My Summer in Rocky Mountain National Park

It was 2009, and I was 19 years old. I was in my sophomore year of college. That was a rough time for me. My paternal grandfather died of stomach cancer at the beginning of my sophomore year of college. He was one of the most important people in my life, and it was a devastating loss.

In the weeks that followed his death, I also felt dead inside. I loved my coursework and classes, but suddenly I couldn’t focus on my reading assignments. I struggled to write my essays and reading responses. Then I started skipping my classes. I would just lay in my dorm room bed staring at the ceiling for hours.

I spent my sophomore year going through the motions, and it was the worst grades I’ve ever gotten in my life. I had graduated highschool in the top 20 out of over 600 students. I prided myself on my intelligence. I wasn’t popular in high school, I never got invited to parties, and I didn’t have a boyfriend, but I was going to be the first person in my family to go to college. I had tested out of so many classes that I was given permission to take graduate level literature and writing classes as a freshman in college, which was unheard of. But that year, my sophomore year, I didn’t give a shit.

The only thing really keeping me going was my relationship with my college boyfriend (he would later become my first husband, and then ex-husband). My college boyfriend was pretty much a genius. He had applied to Cornell, got accepted, and then received a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Arkansas, which is the best scholarship you can get. It pays for everything, your tuition, and your room and board your entire way through college. Which kind of seems backwards, if you think about it. He came from a well off family who was able to give him every advantage when he was in highschool. Tutors for his SATs. He graduated top of his class, of course. He had all of the extracurriculars. He got a full ride. His family could afford to put him through college. I got a few scholarships, but I had to borrow the rest of the money to afford to go to college. Funny how that works out, but I digress.

We met our freshman year at the University of Arkansas in a creative writing workshop. He was intelligent, dark, and broody, and I started showing up to class early so I could talk to him. We lived in the same dorm, and soon we were walking back from class together and eating lunch together. Then we were inseparable.

My college boyfriend and I started planning for how we were going to handle our second summer apart. His family lived out of state, and I spent the summers back at home with my family which lived nearby locally. During our first summer apart after freshman year, he drove up from Texas a few times to see me, but we didn’t want to be apart the entire summer after our sophomore year of college. We’d been dating over a year at this point, and it was getting serious.

He had the idea to go to a student work program at a tourist town, and spend the summer working together. These summer work programs are designed for students during their summer breaks off from college. Companies provide room and board for students who come and work at their restaurants, shops, and amusement parks and pay the students minimum wage. Or even less than minimum wage.

We applied to work on Mackinac Island, which is a touristy island in Lake Huron that you can only get to by ferry. On the island, everyone rides bikes everywhere. We both were approved to work there. I was supposed to work in a fudge shop. I have never been there, but I hear it’s beautiful.

Instead, we ended up getting accepted to work at the YMCA of the Rockies, which is a huge retreat center with hundreds of cabins, restaurants, and event centers located right in the Rocky Mountains, right outside of Estes Park, Colorado.

My college boyfriend had been there numerous times with his family on vacation, so he was excited that we would get to spend the entire summer there together. He accepted a position on the grounds and maintenance team, and I took a job in the Rustic Cafe, though I ended up switching into housekeeping later on in the summer. I had to be at work at 5am at the Rustic Cafe, which was a no-go for me after a few weeks.

Housekeeping team had way more fun. We would team up into crews of 5-6 people, a van would load us up and drop us off at a cabin. We’d scrub it from top to bottom. If the family happened to leave good snacks and food behind in the kitchen, we’d eat what we could before loading the rest into trash bags, and then the van would come and get us and drop us off at the next cabin. It was sweaty, hard work, but fun. I stripped a lot of sheets off of beds, and scrubbed a lot of toilets. The days went by fast. There was a lot of goofing off on the crews.

My college boyfriend and I would spend our days off going into Estes Park to watch movies at the historic theater that only had two screens. We played minigolf, and went to the library and bookstores. We’d spend hours curled up reading together and listening to his hipster, indie music. He tried to teach me how to play chess, but I couldn’t pick it up for the life of me.

