So...
This is about where I lost the trail. It was perhaps the penultimate false summit and was extremely rocky. Eventually I just climbed up the rock, throwing my trekking poles ahead of me, until I found the trail again. But first I snapped the photo of this rather self-important boulder. What you can't see is that beyond it is about a 500 foot drop.
After the third or maybe the ninth or maybe the fifteenth false summit, I started thinking to myself you know, I could just take a picture here and tell people oh yeah, this is me summiting Byers and only someone who's done it (none, to my knowledge, of my regular readers) would know.
Of course, if you know me, you know that's not how I roll. So here instead is yet another photo of another dang false summit.
At last!! To prove I didn't wimp out at a false summit and turn 'round, here is a shot of the US Geologic Survey marker at the actual summit:
Oh, and to prove I didn't pay off another hiker to take a picture of the summit marker for me, here's a shot of me crouching over the rock the marker is on (I didn't realize till I got home that you can't see it from this angle, but trust me, it's there).
Actually, I really like this photo of me because I think I look completely insane, like I've been in the thin air for too long (well...). As Douglas Adams describes Ford Prefect in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, my smile is just a little too big to be normal.
But I did it! I made the summit! No one is more surprised than me, believe me, especially when I started thinking, at false summit #10 or so, "you know, I could just stretch out on the rock for a nap and die of exposure... no fighting, no pain, no more damn steep grades..."
Here's a view from the summit of Bill's Peak on the right, an unnamed peak in the foreground and, in the distance, the Gore Range and Continental Divide.
But wait, there's more...
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