Introduction

A trip to the Weminuche is something I'm sure many of us are constantly daydreaming of. It is a wild, rugged, inspiring landscape that fills my thoughts and constantly calls to me. For someone working on finishing the list of Colorado's ranked 13ers, it will require something like 5 week-long trips to finish this area. I think of it like entering Colorado's core, the nexus from which other mountains are made, like these are the prototypical mountains the rest of the state is trying to emulate. A truly special place.

I had talked with a few different folks this year about making a Weminuche trip happen, but weather is a fickle force that often gets in the way of grand plans, and this summer's August proved a particularly rainy one. Not suitable for a week of high-alpine camping and scrambling. Robin and I took our planned week of Wemi shenanigans and turned it into some inspiring dayhikes around Imogene Pass and one of my first real forays into the Gore Range, a worthy alternative to getting stormed off every high-commitment peak on our Wemi wish list. Injuries kept getting Ian down for the count as well, so I played around on my own for a while hoping a trip might come together. Some penciled-in plans with Sarah aligned with what felt like the first high-pressure system since June, so we embarked at the end of August on a weeklong getaway into the vicious, gorgeous, known unknown that is Colorado's Weminuche Wilderness.

Tragedy

It's very difficult to know how much to share here. My friend and climbing partner died a week prior to this trip. His death colored so much of my thoughts and emotions during this trip that it would feel disingenuous to leave out of the story, but it also feels far too intimate to share, and at the same time it would feel immensely disrespectful to only mention and move on; I don't want to focus only on the pretty photos and good feelings. More than half a year later I have many half-formed thoughts swirling in my head about this day and its aftermath. I worry that writing about it at all here will bring discussion I simply don't want about an experience that, honestly, I don't need anyone beyond my loved ones and therapist knowing about. But, yeah, I was party to a fatal climbing accident and watched my friend pass away right in front of me. And I turned right around and went to climb a bunch of mountains in the Weminuche on a 6-day backpack. I feel immensely conflicted about this decision still and am doing my absolute darndest to figure out what to take from the experience, how to access my emotions about the mountains, my relationship with them, and with the people I share time with in them.

I did not know my late friend and climbing partner very well - we had hung out maybe six times or so before our trip to the Williams Mountains with two other friends of ours. But you get to know people remarkably fast when climbing mountains together. Someone once told me that it takes something like 50 hours together to make a real friendship. During one day of peakbagging you can easily rack up 10 hours together, so an impression forms rather quickly. I got to know him as a witty, joyful, caring, and remarkably genuine human being. He had three cats (good man) and every person who knew him was a friend. On the second summit of our day on the Williams group he pulled out four immense veggie wraps he had meticulously crafted the night before, to power us through the rest of a long day. Every second with him in the outdoors he radiated a joy for simply being where he was in that given moment, a joy I'm constantly trying to achieve myself. He was not a peakbagger, just a lover of anything that took him to a new place outside. You can never play the game of "it should have been me", but the three of us who got off the mountain that day wholeheartedly agreed that it should not have been him.

I worry about putting this out there because this trip was sincerely one of the greatest peakbagging trips I've ever been on; a lot of this report is going to consist of me gushing about how beautiful the Weminuche is, how awesome me and Sarah are for getting so much done in a week, and how amazing it feels to move in the mountains at a high level, to feel like a master of the craft. And I'll say all of that when just a week before I watched a human being die right in front of me. I obviously had no idea (still have no idea) how to process such an acutely traumatic experience and going to the mountains felt like it might be more productive than sitting at home. As much as I wanted to viciously hug every loved one I have, as much as I wanted to cry in my parents' arms and apologize over and over for doing these stupid and dangerous hobbies, as much as I wanted to throw in the towel and never climb a mountain again, I wanted to go do my single favorite thing in the world - walk up mountains.

There's a lot of ways I want to justify this disparity - not just to you, the reader, but much more so to myself. But I can't justify this to myself, this isn't something I claim to understand one bit, so I won't try to sit here and justify it you either. I suppose I'm writing this to say that my emotions are incredibly confused, that I don't take this hobby or any of our mortalities lightly, and that these feelings of confusion have been flowing through me ever since the accident, and will continue to for a long time to come.