We had driven to Colorado from Arkansas in his car, so we were lucky that we had a car available to us so we could leave campus.We took day trips to Denver, Boulder, Ft. Collins, and Loveland. My happiest times that summer were taking road trips into the cities. I was starting to feel isolated and trapped in the mountains. Estes Park was such a small town. Incidentally, the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park is the hotel that inspired Stephen King’s famous work, The Shining.

It was a tough summer in a lot of ways. I didn’t make a single, good friend there. I had a few people I was friendly with, but most people had traveled there in groups together, and they already knew each other. My boyfriend and I were one of the few couples that had gone to work at the YMCA. I am normally very social and can make friends easily, but that summer I could not get in with a single of the girl cliques. Even my roommate, this girl from Michigan, avoided me like the plague. Many of the groups of girls went out of their way to avoid me.

When I would approach, sometimes they would whisper to one another and laugh as I passed by. Sometimes they made mean comments. It cut deep, but I made sure to just laugh right back in their faces when it happened, and then cried about it later in private. I had no idea why they didn’t like me. And I decided it didn’t matter because I thought they were all boring and shallow, anyway. I didn’t care what they thought at the end of the day, so I stopped trying to connect with people, and just did what I was good at, which is to be a loner.

I like my own company. I would spend my free time taking short hikes alone. I would go to the library either in town or on campus and read and write for hours. I would go for jogs around the YMCA, and listen to music. I became my own best friend.

My college boyfriend became great friends with his entire maintenance team. There were seven or eight of them, all guys except for one girl. The girl was this pretty, cool, laid-back girl. She was like the stereotypical “girl next door” that all the guys had a crush on.

Every time she walked by, my boyfriend’s face would light up. I saw them pairing up together a lot in the mornings in a work truck together. He was sharing all of his favorite indie bands with her, like he had done with me when we first started dating. When I sat with him and his friends at dinner, it was like I was invisible. It ate me alive, but I told myself I was only upset because I had no friends except for him, and that was why it hurt so much.

My college boyfriend and I went on so many hikes that summer. Most of our free time was spent hiking the trails all around us. We were stationed right in Rocky Mountain National Park. He planned the hikes, and I was his sidekick. It was the best shape I’ve ever been in. We were always on the move. He liked doing intense hikes, the steeper, the more switchbacks, the better the views, the better the payoff.

Towards the middle of the summer, he planned this hike on a day off that we both had. The hike would take all day and would be our most intense hike yet. Most of the hikes that we did were “there and back” hikes, where you hiked to your end point, turned around, and retraced your steps to the trailhead.

This hike that he wanted to do was a loop. So, no retracing. We would park, start at one trailhead, hike for around 6 hours gradually up a mountain, pass through a mountain pass, go down the other side, and connect with a different trail that would take us down the other side until we had circled back along a different trail to near where we had parked. It was supposed to take 8 hours to complete.

Again, this was 2009. We had physical maps that we looked at and cross referenced with the internet. We had WiFi in our dorms. Our first mistake was not checking the weather reports for this particular mountain. We were doing this hike later on in the summer, so most of the snow had melted on most of the mountains, and we just took for granted that this would be the case for this particular hike. We didn’t verify the conditions before setting out.

Mind you, part of new hire orientation was learning how to self arrest in the snow. During our first week at work at the YMCA, they drove us all up in buses to the top of Trail Ridge Road to where it was still snowy and icy and taught us how to “self arrest” if you were to slip and fall on a snowy/icy cliffside. We were also taught how to protect ourselves from bears. We were also all supposed to sign out every time we left our dorms for a hike, which we did do.

We packed our backpacks with a bagged lunch and dinner. I brought some extra snacks for myself in case my blood sugar got low. We were dressed in shorts, tee shirts, and had no camping or safety gear in our backpacks. We fully expected to be done with the hike in 8 hours. We left early.

