Hydration Pack-$130.00
Hats and Gloves-$0.00
Hiking Mt. Quandary-Priceless!
The day was finally here-the day that Alli and I decided that we were going to hike our first 14er! We wanted to get an early start, so I met Alli at 6:00 a.m.!! We were so giggly on the car ride up, a lot of nervous excitement in the car for sure! Finally we arrived at the trail head and were loading our packs and lacing up our boots when a women standing next to us was asking us why we didn't have hats and gloves-looking at each other we just shrugged to her as if to say, "Do we need hats and gloves?" All she had to say was, "Well I hike all the time in Colorado, and you need to be prepared for everything!" A little more giggling from Alli and Kelli!
We started up the trail and were happy to get going! The trail definitely started out by going up fairly quickly! Shortly thereafter we passed two older guys and a fairly large group of what looked like a inner-city kids on an Outward Bound trip. They appeared VERY nervous and apprehensive. About half way (or what we thought) up-the trail turned into a rock field. By this time we had been piggy-backing with the older men and I had asked if they knew how much farther. After asking me if I really wanted to know-he pulled out his GPS and told me we had gone 1,700 feet and had about 1,800 more to go! We were half way and knew that we had to keep going!
Then we saw the peak! We knew it had to be the peak-there were lots of large groups of people just hanging around! Our spirits were lifted once again, and we were back to being giggly! We still had a ways to go-but with the end in site how hard could it be right? Wrong!
We finally got to what we thought was the peak only to figure out it was a false peak! I really thought they were kidding me! But once again, we had come so far there was no way we were going to turn around! And we were at the base of the real peak for real this time! The altitude was really bothering me at this point (swollen hands, tunnel vision, and a slight headache) but it was really important for me to finish! To make things a little more difficult-I had already drank my 100 ounces of water (Yes, Jon and Jay-I did it again!) and had no water for the remainder of the hike!
And finish we did! It took us about 3 hours to get to the summit at 14, 265 feet! We were so happy and proud of each other because it was not an easy, enjoyable hike!
The weather at the top was around 30-40 degrees and very windy! So needless to say-Yes we could of used the hats and gloves!!
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