In Colorado many people develop their own "peak lists": a list of mountains they plan to summit. For some it is the "Colorado 14-ers", 53 mountains of at least 14,000' elevation. For others it could be the high point in each county, including both Rocky Mountains and plains counties. For those wanting extra challenge it could be the 14-ers in winter, or the 14-ers solo, or both solo and winter. Not necessarily recommended.
My Peak List for 2019 has 7 to 9 peaks, in ascending elevation starting just above our 5,862' elevation for Paonia proper, all of which I can see from my tiny house on Pitkin Mesa. Thus I will climb a 6er, a 7er, an 8er, a 9er, a 10er, an 11er, a 12er, and possibly a 13er and even a 14er if those last two are determined to be visible from my house.
My intention is to undertake each summit bid as a pilgrimage, in collaboration with place, people, and the past. See my backstory below for more about that. My current intention in working with people is a practice in partnership, balancing authenticity, transparency, and loving-kindness. That's practice, not perfection! I am looking for climbing partners for all remaining peaks. Are you up for an adventure?
The list is subject to change at any time, but as far as I can tell, my intended climbs are to the following peaks:
Backstory:
Some time after moving to Colorado, in the darker hours of winter, I became obsessed with mountaineering stories. On a visit to Utah, my sweetie and I happened to watch a movie on Netflix about mountains. It had gorgeous footage, but turned out disappointingly short on story line. It led me to remember Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air, which I had always wanted to read. We looked and looked, thinking there must be a movie version out there, but to no avail. The WWOOFer staying there recommended the movieTouching the Void, so we watched that. It awakened a certain ethereal hunger in me. As grisly and grueling as the story was, I wanted to be in my imagination in that environment: in the pristine, rock-and-icy world above tree line. There was something hauntingly beautiful and undeniably refreshing about it. I think there was a lot about the story itself as well that attracted me, a story that took us to the edge of survival, to a severe test of friendship, and to the possible discovery of what it means to be human. I wanted more.
Back home in Colorado I descended on Paonia’s public library. I started out with the idea of finally reading Into Thin Air. As it had to be ordered from another library, I decided to go cruise the shelf for something to read while I waited. The call number 796.52(2) includes titles from Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills, the reputed mountaineering bible, to local hiking and climbing guides, to mountaineering biographies and essays, to disaster stories, including Touching the Void in book form. I picked out Denali’s Howl: the Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America’s Wildest Peak, about a 1967 expedition that cost 7 young men their lives. “What happened up there?” became the compelling question at the center of all the stories I wanted to read. In each, the central character was always the mountain. In my imagination Denali loomed in all its 18,000’ glory, taller from apparent base to summit than any other mountain above sea level. I look out at the apparent nearly 6,000’ of Mt Lamborn and imagine two more stacked on top. Huge. Literally awesome.
My fascination took me to such exotic locales as the Andes, the Himalayas, Antarctica, and back home again to the Colorado Rockies. While I was at it I looked up 127 Hours, the movie version of Aron Ralston’s ordeal in a slot canyon in Southern Utah. It was another story I had always wanted to see, but I didn’t feel up for it at the time, and maybe I couldn’t find anyone to go see the movie with me. The library had it. I watched it alone. Then I went back and got the book and read it. Because I waited so long, I had now lived in Southern Utah and was familiar with the landscape he described. And now I live in Western Colorado near where he was living at the time. I hadn’t known how well the story would fit into my studies, but at the time of his accident, Aron had already climbed all of the Colorado 14ers (mountains above 14,000’ elevation) and was working on his next personal “peak list”, namely all the 14ers again, solo in winter.
I first became intimate with the concept of a “peak list” reading Colorado 14er Disasters, realizing there is a whole subculture of people who set out to climb all the 14ers in Colorado. A peak list is, most simply, a list of mountains to be climbed. It’s a sort of challenge issued to oneself according to one’s personal aims of achievement using mountains as concrete goals or mileposts. It’s an intention set to “get out there and do something” where the something is definable. After all, we can know when we come to the top of a mountain. Although for those whose peak list entails the highest point of land in a given area, such as each county in Colorado (called highpointing), it may be less obvious in some of the plains counties. The “why” of it is a ponderous and elusive question, as belied by George Mallory’s famous, off-the-cuff response, “Because it’s there.”