The hike was beautiful. We didn’t see any other people at all, maybe one other couple. We parked his car at the trailhead and started hiking through a field filled with wildflowers. We approached the mountain and began the slow descent upwards. The mountain wasn’t a big or steep one. There were trees and wildlife the whole way up. The views at the scenic overlooks were gorgeous. We hardly saw anyone else. I stopped every now and then to take photos with my little blue Kodak point and shoot camera (I had a flip phone in those days; I don’t even know if iPhones were a thing in 2009). It was a beautiful, remote hike.

After several hours, we came to a small lake. We hit a snowline. Though it was only up to our ankles, it was a surprise. We were wearing our shorts and hiking boots. It was a warm, dry day, probably around 75-78 degrees. The snow was funny to us. Second big mistake we made, not taking it seriously.

We sat at the edge of the lake and ate the rest of our food. According to our map, we were almost to the mountain pass, where we would go up and around the mountain and down the other side, connecting to another trail that would lead us back to our car. We should only have another two hours of hiking left. Which was good, because it was around 6pm at that point and we were pushing it with daylight.

We finished eating and started walking through the snow towards the mountain pass.

But as we started going steeper, the snow got deeper. There really wasn’t a trail anymore. We were following what looked like a skiing or perhaps a snowshoeing trail next to a steep cliff that dropped off to a river way below. We kept following the makeshift snowshoeing/skiing trail.

We were up to our knees in snow, and the sun was fading when we started to panic. If we turned around and went back the way we came, we would be hiking through the night to get back to our car. We had been hiking for 6+ hours at that point. We would be in a remote part of the Rockies in the pitch darkness without gear. I don’t think either of us had packed flashlights. Again, ill-prepared and just all around dumb.

My boyfriend thought it best to keep going the way we had originally planned, up the mountain pass and down the other side. It was slow going. It is strange to say that it was warm outside, and though we were trudging through almost knee-deep snow, we weren’t cold. But the sun was going down, and the temperatures were dropping fast.

As it got steeper, we were both slipping and falling over. It was getting dark. I realized there was no way we were going to make it up and over before nightfall. We still had water but no food. We had no blankets, camping gear. Nothing. Yet, we kept going upward and onward, falling over, sometimes on our hands and knees in the wet snow, as the sun began to sink behind the mountain.

I began to cry, and honestly just lost my fucking mind. I realized there was a chance I might actually die, or get really hurt out there. For the first time in a long time, I really wanted to live. I didn’t want to get trapped on this remote mountain in the snow in the middle of the night. As a type 1 diabetic, I was acutely aware that I was out of food, and a low blood sugar episode could mean the end for me. I was stunned at my own stupidity. I have been diabetic my entire life, and I have always been prepared for anything. And yet, here I was, on some remote mountain with no food left.

There was no cell phone reception. No one knew where we were. Yeah, we’d signed out at our dorms with our hiking destination, but it wouldn’t be until the next morning that people would wonder where we were. I was terrified, the most terrified that I have ever been in my entire life. I hated myself for my own stupidity.

And I hated God. I started cursing God. I cursed him for allowing me to get into this position. I cursed him for taking my grandfather away from me. I cursed him for a lot of things that I am not going to get into here. But then after falling over for the hundredth time in the slippery, steep snow, I broke down crying and I asked God to help me. I prayed that he would help me get the hell off that mountain and back down to safety.

And suddenly, I heard someone yelling, “Hey, you can’t go that way!”

I thought I was hallucinating. I thought I was hearing the voice of God on the mountain. But my boyfriend heard the voice too. We both started looking around. We heard the voice yell again, “You can’t go that way!” The voice was echoing across the other side of the valley.

We were on the edge of one mountain, going up a pass. There was a steep cliff next to us that dropped down to a creek. On the other side of the creek was another mountain. The voice was coming from that side.

Directly across from us, in fact, was a figure in a bright yellow coat. He waved us down. “Go back down! I’ll meet you down there!” He gestured towards a spot down the trail at the bottom where the creek leveled out and it was flat.

It took us a while, but we turned around and backtracked all the way back down to where it was level. The guy in the yellow coat met us down there.

