Peak-Baggin', My Way

Wiley and I summited the 14,258-foot Mount Evans today. That's right, we bagged a 14er as the locals say. Without even breaking a sweat.



Because we drove all but the last quarter-mile.



Mount Evans is, as far as I know, the only 14er that has a summit you can get within shouting distance of in your car. The road that leads to the Summit Parking Lot is billed as the highest paved road in North America, not to be confused with Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, the highest continuously paved road in North America (though it tops out at less than 13,000 feet, you can drive Trail Ridge all the way through the park and over the Divide).



In any case, the Mount Evans road is a bleepin' high road, one of the most precarious I've been on because it's narrow with no rails and a lot of hairpins and blind curves and inattentive tourists.



It had been on my list of to-dos for a few months now, but only last night did I look at my guidebook and notice it closes for the year on Labor Day because of the snow. Yikes! That's next week!



So off we went early this morning in hopes of getting back in time for a physical with my new doctor (now that I have health insurance again... yay America for its universal health care! Oh, wait a minute... Let me put my reality boots back on so I'm firmly anchored to the ground.)



Here's the summit marker:





And if you think I'm developing an obsession with photos of the US Geological Survey markers yes, yes you are correct. By the way, I uploaded all superlarge files that you should be able to "embiggen" by clicking on the photo... please let me know if you can't, as it's been an issue in the past.



Here is a view from the summit looking north. Summit Lake, which interestingly enough is more than a thousand feet below the summit, is in the foreground. The mountains in the background are, I believe, the string of peaks on the Divide that loom over the valley where I live. If you are able to embiggen the photo and get really really close to your monitor and squint, you may be able to see the mountains of Rocky Mountain National Park in the very distance, on the right.

Below is my favorite view from the summit, looking west towards what I believe is the Mosquito Range.

Yeah, the shot below is essentially of the western view again, but when Smalls crowded into my camera's view to stare intently at some ravens circling around the snowfield, I just really liked the way his ears lined up with all the peaks.

And finally, here's a view looking south. In the foreground is what's billed as the world's highest observatory (I thought the ones in Hawaii and Chile were higher up, but I don't go around with a tape measure). Just in front of it, you may be able to make out a structure that blends in well with the landscape. It's the remnants of what was once "the world's highest snack bar" but exploded in 1979 due to either a faulty propane tank or one hell of a bad burrito reaction... They preserved as much of the rubble as they could and turned it into an observation platform.

And again, if you embiggen the photo and squint, that mountain on the far right, far horizon is Pike's Peak. This was the last shot I got before the skies darkened and it started to hail. Wiley and I made it down the 130-foot elevation gain to the parking lot, which I'm sure is billed as "the world's highest paved parking lot," and made it back to our side of the Divide just in time for my physical.

Re: the physical, it was the first I've ever had by a doctor dressed in denim shorts, sandals and a t-shirt (it's a different world out here). It was also the first physical that included checking my blood oxygen saturation level to make sure I'm not hypoxic or anything because of living in this altitude.

Huh.

On another altitude-related note, yes, I know it was only a quarter-mile each way, with a mere 130-foot elevation gain, but both Wiley and I virtually jogged up the trail from the parking lot to the summit, passing tourists left and right as they bent over gasping for air. I thought it was cool to see how living at 8550 feet above sea level has granted us some semblance of superpowers when heading upward from the world's highest paved parking lot.