Partners

Sarah (SasMaster22) is someone I have immense respect for. She sees things she wants to do and she makes them happen, and always in style. Her goals and mine overlap enough that we find time to hike together now and then, and it always leaves me wishing we could climb together more often. She is a patient, determined mountaineer with the kind of level head and driven heart that makes me feel safe, at ease, and encouraged. Our few dayhikes together before this week had me confident we would get along well, but this week of relying on each other has cemented our partnership as one I will come back to time and again - she rules, basically.

She is also no stranger to tragedy, and completely understood if I wanted to call the trip off. I told her I still wanted to make it happen, that it would be better for me to just be out there, and if the mountains ever didn't feel right to me, I could stay at camp and read a book in a beautiful place. I also felt confident that Sarah wouldn't be the kind of partner to push me into anything I felt was uncomfortable, that she would be someone I could trust wholeheartedly for a week for my safety. Our week together proved me right.

And so, with the gentle beckoning of life before me, the haunting of mortality like a weight above me, and the calming presence of a friend beside me, we drove to Beartown.

Tuesday, August 27th: drive to Beartown

Sarah is a good friend to have for another reason: lifted Jeep. I'm a fan of the jack-of-all-trades Subaru (which gets me to almost every trailhead I need it to), but Beartown's one of those no-nonsense roads you bring out the big guns for. I convinced Sarah to try airing down for once, and we got there quickly and comfortably! Silverton has free air at the gas station on the other side of the highway, after all, so you might as well air down to give yourself and your tires a break on the long, long drive back to Beartown. Plenty of big puddles on the way in were reminders of how recently rainy it had been in the Wemi, a first sign of all the wetness and lushness to come. We drove all the way to the trailhead and found a nice flat meadow nearby to set up my tent while Sarah set up her impressive 2-door Jeep sleeping setup. The sunset was a warm welcome, and made me feel that I had made the right decision in coming.

Wednesday, August 28th: hike in via Stormy Gulch, Storm King Peak, Peak Eight

We started an hour before sunrise, and made our way up the trail. This area was new to the both of us, who had only played around on the Animas side of the Wemi before. A faint, rosy sunrise began as we crested Hunchback Pass.

Lots of heading down after that, losing far too much gain for what we had planned for the day. I had done a lot less last-minute research than normal for this trip (for obvious reasons) so wasn't quite sure when to turn into Stormy Gulch or if there would be any kind of trail to follow. We just went for it and started bushwhacking. It was far more than we had thought given what we had read about. A trail wasn't really ever found, and it was surely tedious and wet. The storms this summer seemed to be feeding the plants more than usual. Either way, we popped into the meadow at some point (marshy, and it's almost Septmeber??) and then started our way up towards Lake Silex. Again, my lack of research led us astray and had me believe there would be a good, cairned route through the cliffs to the North of the steep grassy slope. There wasn't, so we did a fair amount of exposed class 3 with heavy packs. No matter, it went, and we wouldn't be doing that again. A route started to present itself as we made our way to the Storm King/Peak Eight saddle. A very talusy route, but a route nonetheless.

Pleased with the distance we had covered so far, and with how the clouds looked, we dropped our packs and ran up Storm King. It was loose most of the way but never too scrambly or exposed, and we summitted in no time. The views were absolutely rewarding, and I was feeling quite good about my first summit since the accident. Sarah was great about checking in with me about my comfort level, which encouraged me to do the same. In no time we were back at our packs at the saddle, ready to grab Peak Eight and head down to camp.

I had heard great things about Peak Eight, a recent LiDAR addition to the ranked 13ers list, and it did not disappoint: the rib to the right of the heinous-looking gully was truly a delight, some rock I could trust in and have fun on. The summit ridge however had me grappling with lots of nerves that I'm not used to. Every rock I looked at, I couldn't tell if it would move or not. Turns out, you don't get to choose if rocks move or not. With however many thousands of steps, holds, moves on a route, there's no way to assess every single one to ensure it's safe. This was so at the front of my mind that I don't recall anything on this ridge but what was five feet ahead of me at any given time. At any point I felt I could cause untold anguish on Sarah, on my family, on a SAR team, on all my friends. A very unwelcome line of thinking to be dealing with in the moment. Sarah was particularly patient with me here, and our stay on the summit was short. This sea of thoughts stayed with me a while, until we were back in grassy meadows on our way to Balsam Lake.

