I already knew Tabeguache was going to be...interesting from the day I returned from its next-door neighbor Shavano's summit last October. Having vowed that I was never going to set foot on that granitic hell-beast ever again, I began researching Tab's back-door route from the Jennings Creek TH as soon as I got back to Denver.

What I saw made me rue the case of literal-leading-to-metaphorical cold feet that I'd developed on Shav. A rutted-out road? Bushwhacking? A section of four-points-of-contact that looked a little rougher than the mere Class 2 that had been promised?

Nevertheless, when I started exchanging messages with Robert, a fellow participant of the amazingly-to-my-eyes popular "Slow Hikers Unite!" thread, and he expressed interest in doing Tabeguache, hold the Shavano, I perked up. I'd most likely have sucked it up and gone via the standard double-whammy route if I'd had to tackle Tab solo, but with someone around to call for help in case I got into a not-atypical amount of trouble, this option suddenly seemed feasible.

Feasible or not, I could've picked better personal conditions under which to tackle this monster. I'd spent the previous three weeks in the Eastern Time Zone, most of them at sea level, though I did put in multiple days on a bike trail whose high point was a whopping 827 feet. But biking uses different muscles from hiking, and I had an abundance of oxygen the whole time I was pedaling. I'd only returned to Denver two days before taking on Tab.

I nevertheless don't think I can entirely fault my precipitous re-entry to high-altitude hiking for the...interesting times my hiking partner and I had. We knew that Point 13,900 was a false summit. We did not know until we reached the top of it that the, uh, point after it was a false summit as well.

We also did not know that the final approach to the real summit contained some scrambling that would later make me compare it to Longs Peak in such a way that I would call the Class 3 fourteener a relative cakewalk, because at least most of the portions of the latter on which you have to cling to a rock face for dear life are on *solid* rock, and even the Trough's gorge of potential rockslide material is packed down well enough that careful foot (and hand) placement can avoid undue danger. Such could not be said for the often-literal crawling that Tab's highest "screw you" to weary travelers necessitated.

Part of the issue with that last pitch was that my penchant for losing trails is apparently infectious; the path we had been following petered out where it overlooked an especially ugly gash of a gully. We did manage to pick our way around a precarious series of rocks I would deem at least a Difficult Class 2, though he would later admit that the sight of it had stopped him cold at first, an assertion with which I immediately agreed. I'd also have to say that the "real" route, which we took on the way down, was not, on the whole, that much less perilous.At least the view was nice.

The fun wasn't over even after we got back to the safer territory of the false summit and beyond. The NWS' prediction of gusts up to 35 mph turned out to be a major underestimate, as we discovered while picking our way down Pt. 13,900's sloppy scree slopes; one particularly vicious gust pushed me over while I was attempting to navigate from one unforgiving rock to the next, and I came thisclose to navigating the lower of the two with my face. Apparently I looked like I was in sufficient danger that Robert came running back up that godawful slope (he wasn't that far below me, but allow me to emphasize just how steep and rocky that pitch was to highlight what an effort this must've entailed) to help me back on my feet!

The rest of the return trip following that was just...long. Both of us expressed surprise at how much steep downhill we had left after we finally finished Pt. 13,900's scree slopes - we both thought we recalled that the uphill portion between there and the saddle was filled with grassy, gentle rollers of ups and downs, not more fodder for the later griping about my knees and feet that would comprise 90% of later conversations.

Still, after one last battle with a steep track of loose dirt and gravel off the saddle, the rest of the route lacked technical difficulty, though both of us were stunned at how long it took us to walk down the road from the TH to our parking space, selected partially because the road was, indeed, so rutted-out that we figured it would take about as long to drive as to walk the full length of it, and also because, in a fit of brilliance, Yours Truly had last fueled up in Nebraska and didn't want to risk being That Person. You know, the one who gets stuck in the middle of a single-lane road after the car runs out of fumes and then never lives down the 14ers.com infamy.

But it wasn't all bad, of course. I have my second-to-last Sawatch fourteener checked off the list, the reward for the bushwhacking section of the trail was a bevy of columbines in full bloom, and now I know that there is a fellow hiker out there who is tolerant of both my glacial hiking pace as well as my often grim sense of humor.

I'm never doing this one again. But I am glad I did it once.