We learned that he and his buddy were ice camping, and they had seen us from their campsite. He said the trail we were trying to take was impossible to pass without serious climbing gear, because it was frozen with ice and snow. He pulled out his map and showed my boyfriend an alternate route down and around the mountain that would take a couple of hours, but it was better than turning around and going back the way we came, which would take all night.

“Do you have any food? My girlfriend is a diabetic,” my boyfriend said.

The camper in the yellow coat handed me a few Clif bars.

“Thank you so much,” I said, tears streaming down my face.

“It’s going to be dark soon,” he said. “You guys better get going.”

We thanked him profusely, and turned and started on the trail he had shown us. Once we were out of the godforsaken snowline, we started to run down the trail until it got too dark to see. Then we had to walk. I think maybe my boyfriend had one of those headlamps. I can’t remember. But we didn’t have flashlights. It was so dark.

I am actually very scared of the dark, and I was absolutely terrified. We hiked down the trail in the pitch black for a couple of hours. There was some moonlight and starlight. It was so quiet. God, I was terrified. I was afraid of bears. My boyfriend tried to distract me by telling me how he couldn’t wait to get back to Arkansas and start our junior year of college together, about how he was planning to propose to me that year. I was just in shock. I just wanted to get out of there.

I’ll never forget the feeling of relief when we exited the trail and hit a trail head. The trailhead was a paved parking lot. Seeing a paved parking lot bathed in the moonlight was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.

My college boyfriend checked his map. “Well, we are quite a few miles away from where we parked the car,” he said.

We started walking down the deserted road.

“Would you say yes if I proposed to you this year?” He asked.

“I’m 19,” I said.

“Yeah, but you’ll be 20 in a couple of months. We could get married next spring. You’ll only be 20 still, but I’ll be 21. We could get a place together, and finish up our last year of school after that. We can both go to graduate school after that. I think I want to get my doctorate degree in literature. We can stay at the University of Arkansas or go wherever we want.”

“I don’t know, I haven’t been happy at all. I was thinking about breaking up with you after the end of this summer,” I said.

“Yeah, I know it’s been rough for you. But we’re going to get married, Lindsay. I realized it after this experience. I love you. I’m going to propose to you when we get back to school this fall. You’re going to say yes.”

“I just want to find the car and get back to the Y,” I said. “I just want to go home.”

“Don’t you love me?” he asked.

“I do love you,” I said. “But I want to go home.”

We had been walking down a dark and deserted road while we were talking, and we saw lights in the distance. As we got closer, we saw what appeared to be a ranch. It was really late, but we decided to take our chances and go to the door. We walked onto the property, and it was a ranch as we had guessed. We walked up the gravel driveway to the front steps. At the front door, we were both scared, but we knocked on the front door. The porch light was still on.

When we knocked, someone actually answered. A man came to the door, and he had a couple of small children with him, who stared up at us like we were aliens from outer space. We explained what had happened and asked if he would be willing to give us a ride to the trailhead several miles away where my boyfriend’s car was parked.

He actually helped us out. He loaded us up in his truck with his kids, and he dropped us off at my boyfriend’s car in the middle of the night.

Another miracle.

After that experience, we took it easy on our hikes. His family came to visit, and we took picnics near a river. We went into town and ate ice cream. We bought a cherry pie at a pie stand and ate it in a park. We went to a rock shop and looked at crystals. It was all perfectly safe.

When my family came to visit, we did a couple of the easiest hikes with scenic views and plenty of people around. Their visit was the highlight of my summer, and when they left to go back to Arkansas and left me there in the Rockies, I was gutted. I wanted to go back with them. Just give up and leave. But I stayed.

And I am glad I did, because if I had left with them, I never would have climbed my first and only 14’er.

Longs Peak was legendary at the YMCA. The summit is over 14,000 feet high. It is the tallest mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park. It takes a minimum of twelve hours to hike to the summit and back to the trailhead, depending on which trailhead you start from. As the summer wore on, people started making plans to hike to the summit. Groups were formed. Some groups went out to attempt to get the top, and didn’t make it. They came back with promises to try again next year. Other groups made it, and they came back from their adventure looking windswept and tired but happy and satisfied. Everyone would crowd around them and listen to them talk about their experience.

