My Alternative Education - The Gore Mountain Range Part 2 "Livin' on a Prayer"

The Gore Range

Obviously, it did not take long to realize - one, I was head over heels in love with nature and being outside, but two, I was ill prepared and terribly uneducated in the ways of the outdoors. One advantage I had was that I have always been an optimist (sometimes to a fault), and my glass always seemed to stay half full.

Let's meet the other gentlemen on this patrol that were meandering through the Gore Range with me. This was my "core" Patrol that would always be our kind of "home" group.

Bill, our lead proctor was from Long Island. He was a big burly man with dirty blond hair and beard. Talking with him you could tell he was genuine, a lover of the outdoors, maybe had a little bit of hippie in him, and totally trustworthy. His favorite word was "bomber". Everything had to be "bomber", meaning stable or secure or infalliable.

His counterpart was Mike from Chicago. Mike was a metal head that loved Slayer and came off, at first encounter, a little more intense and sometimes rude. I didn't like Mike at first, but I totally appreciated him after a few days and respected his knowledge of the outdoors and mountain fitness. By the end of the trip, he was one of the most memorable guys I had met.

My fellow students were Steve from Milwaukee, a long haired and skinny as a rail hipster. Steve carried a hackey sack everywhere he went and was about as laid back as you can get.

Eduardo was from Guatemala. He was the guy with possibly the most experience in outdoor life that was not a proctor on our trip. He could be kind of come across as an arrogant dude, but he was quite trustworthy and not above teaching or helping in any way. I liked Eduardo and respected him.

Lance was the local boy. He grew up and lived in Denver. Lance was a tall trim red-headed dude with goatee and looked just like Layne Staley, lead singer of Alice in Chains.

Chris was from Libertyville, IL. A kind of quiet dude at first, but had an infectious laugh. I always kind of wondered to myself if his family was mafia. I don't know why.

Jay was from Boise, Idaho. He was some kind of professional snowboarder or something and I could tell he came from a pretty "well-off" family. He had all of the newest and most expensive gear it seemed. Jay was a good kid though and fit right in.

Tony was from up-state NY somewhere. Tony was another tall and lanky guy. Long brown hair and thick NY accent.

Lastly, there was Mike. Mike was from Bellmont, WA and was the quietest guy I have ever met. I can't remember his exact age, but he was young. Physically, he was probably the most fit of all of us, endurance-wise anyhow.

Day 4, I had woken up thinking to myself this will be the hardest thing I will ever do in my life. My legs were killing me but I was in a great state of mind and ready for the challenge of this experience. I could have been a little sleep deprived as well. The mountain goats were taking a lot more time for me to get used to and they kept me up many times throughout the night.

The next two days' agenda included rock climbing and a peak climb. My journal entry from day 4 said it all, "My legs are killing me but somehow I just keep moving". The upside was that we would be staying in one base camp for the next 2 nights.

I had certainly rock climbed at indoor gyms, but not out in the wild on "real" rocks. I did better than I expected to do. Out of the 3 climbs we did, I made it through 2 completely. That third one showed me how far my fitness level needed to be raised, but I wasn't scared. I embraced that challenge. Important side note: when I began this experience I weighed in at about 235 lbs, was a smoker, drank more beer than I should, and had a non-existent fitness routine.

That afternoon, we learned wilderness first aid and hooking a fall line in preparation for our peak climb the next day. I also decided on this day to set a goal of doing 200 push ups a day. My strategy was to split up the day and do 10-20 push-ups at different times throughout the day. 10 when I woke up, 10 after breakfast, 10 at the first water break of the day, etc. Pretty much whenever we stopped for a long enough time to take the pack off.

We woke up the next morning at 5:00 AM and began our peak journey at 6:15, reaching the peak at 9:10. It was an incredible view at the top. Vail was visible in the distance and I could hear the wind fighting through the mountains. All of the lakes were glistening in the sun. Snow caps that have been on this mountain for thousands of years from left over glaciers were scattered sporadically across the mountain.

Bagging my first peak in the Gore Range

We broke down our base camp the next morning and hit the trail with full pack again. I was doing a little better physically and a lot better mentally. We climbed close to 2,000 feet on this day as we navigated through two passes. We trekked a long way this day, but the miles dropped with ease. Jay lead us in "Living on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi throughout the day and we just sang it over and over again. I really did not even like Bon Jovi, but I knew all the words and our crew had become a pretty tight knit group by this point. We were having fun.

Our first re-supply was the next day, and I remember being excited that we were going to get to sleep in until 7:00 AM before hiking into re-supply. "Sleeping in" until 7:00 AM would have been a complete joke in my normal life. Heck, many mornings I was "going to bed" at 7:00 AM.

Re-supply was incredible. I never thought I would be that excited to have bacon, oranges, milk or bagels. We hung out at re-supply for about 4 hours. Josh, our LC (Logistics Coordinator) was my one connection to the outside news and thanks to him, I found out that Mark McGuire had just hit #62 that summer. For those that don't remember, Mark McGuire was chasing the MLB home run record that summer.

Bill and Mike set out ahead of us from re-supply to find our next camp. As we set out, the rain started and we started moving fast. We had a brief lunch and as we were reviewing the map, we realized we had hiked right by the pass we were supposed to take.

After about 20 minutes of hiking back the way we had just come, a pretty intense looking thunderstorm was threatening. We decided as a group that the pass was not where we wanted to be in a lightening situation, so we decided to set up camp in the valley and wait it out til morning.

Under the tarps, we huddled together as hail pelted the campsite for about an hour. I was freezing. Wearing shorts and wet socks, I just decided to climb in my sleeping bag and go to bed.

Luckily, the next morning our delegated scouts, Steve, Jay and Eduardo hiked over the pass and found Mike and Bill. While we are waiting on them to all return back to our camp, Tony has managed to throw his back out or something and Lance is having stomach issues and is worried he has Giardia.

When Mike and Bill get back to our camp, they make the decision to hike back to the re-supply area. Bill, miraculously finds a doctor that is actually on the OB Board of Directors and they evacuate Lance and Tony to join Chris who was already out of commission previously (but I cannot recall why).

We hike double time that day and make it back to camp where we were supposed to be the day before. We hiked past Upper Piney Lake and climbed the steep Grass Pass. We actually had to do some rock scrambling with full packs near the top of Grass Pass. From there we traversed over to Melodrama Pass where we were forced to lower our packs down with ropes before climbing down.

Upper Piney Lake

I could not get over how deep blue the lakes were in the Rockies. It was breathtaking. This was, by far, the longest day of hiking so far. Highlight of the day was eating bacon that night and hearing about the upcoming week. I was getting ready to have a 3 day solo experience in the wilderness of Colorado with only 10 days of experience in the outdoors.

I was getting ready to begin my outdoor Jedi training....