Colorado 14er Disasters talks about the role of technology in revolutionizing recent mountaineering history, for example referencing websites where 14er enthusiasts can network, access advice, weather, and other information. The book also discusses the role the relative ease of going out into the mountains plays in the occurrence of climbing accidents. Like many areas of recent human history, modern times have brought an unprecedented increasing rate of change to our relationship with mountains. To put ourselves physically at the top of not only one, but many mountains, must seem a very strange notion to the majority of our ancestors, were they to know about it. If in Mallory’s time it was a matter of national pride, this race to the top of the world was still seen as crazy by indigenous onlookers. How much of the mindset of the age of conquest is still with us, as now more and more people have stood atop Mt. Everest, and K2, and the Seven Summits, and the mountains and routes and added degrees of difficulty that have yet to be attempted or attained?
I don’t know.
What I do know is I want to participate. There is something in my human soul that draws me toward the summit. I look across the valley to Mt. Lamborn, and I wonder. What would I feel as I stood up there looking down? What would I see in the many directions viewed from that perspective? What would I learn about myself on the difficult journey up? How would I be different when I came back down?
I wish to participate in a respectful and conscious way, as much as possible. I endeavor to undertake this Peak List as an act of Sacred Relationship, complete with notions of collaboration and consent. I aim to approach each mountain as a being, asking and listening for what it may ask of me. I intend to follow through with my Peak List during the year of 2019, as an experiential art project and pilgrimage, in collaboration with Place, as detailed above; with People, as each peak is to be attempted as a duo-climb with one other person in a practice of partnership, with a new climbing partner for each summit bid; and with the Past, as we interact necessarily with our conceptual point on the timeline of history - both human and geologic. As I imagine our ancestors may have brought acceptable offerings to places of meaning to them, I hold this intention for myself as it feels appropriate.
*The unnamed peak is just north of the Chain Mountains in the West Elks. I call it Mystery Peak.
My Peak List for 2019 has 7 to 9 peaks, in ascending elevation starting just above our 5,862' elevation for Paonia proper, all of which I can see from my tiny house on Pitkin Mesa. Thus I will climb a 6er, a 7er, an 8er, a 9er, a 10er, an 11er, a 12er, and possibly a 13er and even a 14er if those last two are determined to be visible from my house.
My intention is to undertake each summit bid as a pilgrimage, in collaboration with place, people, and the past. See my backstory below for more about that. My current intention in working with people is a practice in partnership, balancing authenticity, transparency, and loving-kindness. That's practice, not perfection! I am looking for climbing partners for all remaining peaks. Are you up for an adventure?
The list is subject to change at any time, but as far as I can tell, my intended climbs are to the following peaks:
- Cedar Hill (AKA “P” Hill) 6,171’ Completed!
- Elephant Hill 7,056’ Completed!
- Jumbo Mountain 8,260’ Completed!
- Unnamed Peak* 9,938’ Completed!
- Landsend Peak 10,806’
- Mt. Lamborn 11,396’
- East Beckwith Mountain 12,432’
- Mt. Owen? 13,058’ (I’m not sure if I can see it from here.)
- 14er unknown
Backstory:
Some time after moving to Colorado, in the darker hours of winter, I became obsessed with mountaineering stories. On a visit to Utah, my sweetie and I happened to watch a movie on Netflix about mountains. It had gorgeous footage, but turned out disappointingly short on story line. It led me to remember Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air, which I had always wanted to read. We looked and looked, thinking there must be a movie version out there, but to no avail. The WWOOFer staying there recommended the movieTouching the Void, so we watched that. It awakened a certain ethereal hunger in me. As grisly and grueling as the story was, I wanted to be in my imagination in that environment: in the pristine, rock-and-icy world above tree line. There was something hauntingly beautiful and undeniably refreshing about it. I think there was a lot about the story itself as well that attracted me, a story that took us to the edge of survival, to a severe test of friendship, and to the possible discovery of what it means to be human. I wanted more.