Balsam Lake is a place Sarah has wanted to camp at for a while. I initially had no interest in coming here, as my impression was that it is one of the silliest places to camp in the Wemi to accomplish much in terms of peakbagging. I'd be proven wrong by our route the next day, though, which was inspired by Eric Tolleson's (yaktoleft, whom I had met on the Pieplant group of 13ers earlier this year) trip report where he base camped at Balsam for exactly the route we were eyeing up. This a particularly remote section of the Weminuche, which drains into the Animas but is more easily accessed from the Vallecito side. Our route to get to the lake's outlet (which has some excellent tent pads, unlike the rest of its marshy perimeter) was wet but tolerable, and downright pleasant the next day. Let this be a full endorsement of this campsite and approach to the Heisspitz and friends!

There is a straight-up trail (visible from google maps, and pretty well-cairned) that descends into Balsam Lake's basin from the East. You lose it eventually and have to negotiate some marshes, but are rewarded with the greatest campsite I had ever stayed at up to this point, and we were welcomed with a truly incredible sunset. Fresh water abounds from the lake's outlet, and our evening was peaceful and full of many giggles. It felt like coming home (to a place I'd never been before).

Thursday, August 29th: The Heisspitz, Peak Four, Peak Five, Peak Six, Peak Seven

An early start led us across Tenmile Creek to locate the trail Eric mentions in his trip report. We didn't find a real trail, but definitely some sort of elk path that led us into the hanging valley to our Southwest. Lots of ups and downs, trying to stay mostly dry among the marshy tarns in the deep dark with a sea of stars above. Despite our time here being entirely spent in the dark, I remember the scenery feeling lush and beautifully complex, with a personality entirely unique to the Weminuche. Near sunrise (and something like five mini-basins over) we found ourselves in an impressive boulder field that had some wonderful scrambling (no joke the best scrambling of the day). Then it was a scree fest to get up to the Heisspitz's East ridge. This ridge was quite interesting: the routefinding kept our attention without ever becoming too difficult (cairns abound, but finding where to cross over the ridge is critical once the scrambling begins), and we found ourselves at the summit after not too long. But this summit is one of two, with a frustratingly deep saddle between. On to the next one and back! Incredible views of the Animas group's North face. And then back to the Heisspitz/Four saddle.

Eric mentions Four being unmemorable, but I quite liked it. Ridge led us towards cliffs, at which point we traversed into a huge bouldery gully, which led up to interesting scrambling up to the ridge. Then lots of false summits. Plenty of character. I've yet to experience a boring summit in the Wemi!

Grassy ridge and gullies got us to a saddle between Four and a cliffy subpeak, at which point is was time to sidehill some hella talus (hug the cliffs, it's easy enough) en route to the Four/Five saddle. More sidehilling got us to the base of Five's Southwest face, where we found a good enough gully to get us to the talus to the summit. This was the unremarkable one in my book, but still had plenty of character.

Over to Six is super straightforward compared to anything else so far on this ridge run, but it's not a shallow saddle, and summitting Six felt like quite the accomplishment this late into the day. The views of Jagged from this section of ridge were phenomenal, and a perspective of the mountain you don't often see. Sarah had a hard time believing it was Jagged we were in fact looking at, as she'd climbed it years before and had such vividly memories of it, but not from this angle. You don't get these views of Jagged from the hike up No Name apparently!

Even better views of Jagged and friends lie ahead on the catwalk to the Six/Seven saddle. We got our first glimpse of Leviathan Lake, easily one of the most beautiful lakes this state has to offer. And on the catwalk we got to ponder how we'd get to Seven, as the weather was holding and it'd be way easier to get it now rather than later. Steve and Kyle's report detailed their talus swimming in the basin below the ridge, Eric talked of a fine ledge he had found nearby their route, but both have to deal with a very long and loose gully to get up to Seven's ridge. We knew the ridge between Six and Seven went, but didn't know anything about it. My nerves were high but Sarah felt quite confident about the ridge and opposed to the idea of the basin. I agreed we could go for it as long as she led the way.

