Miraculously the rain and cold weather stopped on the day we set aside to hike the first 14'ner of the year. Who ever said 'Plan your hike and Hike your plan' knew what they were talking about. The night before the hike we all agreed to tackle Mt. Torreys, the morning of I changed my mind and decided to hit Greys. Bad idea, good story.
It started out well, we were running a little late, but that's not odd for me. It all started getting strange once we arrived. I changed the plan because I started thinking about the summit at Torreys, it's known for it's true peak, something that is sure to cause me a little vertigo - not good at 14K feet. So I looked in the guide and noticed that even though the hike up Grays was a little longer, the term "gentle slope" drew me and kept me there.
The first 1000 feet there was no gentle slope - I'd say moderate to be generous but it was leaning towards difficult. So we huffed and we puffed all the way to the treeline where we came across an old miner's cabin that looked as if it saw the turn of the century - the one before the most recent one.
The guide books clearly states - "the trail will be obvious to the mountain's ridge line." We looked - all three of us did - and we looked but there was no obvious trail. Somehow we missed it - all three of us did - so we started to traverse the mountain.
I proudly thought of how I was accomplishing this very difficult task as I hiked over vegitation, climbed over steep skree fields and finally reached the ridge line. The sight before us was breath-taking, the trail was now obvious and a relief.
Our friend Mark was about a 50 feet behind us when we saw the first goat. A beautiful white mountain goat at 13,300 feet was not rare, but it was exciting. Marcus and I stood there looking at it, I pulled out my camera and yelled to Mark to hurry before it ran away.
As Mark double speeded it up the ridge, I yelled, "Mark, there's a mountain goat, actually there's two. No, there's a whole herd." That's when I realized we were in trouble.
Most of the time goats don't instill fear. Most of the time. But we were standing on a steep ridge line 13K feet in the air. 10 feet behind us was a steep drop off of loose rocks and small boulders (skree). To make matters worse the kids started showing up - Nannies became more protective. When all was said and done I'd guess we were staring down about 15-20 goats with very pointy horns.
The odd thing was they didn't move ... unless we did. The three of us stood there, contemplating our options ... go up the mountain or go down. Easy right. Wrong. Every time we took a step they did. Not good.
We had our dogs with us - Kal just lay down, we believe he was being one with nature. Maggie surprised us. She must have known what she was up against because she got low to the ground and watched the goats every move. Scary.
After 15 minutes, the leader turned his back on us. We high-tailed it down to what we thought was safety and took a seat. Minutes later we ate our lunch and joked about the experience. The whole time keeping our eyes on the herd. Just as I was about to take a bite of our sandwich a flash of white caught my attention - somehow the goats had surrounded us again. We never heard a thing. Fear caused us to react faster than we knew it was possible. Down the ridge line we went - past the skree, past the piles of goat crap - 1000 feet down ... fast.
And then ... there was no trail. Seriously. There was no trail. There never was. So we had to climb down the mountain the same way we came up. Slowly and carefully - without a trail.
We made it though! It took about 3 hours longer and we never summitted. But some things are just not worth going for.
The next night we sat in our yard roasting marshmallows talking about the experience when we realized we had company. A beautiful orange fox had joined us and he wasn't leaving. No pictures though - too dark.
But the next day i got to see something I've been wanting to see since I first stepped on Colorado Soil. A moose. Yep, a moose. Two actually. Just playing in some grassy marsh by the side of the road. I'll never forget it.
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