I wanted to climb it.

I talked to my college boyfriend about us trying to climb it together, but after our failed hiking experience in the snowy mountain pass, he said he didn’t want to do it.

I thought that was the end of it. But one week towards the end of the summer, I had two days off. Normally my boyfriend and I tried to get the same days off, but I had a day off that he didn’t. I was sitting in the cafeteria by myself eating lunch or dinner on the eve of my first day off, and I heard a group at the table next to me planning their hike to Longs Peak. They were planning to leave that night at 11PM to go to the trailhead, and begin what they thought would be a 12-14 hour hike.

I didn’t really know these people. I worked with a couple of them in housekeeping, the guy and his girlfriend. The guy was a friendly guy who lived in the same dorm as me. His girlfriend also lived in my dorm. Though we all worked in housekeeping together, I hadn’t been on their crew, so I didn’t know them well. But they were friendly, and I asked if they had room for one more in their group. It was a group of I believe around six people. The guy, his sister, his girlfriend, her roommate, and me. There were one or two other people, I think. I can’t remember now. I have a picture of all of us on the summit, but I deactivated my social media and I don’t feel like looking for the picture. I’m still friends with a couple of them. One of the girls still lives in Colorado and regularly hikes 14’ers.

Anyway, they told me what I needed to pack to prepare for the hike. They said they were all meeting in the dorm common area at 11PM to drive to the trailhead and begin the hike. They said to prepare to be gone for around 12-15 hours. I went to prepare for the hike. I packed my backpack with a shit ton of Capri Suns, water, Clif bars and Uncrustables. I packed an entire bag of Skittles, because I was not about to have a low blood sugar episode up there.

The reason we were leaving to start the hike in the middle of the night was that you had to make sure to be at the summit and make your way back down well before 1PM. Regularly in the afternoons in the summer, storms hit the mountain, and it is very dangerous to be up there. It’s above 14,000 feet and utterly exposed to the elements. It’s well above the tree line, and as I later learned, you are looking down at the clouds below you. It’s like being on the moon. So everyone always began the hike at night with the expectation of reaching the summit well before noon or 1PM the next day. You wanted to be on your way back down the mountain when and if the summer storms struck.

If I remember correctly, there are five phases of this hike. I can’t remember which trailhead we started from, but you can approach the summit of Long’s Peaks from multiple different trailheads.

The first phase is just normal switchbacks up and up for hours and hours until you reach Boulder Field. This is the easiest part, because you are hiking through very scenic areas with creeks, scenic overlooks, and you are still in the tree line.

Boulder Field is phase two. This is exactly what it sounds like, a large field of smallish boulders where you hike by hopping from one boulder to the next, and it becomes quite a steep grade as you go up Boulder Field approaching the Keyhole. Very exhausting. Boulder Field leads to the one and only shelter on the mountain, and there are also a couple of Porta-Potties. A lot of people camp at the base of Boulder Field before approaching the third phase, which is the Keyhole.

The Keyhole is literally a large hole in a rock formation at the top of Boulder Field that looks like a keyhole. You approach the Keyhole, pass through it, and officially are on the other side of the mountain. Once you pass through the Keyhole, you have 1,000 of very steep elevation to climb before the summit. From there, you have to continue going up the mountain through the hardest conditions, the next being a very steep climb through scree.

Scree is a hiker/mountaineering's nightmare. It is loose gravel and rocks. You slip and slide and it is extremely dangerous, especially on steep grades. You have to go extremely slow. Most people hike this part on their hands and knees.

The final phase is called the Narrows and the Home Stretch. This is essentially a tiny trail with a very steep drop off next to you that leads up to a very steep but smooth rock face that leads directly up to the summit of Longs Peak. Most people climb this on their hands and knees as well, because it is basically straight up. It is very steep.

The summit of Longs Peak is actually very small. It is a leveled out plateau. It is rocky and well above the clouds. You look down at a tiny lake on a mountain far below you. You can’t see anything except clouds and sky and the formations of smaller mountains beneath you. You feel like you are on a different planet, looking down. You feel like a god. But you also feel weak and small. It is a paradox.