The ridge ended up being straightforward enough, and Sarah found a good route without too much backtracking. We found basically no cairns, but started on the ridge's right side until it became obvious to switch over to the left, then some headwall spat us out at easier terrain near a saddle. My experience on this section of ridge was one I had rarely had before: I was never comfortable with the scrambling as there was quite a lot of exposure, cairns weren't found, and we were going into an unknown route close to 12 hours into our day. Most of our day to this point was just crummy class 2 with some class 3, but this was stout class 4 with lots of exposure almost all of the time. My head continued to look at every rock and see it move. I couldn't see any possibility of a route ahead, and then I would see Sarah go up something and beckon me to follow. A voice in my head kept saying "I hate this, I don't want to be here, this is stupid", but another voice told me that this was nothing I couldn't handle, and that Sarah wouldn't do anything dumb. I think Sarah knew how uncomfortable I was, and she took her time finding a route and would tell me to follow only once she was confident in it. In a climbing partnership, you often take turns in the lead routefinding, but both people are usually present. I couldn't be in this moment, but Sarah met me where I was at and held my hand the whole way through.

The rest of the ridge up Seven is about as straightforward as they come. Descending that gully that we opted not to ascend validated our decision making, as it was truly despicable. We got down into the basin, then picked our way down tons of very steep talus toward the lake, almost getting cliffed out on the way but eventually making it. We then willowbashed our way back to camp (no victory laps here), then crashed incredibly hard. We slept in.

This day felt like one for the books, and was a great way to knock out these 5 remote peaks that have no easy access. I know some people do these as an out-and-back from close to Jagged Pass, but with how tedious the entire ridge is, I'm really glad we did it as a loop. 100% would recommend Balsam Lake as a jumping-off point to get these five done in one fell swoop. Sarah and I aren't super fast climbers, though we do climb quite a lot (I climbed 100 peaks this summer) and it took us 13 hours camp-to-camp. Seeing as the day is 99% above treeline, you need a very good weather window, which we were glad to have after such a stormy August.

Friday, August 30th: move camp, Peak Nine

I think this was the only morning we slept in at all, which felt deserved after such a big day. We again awoke to the most beautiful campsite in the world, and enjoyed a leisurely morning making breakfast and packing up. Our egress from Balsam lake was much more straightforward than our ingress - everything seemed drier today and allowed us quick passage. We were soon back above the lake on the use trail back towards Storm King. We danced our way up through meadows to the pass between Peaks Seven and Eight, and tiptoed around a glassy tarn at the top of the pass.

More grassy slopes took us to THE CRACK and our next campsite next to an unnamed lake beneath Peak Nine: an impressive monolith of a mountain. We had a quick snack, set up our tents, and pondered our route up Nine. We had what looked like enough of a weather window and it just made sense to get this one done today. The ridge took us a lot longer than we expected, the weather started to look less than ideal, and we were a little stressed out so we surprisingly didn't take any photos on this peak.

Very steep junk led us to the big beautiful ramp beneath Nine's ridge, which we took to the very very end past even where the cairns ran out (we had done our research at least that much), and then up a nice enough class 3 gully to a low point on the ridge. The ridge was a fair bit more than either of us had anticipated, and the cairns we had enjoyed up to this point almost entirely ran out. We stayed on the ridge's South side longer than we should have, but found a crossover to the North side that gave way to weird, ledgy, ribby terrain up to a false summit. I placed a cairn at the crossover point we found on the way back, but this ridge is complex and the cairn will be hard to spot. With good weather, the routefinding would probably be some good fun. Our weather was in and out enough that we decided it was spooky. This ain't a peak to sneeze at, basically.

There's one or two more difficulties between the false and true summits, and a catwalk takes you to the summit register, finally with views down to Lake Silex.

Descending this ridge went three times as fast as ascending, since we knew the route easily going in reverse. Great peak, though formidable. The wind on the way down smelled like snow.

This afternoon was the most leisure we enjoyed on the entire trip. The weather entirely cleared as soon as we got off the mountain. The views from our campsite next to this unnamed lake was even better than at Balsam Lake: walls of rock all around, the valley dropping out from under us to the East, big views toward the Nebo group, and a crystal clear shallow pool to cool off in. The temperature swing between full sun and light cloud cover felt like more than 20 degrees. At 12,500, this is easily the highest place I've pitched a tent, and it felt like it. A beautiful and extreme place to exist as two small human beings, eating our goldfish and poptarts in the land of Leviathans and Kings.

