of weather.
We left the summit of Democrat at 10:45, made the summit of Cameron at 12:05, left at 12:15, and were at the summit of Lincoln at 12:30. On Cameron, we found that we could unpack, assemble, with all velcro attached, photograph, disassemble, and repack C. Rodney in five minutes or less (the actual times reaching and leaving Cameron were 12:07 and 12:14, but I've rounded times to the nearest five minutes).
About thirty people were on the summit of Lincoln when we arrived (I didn't think to count at Democrat or Cameron). We ate lunch there. C. Rodney complained that he didn't get no lunch or no respect.
We left the summit of Lincoln at 12:55 and reached the summit of Bross at 1:40. Again, about thirty people were there. While C. Rodney was relaxing at the summit, a hiker arrived and commented that she had ended up on all four summits with C. Rodney. She did remark that C. Rodney beat her to all four summits.
Democrat, Lincoln, and Bross must be the fourteeners to hike for dogs with short legs. On the summit of Bross, we met a Welsh Corgi. Going up Cameron the second time, we met an even smaller dog, with even shorter legs. Then going down from the saddle with Democrat, we met two more small dogs.
Rather than go down the scree from Bross, we went back around over Cameron and down from the saddle. C. Rodney was rather subdued for most of the trip--probably still recovering from the surgery--but, having gone down the scree from Bross once, I guess, he pleaded with us not to go down that way again. So C. Rodney summited Cameron for the third time. We had to go to the summit of Cameron again because Jim brought along to drink on summits two cans of a diet soft drink that will remain nameless to avoid any charges of unfair product endorsements, but he had used only one, on Lincoln.
We left Bross at 2:00, reached Cameron at 2:50, left Cameron at 3:00, and were back at the saddle at 3:35.
When we descended, 12 to 15 cars were still parked around the camp sites, but only 12 cars were in the parking lot, and 12 below the lot. While the pit toilet still had a line, most of it had cleared during the eight hours or so that we had been gone.
We still had to hike down to the car. Greg noted that it was the hardest half mile of the trip. We reached the car at 4:30, eight hours, to the minute, since we had left it.
When we returned, C. Rodney had summited his 23rd fourteener, and has also now summited at least two fourteeners twice and at least one (unofficial) fourteener three times, pretty good for an 82 year old guy who had heart valve replacement surgery twelve days earlier.
Quote:
When asked how long he will be in the hospital after the operation, Dangerfield quipped, "If things go right, I'll be there about a week, and if things don't go right, I'll be there about an hour and a half!" |
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