This was my first 14er, and I am a pretty active outdoorsy person usually biking over a thousand miles a year but this one was in a league of its own and I would call it a very hard challenge for myself. We arrived to the trail about 9:45 a.m. and the temperature was a balmy 37°, but the clouds had broken and the sun was out. We started the hike at 10:00 a.m. and was making a good pace through the willows, over the stream and up to about the second switchback over 12,000 ft is when our slowdown started. We each packed over 100 oz of water which we used up.

The weather was great all day except between 12 and 13,000 ft it was a little breezy so it was stopping to put on more layers when it got chilly and then take them off when it got warmer. I think the highest temperature of the day was probably about 45°. At 13,000 ft it really started getting Rocky and it was slowing our Pace down a lot and more and more snow and ice started to form on the trail especially in the shady parts. When we got up to the small Boulder Field that was packed with fluffy snow and some ice, but the really packed down snow was on the final climb to the summit. It was actually hard to follow the trail because there were footprints all over the place. We did bring spikes but we did not use them. We found that just climbing over the rocks was enough grip for our hiking shoes.

We finally got to the top which took us just over 4 hours. I know it's not fast. Anyway we stayed at the top for about 30 minutes to fuel up with lunch and then we headed down the mountain and that was tough enough. We had our hiking poles to try to take some pressure off our feet but we found that we were stopping every 10-15 minutes to stretch and rest. We made The descent in 3 hours which puts our entire trip at 7 hours and 15 minutes. Maybe with a little training next year we can accomplish this a little bit faster.