Saturday, August 31st: Mount Silex, The Guardian, move camp

This day was straightforward except that it required a descent right from the beginning! We followed the valley down a couple hundred feet until contouring into the basin below Silex and Guardian, then romped our way straight up Silex to its summit. I don't remember much about this peak except that it was steep, and pretty loose and annoying. More looseness and annoyingness led us back down Silex's face and towards the Guardian, sort of via a connecting ridge on a ledge system. Guardian was a lot more fun, pretty scrambly and plenty of routefinding. We made the summit without too much hassle, then made a swan dive back into the basin and back up to camp. Sarah loved the Guardian (one of her favorites of the trip), and I found this day pretty lackluster. There's got to be a lowlight of the trip at some point, I suppose. The good memories of this day were checking in with loved ones from the summits, and singing Owl City songs on the way back to camp.

We tore down camp quick enough and set off on the haul over to our next camp at Leviathan Lake. We had done plenty of pondering on whether or not it made sense to move camp or just take a longer dayhike the next day, and what the best egress back to Beartown would be. We chose to camp at Leviathan Lake and head down from there, which in hindsight was not the move, but allowed us to camp at, yet again, the coolest place I've ever camped. We shlepped up and over a ridge or two and maybe found some use trails to get us towards Leviathan Lake, passing under the walls that are Seven and Six, and an odd little rock shelter along the way. Steep terrain led us down to the Western end of the lake, where we found two usable tent pads right at some krummholz on an outcropping.

It was a colder evening, with a decent amount of wind, but the views before bed were again spectacular. Bats came out before bed and danced above the lake. There was a weird mossy waterfall area just above camp. We stared at the truly vertical face of Leviathan, the summit more close to us horizontally than vertically, and pondered how such a campsite could even exist and why so few people have ever been here. And how lucky we were.

Sunday, September 1st: Leviathan Peak, Vallecito Mountain, Jagged Mountain, move camp

The best day. A true victory lap. The greatest I've felt in the mountains in a while, just loving this world and this amazing place I get to live in.

Our plan for the day was to grab Leviathan and then Vallecito, and then head back to camp and pack out as far as we reasonably could. We grinded our way up a sea of talus to the Six/Leviathan saddle, then enjoyed a stellar blocky then slabby ridge to Leviathan's summit, an eagle's nest right above our campsite. Along our climb we noticed a figure standing next to a tent down in the basin, the first human being we had seen in three days. Seeing as it was Labor Day weekend and the weather was perfect, we anticipated seeing plenty of people up here, but so far just the one guy.

The ridge direct towards Vallecito had what seemed to be a huge exposed downclimb right off the bat, so we backtracked a ways before finding a slab we could use to cut across Leviathan's South face. This worked super well and soon we were romping our way to the saddle and then up Vallecito's blocky talus ridge. The summit came in no time at all.

From the summit of Vallecito, Jagged looked so close, and even though it wasn't anywhere in the plan, there seemed no reason not to just go for it. I had spent the last few days waffling on it every time we discussed our itinerary. It wasn't in the plan, and even though it was right there and it seemed like we would have the time for it, we didn't bring approach shoes, a rope, none of the specialized gear people typically bring for peaks as formidable as Jagged. I thought that when the time came for Jagged I would absolutely want a rope for the way down, which seems to be the style most people climb it in. The conclusion I kept coming to was that just a week prior I had someone die in my arms, on a mountain, and that climbing my first class 5 13er a week after such a brutal reminder of the risks of this hobby would be an unforgivable act of hubris. And yet, this week had been day after day of the most beautiful scenery, the most beautiful campsites, it felt like the mountains had invited me to in, and that I was being granted passage. Everything about this trip felt right, my partner level-headed and supportive, and my abilities and risk assessment in tune with what the mountains were saying. So in the moment, on this calm morning standing atop a beautiful massive hunk of rock, I decided it would be great to go climb another massive hunk of rock.

Sarah had climbed Jagged before, she says it's one of her favorite 13ers, an accolade quite a few Colorado mountaineers agree on. She assured me that I was entirely skilled enough to do it, and that we'd figure out the routefinding together. It felt right, and so we went for it.

We met the guy down in the basin having a chat with a mountain goat, turns out he was a guide waiting for his clients to show up. He was great vibes, and was stoked on our attitude to just go for it on such a gorgeous day. We found our way up onto the most beautifully textured slabs (like the roughest sandpaper you've ever seen, your shoes could not let go if they tried) while Sarah assured me this was only the beginning of the fun. We eventually got to Crux 1, some tougher slabs which honestly came and went with ease. I was less of a fan of the exposed grassy ledges on the way to Crux 2, and I assured Sarah in this moment that although I was feeling okay about the up, the down would definitely be slow going.