Anyway, I told my boyfriend what I was doing. He thought I was crazy, but he couldn’t talk me out of it. I signed the trail log so the administrators would know where I was, writing down when I expected to return. I signed onto FaceBook and sent my mom a message telling her what I was doing. Then I went to bed at 8PM in my clothes, and set my alarm for 11PM. At 11PM, I met the group in the common room, and we set out.

That was the summer that Michael Jackson died. We blasted Thriller and Beat It and all of his songs in the car as we drove to the trailhead. I finally felt like I belonged for the first time that entire summer. I thought about my grandfather and what I would say to him if I could.

We hiked through the night, making our way gradually up via switchbacks. Despite it being mid to late July, it was cold, and we were all bundled up. But we were all very excited and we were making great progress.

We saw the moon rise over the town. We came to an overlook and could look down on the city, and we could see the town lights twinkling far below us. Above us, the moon and the stars were shining so brightly. It took my breath away as I looked down on all of those people sleeping soundly in their beds far, far below.

We continued hiking up and up in the dark.

The sun rose as we were approaching Boulder Field. We had been hiking for at least maybe 6-7 hours at this point. We were out of the tree line, so it was mostly just dirt and rocks. There were scraggly little plants growing, and some kind of strange flowers here and there. It was a very rugged kind of beauty. When the sun rose, the rays of sunlight looked rosy and orange as they washed across the rocky surface. It was gorgeous, but it made us realize how exposed we were up there.

We stopped as a group when we needed water, snacks, bathroom breaks. If you had to go to the bathroom, you wandered off the trail a ways and did your business. Some of us chatted, some of us just hiked in silence, lost in our own thoughts. I clicked with the leader’s sister. Her name was MiMi. She was older and really down to earth and cool.We kept the same pace, and as we hiked next to each other, we would either talk, or we would just walk beside each other in companionable silence.

By the time we reached Boulder Field, I was exhausted.

Boulder Field was the Grand Central Station of Longs Peak, because everyone had to go to Boulder Field to Keyhole to Long’s Peak. There were a lot of people at Boulder Field, and we saw several tents. Many people would camp at Boulder Field and break their hike up to the summit of Longs Peak into two days so it wasn’t as grueling of a climb. Boulder Field was where we would find the only bathrooms, a couple of Porta-Potties that were just holes with a fences around them that were completely open to the sky. We all used it, though. Better than squatting off the trail.

We took a long break at the base of Boulder Field. I was doing fine with my blood sugar levels and food. I was doing a great job rationing my water. I would not have to worry about running out of food or water, I was sure of that. I ate an Uncrustable and sucked down a Capri Sun, purposefully carb loading.

“This is where it’s going to get really hard,” JR, our leader said.

He wasn’t kidding. JR was a few years older than me. I had gone to college, but he had enlisted in the military straight out of high school and had already done a tour in Iraq. He was a natural leader. We all followed his lead without question.

An hour into climbing up Boulder Field, I was physically spent.

“We’re not even halfway there, Lindsay,” he said. “Push through. We’ll take a long break at the Keyhole.”

None of us were talking much, then. We were all watching our feet as we hopped from boulder to boulder, making our way up to the Keyhole. Almost to the Keyhole, we approached the shelter. It wasn’t what I expected. The shelter was made out of stones and was circular. It looked like a turret on a medieval castle. But apparently this was the place to hole up in and wait for a Ranger to come and rescue you if something went wrong on your hike and you needed help.

We kept going, up and up towards the Keyhole. When we got to the Keyhole, there were numerous people laying down on the rocks up there, resting. Our group sat down and took a long rest. Now that we were on the other side of the mountain, I could see how far we had to climb, and I lost my nerve. We had been hiking for several hours, but I could now see that it was only going to get harder.

“I’m just going to stay here and wait for you guys,” I said to the group. “I’m too tired to keep going.”

“No, you can’t stay here alone,” JR said.

