The Sawatch Cowpoke

I tried to look past my headlamp in the very-early morning darkness, and in all honesty I couldn’t. Matt, Scott, and I had met in a parking lot only less than an hour before, three men on a mission to go to one of the most remote peaks in all of Rocky Mountain National Park. By the end of today, with a little luck and a whole lot of skill and toughness, we would summit Hayden Spire. Laying on a ridgeline extending from Sprague Peak and off of the western side of Stones Mountain lays a massive crater-like formation of rock and cliffside. Along that cliffside sits a series of huge spires above Hayden Lake, one of many year-round pockets of glaciated lake that sits quiet among the high peaks in the park. Hayden Spire is easily seen from Trail-Ridge Road, and the Forest Canyon Overlook, but never easily reached by any sort of insertion point into the park. On this particular morning, we had chosen to take the overland approach route to the spire from the Bear Lake Trailhead. This ...

  In all honesty I do not know why his goofy face crossed my mind the other day but it did. Being here in the Rockies among the high peaks and the wide open and deep wilderness, I can’t help but think that he would love to run and play here, and probably trip over something. I was young when we first got him. My first best friend. Tanner was a first-generation Goldendoodle, the cross between a male Golden Retriever and a poodle. His hair was a dark ginger as a puppy, with a slight wave as it spread over the hunches of his shoulders and onto his back. His hair was never curly, but it was never really straight either. As he grew older into adulthood, his hair took a lighter hue of yellow, matching the same colors as a purebred adult Golden Retriever male. He was the best dog that I had ever had. He was the best dog that I had ever met either, even to this day. There are some days when I honestly really do wonder if he truly had the soul of a dog at all, or if he was something a ...

My legs shivered. The room was dark. I woke up to my phone alarm halfway through it’s first crescendo. I shuffled slightly in my bed and illuminated the time on my watch. Three minutes past when my alarm was set for. Goodness was I tired. I got out of bed slowly and made my way to the bathroom as I shook both of my roomates, Isaac and Isaac, awake. Today we were going to conquer giants. By about 1:15AM we were out the door and in Isaac’s car on the way to the trailhead. To normal people, the absurdly early time that we had woken up at seemed crazy. To anyone meaning to summit the high peaks of northern Colorado without being caught in a thunderstorm, or something worse, this was a normal, run of the mill wake up call. We had planned this peakbagging mission for a week before, collecting as much beta (information) as we could to pick the best route for what we wanted to do. We had made it our goal to summit both Mt. Meeker (13,911’) and Long’s Peak (14,259’) through a lesser-travell...

“WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE HERE?” was typed across the screen in front of me in bold at the top of the list that I was compiling. I had been ignoring the question for a long while now as it seemed. Everytime my eyes rose to read the heading that I had selected, I felt just that much more sick in the pit of my stomach. The words almost made me shiver. I read over slowly the three main points that I had come up with. The first, “ To develop and sustain an intentional and life-bringing relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through fellowship with others and stewardship of the environment around me.” I nodded gently in approval. The second, “To develop myself to be the best mountain athlete that I can be in preparation for greater goals and tasks than these through the repeated training and practice of running, cycling, climbing, and mountaineering.” I continued to quietly agree. The last point, “To complete my education regarding wilderness medicine, outdoor leadership and gu...

If I get a little lost don’t worry about me. Just remind me why I do all of this. Shake my spirit slightly and direct my vision to the western setting sky. If I lose myself a little out there, don’t cry for me. The tears aren’t worth the joy that’s being lived. Not very many have been able to hold me down, and I know that few in the future will be able to either. Chances are, If I get lost out there, I planned it anyways. Look to the mountains above, take in their massive beauty. See in detail the rugged crags of their headwalls, the rocky outcroppings from which only the angels and the birds know the view. I mean to be there. It is where I belong. It is where I feel whole. My mind wanders there often. Every morning that I wake, my ambition swells with another day to go out there. One would be hard-pressed to find something that can hold me back for too long. The determination of a man unfettered, the wild stubbornness of a grizzled mountain goat. The ferocity of a pit-vipe...

“You alright!?” I heard a thud and a few timid footsteps short after on the quaint ridgeline above me. “We’re chilling,” AJ announced out loud enough for me to hear over the insulation of the desert bush between us. I looked up to the sky. Shortly after 2:45PM and the sun was still beaming down on us from high in the atmosphere. It was early March in southern Arizona, but that never guaranteed that it wasn’t hot. We were dead-set in the northeast corner of the eastern section of the park, making our way down from the infamous “Finger Rock” formation near Wasson Peak. This place had a thing or two to leave me with before it’d let me leave with some pictures and a good tale to tell. Behind the red-washed and pink sunset pictures of high-desert hills teeming with the quintessential large Saguaro cacti, sprawls one of the most underrated wilderness areas in the American southwest. Encircling the northeast, east, and western sides of Tucson, Arizona, lies the very large expanse of Sagu...