Crux 2 was a blast, and I stemmed up it like I was in a slot canyon. Just super fun.

Crux 3 felt exposed, and careful foot placement was required, but then you're onto the other side of the mountain. Lots of exposure, like so much. But this mountain never once made me feel like any rocks wanted to move, so I was still having a great great time even if I was moving slow.

The final chimney to the summit was, again, so much fun, and as someone who's gotten into canyoneering a bit in the last couple years, it felt super secure and easy to just stem my way up the thing. In no time, we were on the summit of a peak I had thought would be incredibly daunting, but instead felt like a breeze. It sort of felt like a gift from the heavens, that such a beautiful day would end our trip, that this mountain welcomed us with open arms, and that I got to be up here with such a fantastic climbing partner.

I don't know how to explain it, but downclimbing this peak felt easier than upclimbing most of the time. The really exposed sections were still quite heady, but since all of the cruxes are so short, it never felt too tough and at no point did I wish we had brought a rope. In no time at all we were on the dirt below crux 1 and making our way back across the basin. We picked up game/climber's trails to get back to the Six/Leviathan saddle, and waved one last goodbye to our favorite fella in the basin (he waved back!). We then stumbled down the sea of talus back to camp, riding the high of such an unexpectedly fantastic morning.

On the way back to camp, we encountered a father and son hauling packs up the talus while we were descending, seemingly on their way to Jagged. Indeed they were, and they had come up Leviathan Creek - they had no good things to say about it, yippee! But we didn't really trust what they had to say as it seemed they seemed a bit in over their heads. We wished them luck and told them to tell their guide hello for us, and we carried on.

Now, I have a friend who convinced me to try out the Leviathan Creek descent by describing it thusly: "straightforward and pleasant". I don't know what has happened since she went up and down this drainage, but my and Sarah's experience was nothing of the sort. We found hardly any trail, and the vegetation was so thick and tall everywhere we went. Our only theory is that it was abnormally rainy this summer, which may have led to the area being abnormally lush, but it's hard to say. Basically, this drainage is navigable, but not ideal. It would definitely work well, but I'd do it different next time: Zooming around on Google Maps satellite seems to reveal some game trails that descend a drainage due South of Mount Silex, which although steep, seems to intersect the meadow right where we ended up finding a usable trail. In hindsight, I would have had us stay at our camp at the unnamed lake and use this descent instead of the long meandering bushwhack that we ended up putting ourselves through. I had intended on doing a bit more research the days leading up to this trip, but was obviously busy with much more pressing matters, so this was a lot more winging it than I'm used to. It all worked out though, just with a little more cursing I suppose.

First, just getting to the Eastern end of the lake proved to be quite the task, with tons of dense vegetation blocking passage and complex cliffy terrain forcing us to continually reroute. Once we reached the lake's outlet, the terrain gives out to a steep slope with absolutely no semblance of a path, so we just picked our way down and figured it out. We found our way into a glade on the north side of the creek, following mostly flat terrain for a while until we were able to drop down in a wooded bowl. We found a fire ring here but never any semblance of a trail. It started raining and hailing, which decreased our mood a bit. We found a dead deer in the woods, which was a first - no sign of a fight between it and a predator, just a motionless animal with a few flies circling it. Weird.

Woods woods and more woods gave way to sporadic meadows and we continued to hope for a trail, until we eventually actually found one! It was bad and hard to follow at first, but once we followed it into the woods it became quite well-defined, and was even hewn into a talus field at one point, suggesting that it was at one point a constructed, human-made trail. Of course we lost it once we got through the trees and down to a meadow area (turned into a marsh, of course, it was so wet and cold ughh) just above Vallecito Creek, and we were so fed up with how cold and wet we were that we made no attempt to re-find the trail, and just pushed our way to the creek and crossed it with our shoes on. We found the Vallecito trail (our first real trail in five days!) and wandered our way in a fugue state towards Rock Creek, where we set up camp near the trail junction. The storm cleared a bit on this segment, which gave us views of snow-covered mountains above us. We were really ending our trip at the perfect time, it seemed. Camp was cold and wet, as night was falling and all our gear was soaked, but we finally broke open the freeze-dried peach cobbler Sarah had been carrying around up to this point, which definitely raised our spirits. We were ready to be out of the wilderness and sleeping in real beds.