“I’m not alone. There are a lot of people around, and I could always backtrack down to the shelter and wait there if needed.”

“You already made it this far,” another girl said. “Are you seriously going to quit now? You will regret it.”

And that was what made me keep going.

We hiked up and around the mountain. It was very narrow and steep. You looked down to your right and looked straight down the mountain thousands of feet. It was not for the weak or the faint of heart.

Then we came to the first very steep part of the climb, and this part of the mountain was made of scree, which is loose rock and gravel. This was the slowest part of the climb. We had to get on our hands and knees because it was so steep, and there was no traction whatsoever. Even on my hands and knees, I was slipping constantly. At this point of the climb, I knew we were about 3-4 hours away from the summit, and my spirit was completely broken.

The only thing I knew was that I needed to put one foot up and drag my other foot upwards to meet it. My sole focus was on getting up that fucking mountainside. I didn’t think about my grandfather, or my boyfriend, or the mean girls that made fun of me, or how homesick I was, or how bad my grades sucked that previous semester, or that I had lost my will to live that year, because in that moment, I wanted to beat that fucking mountain, and I had to push through. I cried off and on. There were people all around me, but we were all in our own private hells, literally on all fours, scrambling up the mountain.

I think at one point, someone reached down and gave me a hand up during a particularly hard part where my damn gym shoes kept slipping, and I kept sliding down, but I was in the zone. But I really didn’t pay attention to that. I was just so tired, physically. I didn’t feel sorry for myself, I just was crying because I was in physical pain and in way above my head.

I knew that the only way to get out of this situation was to get to the top, and then go back down. Turning around now was pointless. I was extremely focused. I heard nothing but a sort of buzzing sound in my head. I was aware of my surroundings but completely hyper focused on only on what was directly in front of me, which was scree. All I could think about was the next step up. I thought about no one or anything else.

When we got past the scree, I was deliriously happy. This was a strange part of the hike, though. At this point, we were a couple of hours away from the afternoon storms. We were on track to reach the summit around 11AM or maybe noon (I don’t remember), but as we got closer to the top, we began to pass people who were coming down.

This is a strange thing. You are hiking and striving so hard to reach the top, and suddenly, the closer you get to the top, the more there are people who have been there and are now coming back down, passing you on their way back down the mountain. And they cheer you on. They tell you how close you are, and how you just need to keep going.

It just kind of jolts you to realize that you are giving it your all to get to this elusive summit, and yet there are people already up there. Even as you are crying and sweating on all fours to reach the top, they are already up there, eating their ham and cheese sandwiches, taking their stupid point and shoot photos (this was 2009), and passing you on their way down with gleeful smiles.

I remember passing this group who were on their way down, they were wearing shirts that said Sea Level is For Sissies, and I remember feeling almost murderous about those shirts. I was thinking about my Florida roots, and how I would give my right tit to be at sea level right then and there.

We reached The Narrows, where you skirt up and around the mountain on a very narrow rocky mountainside. On one side of you is the mountain. On the other side of you, is nothing but sky. Beneath you 14,000 feet below, is the ground.

The Home Stretch was another steep, hands and knees experience, but it was a smooth rock face, and easy to climb up on all fours. Everyone at this point was happy and excited, because once you got past this, you were at the summit of Longs Peak.

At the summit of Longs Peak, it snowed.

It was the second week of July. It must have been raining far below us, but here, at above 14,000 feet, there were snow flurries.

I cried. It was beautiful.

We spent an hour at the summit. There were a lot of people up there. We all talked to everyone else on the summit. A bunch of people had taken different trails up there, so everyone compared their stories and talked about their routes. We all took pictures with our point and shoot Kodak cameras. It was cold up there. We were all wearing our sunglasses and our winter coats.

When I was up there, I desperately wanted to get back down to the trail head. I wanted to go home. I just had this urge to be home. Home to Arkansas. The Ozarks. I was ready to get back to school, and take on my junior year of college. I wanted to live, to thrive, to show my grandfather that I was the person he thought I was, even though he wasn't alive anymore, I knew he was watching over me from somewhere.

