Colorado peak questions, condition requests and other info.
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Presto wrote:Wow ... reading threads like this (and others that I will not mention in specificity) makes me sit back and wonder how the h*ll I ever got the 14ers done back in 1991. We only had the Borneman and Lampert guidebook ... vague and minimal information. No detailed internet blow-by-blow trip reports. No GPS. No photos with little lines drawn showing the route. It's amazing that I survived at all without getting lost, dying of starvation and dehydration, etc. You know, part of the fun and adventure is to find out many of these things yourself. Success and failure. Learning and progressing ... it's all in the development of one's personal evolution and journey in this wonderful world of adventure. Flame away.
No kidding!
"A couple more shots of whiskey,
the women 'round here start looking good"
If you're camping, you're most likely going to need a water source but if you're doing a 14er day hike, why can't you just carry your own water? 2-3 liters is plenty of water to get you through a day of summer hiking. 1 liter of water weighs roughly 2.2 lbs. Even if you could refill somewhere along the route, you'd still carry a liter of water on you. Is saving a few pounds from your pack worth the hassle of dealing with filtering water? I don't think it is.
I do agree that general camping information would be an extremely useful addition to the route or trailhead descriptions, even if the categories were general such as: plenty of camping, limited camping or camping is not allowed in this area.
Presto wrote:Wow ... reading threads like this (and others that I will not mention in specificity) makes me sit back and wonder how the h*ll I ever got the 14ers done back in 1991. We only had the Borneman and Lampert guidebook ... vague and minimal information. No detailed internet blow-by-blow trip reports. No GPS. No photos with little lines drawn showing the route. It's amazing that I survived at all without getting lost, dying of starvation and dehydration, etc. You know, part of the fun and adventure is to find out many of these things yourself. Success and failure. Learning and progressing ... it's all in the development of one's personal evolution and journey in this wonderful world of adventure. Flame away.
Exactly, and the skills involved in learning and figuring some things out for yourself will serve very well if a true emergency does ever arise. It's easy to carry enough water for most routes and I can guarantee that campsites exist along almost every route or close to every TH. Figuring this stuff out yourself isn't that difficult.
I just have to shake my head when I see threads like this.
Presto wrote:Wow ... reading threads like this (and others that I will not mention in specificity) makes me sit back and wonder how the h*ll I ever got the 14ers done back in 1991. We only had the Borneman and Lampert guidebook ... vague and minimal information. No detailed internet blow-by-blow trip reports. No GPS. No photos with little lines drawn showing the route. It's amazing that I survived at all without getting lost, dying of starvation and dehydration, etc. You know, part of the fun and adventure is to find out many of these things yourself. Success and failure. Learning and progressing ... it's all in the development of one's personal evolution and journey in this wonderful world of adventure. Flame away.
Very well said!
Personally, I've gotten lost on the peaks, climbed the wrong one a time or two, bivvied on high angle rock faces and solo on the high peaks in winter a few times, ran out of water on the Maroon Traverse and in other places, had a water filter break twice, lost a stove when a spare canister malfunctioned, had a tent or two get shredded by high winds... the list goes on and on.
Get a grip folks!
If you think you need all the answers to an adventure before you leave your desk... keep your adventures to walking around Wash Park or something as arduous as bar hopping because you're missing the real fun of adventure and living the real life on the peaks and in the back country.
I'm intrigued by your mention of this "Wash Park" hiking area. Is there good camping there? How's the water supply? Cell phone coverage?
Climbing at altitude is like hitting your head against a brick wall — it's great when you stop. -- Chris Darwin
I'm pretty tired. I think I'll go home now. -- Forrest Gump
What????.............and not complain or argue to show now much more knowledgeable and/or superior we are. Blasphemy!!!
I'm sure all that know me on this website will totally agree with your characterization of me being "superior".
Knowledgeable ... yes. And, you know how I gained that knowledge, Mr. Guitarzan? By learning through years of my own failures and successes.
Last edited by Presto on Tue Apr 09, 2013 10:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
As if none of us have ever come back with a cool, quasi-epic story instead of being victim to tragic rockfall, a fatal stumble, a heart attack, an embolism, a lightning strike, a bear attack, collapsing cornice, some psycho with an axe, a falling tree, carbon monoxide, even falling asleep at the wheel getting to a mountain. If you can't accept the fact that sometimes "s**t happens", then you live with the illusion that your epic genius and profound wilderness intelligence has put you in total and complete control of yourself, your partners, and the mountain. How mystified you'll be when "s**t happens" to you! - FM
Guitarzan wrote:
What????.............and not complain or argue to show now much more knowledgeable and/or superior we are. Blasphemy!!!
Advocating map-reading skills and utilizing common sense to find/evaluate water isn't a matter of superiority. Those skills are basic necessities for just about anybody traveling in the wilderness. It's a matter of safety for when events go sour, off-route, or delayed. Somebody twists an ankle. Somebody follows the wrong social trail. Somebody's GPS batteries die. One party member stops for a break and gets lost. It happens. And not just to your own party, but to other parties needing assistance as well.
Criticizing excessive hand-holding in the wilderness doesn't benefit us. We get nothing out of it. It is meant to curtail dangerous situations and an over-reliance on others rather than on oneself and one's abilities: route-finding, route evaluation, water/food management, first aid - those are all highly critical skills everybody should develop and practice, rather than drawing a blank just because their 10 page PDF fails to mention it.
"The road to alpine climbing is pocked and poorly marked, ending at an unexpectedly closed gate 5 miles from the trailhead." - MP user Beckerich
If you think you need all the answers to an adventure before you leave your desk... keep your adventures to walking around Wash Park or something as arduous as bar hopping because you're missing the real fun of adventure and living the real life on the peaks and in the back country.
Sure, but one must balance this sense of adventure with appropriate knowledge and preparation. Isn't that a large part of what this site is for? Getting sick because you didn't know that Matterhorn Creek has high levels of heavy metals is, in my opinion, as unnecessary a part of "the adventure" as getting caught in a blizzard because you didn't check the forecast.
“To be is to do”—Socrates.
“To do is to be”—Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”—Frank Sinatra.
For the record, I camped overnight and did drink from the Matterhorn Creek (spot near the turnoff to Wetterhorn), and as far as I could tell, didn't get sick. The mitigating factors could be that most of the water was likely from the recent snowmelt (it was around Memorial day weekend) and we used a water filter, not steripen. I didn't read about heavy metal content in the water until a few months later.
You know, part of the fun and adventure is to find out many of these things yourself. Success and failure. Learning and progressing ... it's all in the development of one's personal evolution and journey in this wonderful world of adventure. Flame away.
](./images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
By learning through years of my own failures and successes. 