Monday, September 2nd: hike out

We slept in a bit, just past sunrise, but where we camped the sun wouldn't hit us for a few hours so we just packed up and started hiking, shoes and gear still soaked. We saw a group of five hiking the other direction, doubling the amount of people we'd seen on our six-day journey. Once we got to a sunny rest spot we enjoyed warming up our bodies and our spirits. The hike up and over Hunchback Pass from the Vallecito trail really is as bad as they say: lots of uphill at the very end of the trip is just a little bit demoralizing. Sarah and I had played with the idea of grabbing Hunchback Mountain on our way out, but we couldn't quite get stoked for it after so much uphill with our packs, and with the car being so so close. I'll only have to come back to Beartown probably like three more times, so not too much lost there.

We arrived back at the Jeep and dropped down in a huff, ripped off our shoes, and dug into the victory snacks that were waiting for us. We finished with 13 13ers in six days, having wiped out every peak we had planned on, plus one more, and we did it in relative comfort and style. The drive out to Silverton took quite a while on such a long bumpy road, but soon enough we were back on pavement, aired up in town (free air at the WhistleStop gas station!), and drove back to Sarah's in Montrose. With all the time I've spent staring at maps and planning out logistics for these remote peaks, it was wild to be back at someone's home so quickly, and I pondered how I might make a move out to the Western Slope in the next couple years. We had our victory feast of Indian food, and slept so terrifically soundly, satisfied from a week well-spent.

Epilogue

On the drive home, I put on some music. Just turned on the first thing that came to mind, an album that's been in my road trip rotation for a few years. For the first time ever, it made me cry. Every word had entirely new meaning to it, every ounce of the music was charged with an energy I haven't normally found. I cried for a couple of hours on my drive back to Denver. It turns out I hadn't actually been alone since the accident; I was with my climbing partners the day of, then with his loved ones in the days right after, then on the phone with lots of family and friends, then on this trip with Sarah. But now, driving home, I was well and truly alone with myself, and some fraction of the tidal wave of emotion I had been putting away the last week came down on me at once.

It felt great to be crying. I think up to this point in the summer, I had been experiencing some sort of low-level depression. Though I was climbing mountains full-time this summer, spending a lot of time climbing with friends, going up tons of new peaks, it just wasn't the fulfilling and inspiring experience I wanted or needed it to be. The accident seemed to shock my system in a way that everything was full of color again; emotions (good and bad) were accessible again, the sky was a deeper blue, my existence in the world seemed to have more weight. Sure, the Weminuche is the best Colorado has to offer even when the weather sucks (see my last trip report), but this felt like an entire week of one of those moments. You know, when the curtain is pulled back on the fabric of reality and the grandiose truth of all existence and the face of God reveals itself to you? Those moments we obsessive mountain climbers are constantly chasing? Yeah, one of those. And I got to live in it for those six days. And it was marvelous, truly incredible. How I want to live every second of every day.

And I now also get to experience the shame of claiming that the best week of my life was in some way caused by the death of a friend, someone with his whole life ahead of him, someone who deserved so much more, someone who was so much more in tune with that joy that I can only find in such fleeting moments. Maybe it is more true to his memory to go out and have that joy, but it feels so cosmically unfair that I could access that over this trip and he could not, and that he never will again.

On our long walk back to our cars on the evening of the accident, one of my climbing partners gave a bit of advice that has stuck with me: "both things can be true". I can feel immense grief for such a beautiful person, and I can feel immense love for the mountains that killed him. I can feel terror and revulsion over what the mountains can do to us, and joy and desire for what they can do for us. Both things can be true. I'm trying to live in that. It makes no sense at all to me, it can leave me feeling disgusted with myself. And the more I talk with others who have been through this kind of thing, it seems there's no sense at all to be found, that the grief, love, terror, joy, disgust, and much more will all be there, often all at once.

There's no moral of the story, no ending bit of advice that makes it all okay, no wisdom I've achieved, no thesis statement. This is not some big learning experience that has made me a better person. This is just something that happened. Just a terrible thing to have happened to a wonderful person, and a traumatic day for me and my friends to have lived through. And it's something I get to take with me now, every time I go to the mountains.

This is my story of a week spent in the mountains. Thank you for reading.