After an hour at the summit, we began our descent back down the way we had come. Everything was going great until we hit that damned scree. Going up had been torturous, but going down ended up doing our group in. JR’s girlfriend slid down the scree and hurt her ankle. I can't remember if she broke it or sprained it, but she couldn't walk on that leg. Another hiker helped us wrap her ankle. Then we all took turns letting her lean on us because she couldn't walk on that leg anymore.

What should have taken us an hour or less took us double or triple that amount of time. By the time we got to the Keyhole, we were 4 hours behind schedule. We had estimated it would take us 12 hours from start to finish, but it had been 12 hours or more by the time we made it to the Keyhole. We still had to get down the Boulder Field., and then down hours of switchbacks back down to the trailhead. .

“She can’t make it down Boulder Field like this,” JR said. “We are going to have to stay here. Lindsay, you and my sister need to keep going and get help. Tell them we will be down at the base of Boulder Field.”

His sister MiMi and I began making our way as fast as we could down Boulder Field. As soon as we got to the normal trail, we began jogging. We jogged down the switchbacks for the next few hours. The entire hike from start to finish was 18 hours for us. We began at 11pm at night and finished the next day at around 5PM the next day. Meanwhile, the rest of our group was still up there at Boulder Field, waiting to get rescued.

Mimi and I jogged down the mountain for hours. I would later lose all of my toenails from the exertion. But I was so ready to get back, and I was scared for my friends who were still stuck up at Boulder Field. I would've done anything. We started the hike at 11pm the night before, and MiMi and I arrived back at the trailhead at around 5PM the next day. I took out my flip phone and called the emergency park ranger number that was posted on the sign at the trailhead. I gave a report of where we had gone, who was still up there, and where they were. While we waited for the rangers to come out to meet us at the trailhead, I called my boyfriend.

“Hey, I need you to come and pick me and my friend up and take us back to the Y.”

“Where have you been?” He said. “I thought you would be back hours ago.”

“Yeah, someone got hurt, and we had to leave everyone up on the mountain.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said.

The Rangers came out first. We again told them everything, what had happened, where we had left our friends, and their names and descriptions. They told us they would handle it from there. My boyfriend came and picked us up. As we drove back to the Y in his XTerra, I just stared out the window at the paved road in wonder. And when I got back to my dorm, the first thing I did was go to the girls’ bathroom and take a hot shower. I had always hated that shower, but that night, it was like being in a spa. And then I went back to my dorm room and fell asleep instantly.

The next day, I waited all day for news of my friends. It was my day off, and I heard nothing. I hung around the main cafeteria waiting for news.

Finally, near the end of the day, the rest of our group arrived back at the Y safe and sound. They stayed in Boulder Field that entire night. There had been some campers who had shared their tents with my friends. Early that morning, the Rangers had come up the mountain with a rescue llama. They put my friend who had broken her ankle on a llama and led her back down the mountain while JR and the other girls followed them down.

That fall, I returned to school with a renewed passion for life. I moved off campus into an apartment that I rented with an international student from Tel Aviv. She was several years older than me, and was studying architecture at the University of Arkansas, which was a very prestigious program. She became one of my best friends and we had a blast together that year.

My boyfriend proposed to me during Thanksgiving break that winter; I had just turned 20. We got married in May that following year. We moved to Madison, WI so he could get his Master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin. And 5 years later, we got divorced.

I returned to my roots; Bradenton, FL.

Sea level is for sissies? Well, I am glad to be back at sea level.

My life took me down some very dark paths over the next ten years after that summer in Colorado. But whenever I feel scared, I close my eyes, and I picture myself at the top of Longs Peak.

I feel the cold, dry air on my cheeks, making my eyes water.

I feel the hand of a stranger pulling me up when I can’t stop sliding back down.

I see the snowflakes floating out of the sky in July, and I feel the cool, wet flakes melt on my dry, wind-chapped face.

I see the clouds beneath me.

I look around me, and see that I am higher than the birds, the trees, the airplanes, and the clouds.

I close my eyes, and I am invincible, yet utterly imperfectly human, once again.