Jessica Tyler
Though I am Colorado born and raised, prior to entering my senior year of high school I had never hiked a fourteener, and after my experience with my first one I doubt I will hike a second.

I feel like this is a rite of passage living in Colorado, and everyone has to hike at least one at some point in their time here. So, glad I got that over with.

Going into the hike I wasn’t too intimidated. At the age of eleven I participated in my first triathlon, when I was fourteen I ran a half marathon, and for twelve years I have played ice hockey. However, my history of athleticism made no difference as I hiked up Mt. Elbert.

My family, our dog, and I arrived at the base of the 14,440 foot mountain at 8:30am August 24^th. Fifteen steps into the hike, I started to feel my legs burn and thought, “Oh this will be fun.” But I persevered. Twenty minutes later, I could no longer stand the pain so I decided to use my poles as an excuse. “Mom it’s too hard to carry these poles, can you attach them to my backpack?” Success, we stopped for a break. However, using my poles as an excuse was a terrible idea, because for the next hour I ran into approximately 100 trees. My poles would stick out, hit the branches, and then the branch would smack me in the head. Nearly concussed from the pine forest, we started up the smaller “mountain” (really a hill, but from my perspective seemed like a mountain) to the ridge.

At the beginning, I was fine, just a little dizzy from lack of oxygen and my progressing headache. However, soon the hill turned into an 85-degree incline and my body began to quit. Somehow I successfully made it to the end of the hill and we finally stopped for a granola bar.

Hot from exhaustion and scaling the side of the mountain, I stripped a layer, but left my super cute trendy rain paints on, thank God. We started on the ridge and immediately the wind blew at 100000 miles an hour, chilling the air from 45 degrees to around 23 degrees (yes I was seriously hiking through 23-degree weather). The sweat surrounding my body froze, and I thought I would turn into a popsicle, be blown off the mountain and that was the end. But fortunately, I continued to hike and my body was blown nowhere.

Concerned, I let my mom in on my feelings; “Mom I have a headache, I can’t see, my legs are about to collapse, and I’ve never been so cold in my life.” Reassuringly she said, “Don’t worry we only have around 30 minutes.”

Funny because we really had an hour and 30 minutes. But potato patato, right?

With every doubt in my mind I finally made it to the top (disclaimer: the worst part wasn’t over). At the top, a group of hikers were having a celebration because Mt. Elbert was their last fourteener in Colorado, and it was a fun party I was able to experience for all of ten minutes while my family and I shivered eating our lunch.

Then we began the descent down…

After walking through a boulder field, where my Achilles tendon felt as though it was being ripped from my heal with every step, my parents decided that we should take a “short cut,” going off the trail. With no idea what lay in store, I agreed. We hiked down an incline of around way too steep for me-degrees, and then entered a scree field. It was during this portion that I was so genuinely scared for my life, and my dogs, that my legs were hardly able to function.

“Jess, you can do it, just pretend you’re skiing,” my father said so encouragingly. “Yeah, skiing through a bunch of rocks which could tumble on my head at any moment, right. I’ll try that,” I contemplated yelling back, but refrained. After being caught in a rock avalanche and having to grab a secure rock for my life after “skiing,” I decided I would slowly make my way down. So, after an hour of intense fear and trauma, I made it to the grass.

Then we started to look for the trail, which we had so stupidly decided to leave. While making our way back, my dad and sister started to joke about how slowly I made my way down the mountain, and that’s when my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (from the scree field) kicked in and I started bawling. My mom hugged me, I yelled at my father and sister, took some deep breaths through the tears, and then I was fine. We continued on, though I didn’t really speak for the next two hours.

Finally we made our way back to the trail. My knees were throbbing, my Achilles tendon was burning, my stomach felt nauseous, my vision was still blurred, and my right calf was bruised from the boulder than came crashing into my as I was making my way down the scree field. However, we made it to the car seven and a half hours later, still living, luckily.

My whole family including my dog, whom had an amputated toe and 11 stitches in his side from fifteen days earlier, summated the highest mountain in Colorado. Though it was quite the experience and I will never hike Mt. Elbert again, I do still believe all Coloradoans should have the 14’er experience at some point in their life. It really can be life changing, if even it makes you reassess your athletic and mental capabilities!

(In my defense we did hike the hardest trail on Mt. Elbert)