Back home in Colorado I descended on Paonia’s public library. I started out with the idea of finally reading Into Thin Air. As it had to be ordered from another library, I decided to go cruise the shelf for something to read while I waited. The call number 796.52(2) includes titles from Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills, the reputed mountaineering bible, to local hiking and climbing guides, to mountaineering biographies and essays, to disaster stories, including Touching the Void in book form. I picked out Denali’s Howl: the Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America’s Wildest Peak, about a 1967 expedition that cost 7 young men their lives. “What happened up there?” became the compelling question at the center of all the stories I wanted to read. In each, the central character was always the mountain. In my imagination Denali loomed in all its 18,000’ glory, taller from apparent base to summit than any other mountain above sea level. I look out at the apparent nearly 6,000’ of Mt Lamborn and imagine two more stacked on top. Huge. Literally awesome.
My fascination took me to such exotic locales as the Andes, the Himalayas, Antarctica, and back home again to the Colorado Rockies. While I was at it I looked up 127 Hours, the movie version of Aron Ralston’s ordeal in a slot canyon in Southern Utah. It was another story I had always wanted to see, but I didn’t feel up for it at the time, and maybe I couldn’t find anyone to go see the movie with me. The library had it. I watched it alone. Then I went back and got the book and read it. Because I waited so long, I had now lived in Southern Utah and was familiar with the landscape he described. And now I live in Western Colorado near where he was living at the time. I hadn’t known how well the story would fit into my studies, but at the time of his accident, Aron had already climbed all of the Colorado 14ers (mountains above 14,000’ elevation) and was working on his next personal “peak list”, namely all the 14ers again, solo in winter.
I first became intimate with the concept of a “peak list” reading Colorado 14er Disasters, realizing there is a whole subculture of people who set out to climb all the 14ers in Colorado. A peak list is, most simply, a list of mountains to be climbed. It’s a sort of challenge issued to oneself according to one’s personal aims of achievement using mountains as concrete goals or mileposts. It’s an intention set to “get out there and do something” where the something is definable. After all, we can know when we come to the top of a mountain. Although for those whose peak list entails the highest point of land in a given area, such as each county in Colorado (called highpointing), it may be less obvious in some of the plains counties. The “why” of it is a ponderous and elusive question, as belied by George Mallory’s famous, off-the-cuff response, “Because it’s there.”
Colorado 14er Disasters talks about the role of technology in revolutionizing recent mountaineering history, for example referencing websites where 14er enthusiasts can network, access advice, weather, and other information. The book also discusses the role the relative ease of going out into the mountains plays in the occurrence of climbing accidents. Like many areas of recent human history, modern times have brought an unprecedented increasing rate of change to our relationship with mountains. To put ourselves physically at the top of not only one, but many mountains, must seem a very strange notion to the majority of our ancestors, were they to know about it. If in Mallory’s time it was a matter of national pride, this race to the top of the world was still seen as crazy by indigenous onlookers. How much of the mindset of the age of conquest is still with us, as now more and more people have stood atop Mt. Everest, and K2, and the Seven Summits, and the mountains and routes and added degrees of difficulty that have yet to be attempted or attained?
I don’t know.
What I do know is I want to participate. There is something in my human soul that draws me toward the summit. I look across the valley to Mt. Lamborn, and I wonder. What would I feel as I stood up there looking down? What would I see in the many directions viewed from that perspective? What would I learn about myself on the difficult journey up? How would I be different when I came back down?
I wish to participate in a respectful and conscious way, as much as possible. I endeavor to undertake this Peak List as an act of Sacred Relationship, complete with notions of collaboration and consent. I aim to approach each mountain as a being, asking and listening for what it may ask of me. I intend to follow through with my Peak List during the year of 2019, as an experiential art project and pilgrimage, in collaboration with Place, as detailed above; with People, as each peak is to be attempted as a duo-climb with one other person in a practice of partnership, with a new climbing partner for each summit bid; and with the Past, as we interact necessarily with our conceptual point on the timeline of history - both human and geologic. As I imagine our ancestors may have brought acceptable offerings to places of meaning to them, I hold this intention for myself as it feels appropriate.
*The unnamed peak is just north of the Chain Mountains in the West Elks. I call it Mystery Peak.