Night in the mountains
Morning in the mountains
We woke up at 7 am to the sound of a group of chatty women beating the trail to the peak. It was another clear day, perfect for a hike. After eating a breakfast of seven differently-flavored oatmeal packets all mixed together, we filled Jared's daypack with water and headed up the trail. I let the boys go ahead at their own pace, which is fast, while I took my good old time, making frequent stops to take pictures or catch my breath. There was a time in my life when I would have insisted on keeping pace with the guys, just to make the point that I could. Those days are gone. I'd rather enjoy myself; I've got nothing to prove.
The boys up ahead
The first thing I realized about this mountain when we got up past the grass line is that, while from far away it appears to be one massive piece of rock, it is in fact just a massive pile of rocks, with maybe a big piece somewhere underneath. "Climbing the mountain" was really just scrambling up a really big, steep rock pile. It reminded me of climbing the huge pile of limestone gravel by the soccer fields in Lancaster as a kid, which I remember seemed like a mountain at the time. Obviously the scale is a bit different.
There were tons of great photo-ops, seeing as how the view in every direction was like a postcard picture. The sky was clear and blue and the air was still. We passed the group of women on their way down, so we were the only people at the peak, which was really nice. We hung out up there for a while before heading back down, which was actually more difficult than going up in some ways. When I was a kid I would slide down the gravel pile on my butt, getting limestone dust all over my pants, but that strategy was definitely NOT going to work for this rock pile. I took my time getting back down, definitely sliding and falling on my butt plenty of times in spite of myself.
Around the time I got back to the camp, I started experiencing what I would eventually determine to be a light case of altitude sickness. I had a splitting headache. "Drink more water!" Shan commanded. I knew I wasn't dehydrated. I am constantly drinking water, high altitude hike or no. I thought it might be my sunglasses pinching me behind the ears. When we got to Silverton that afternoon, I thought maybe caffeine would help. It didn't. In Ouray I broke down and bought a bottle of Excedrin Migraine, which seemed to take the edge off a little, but the headache persisted. We were, of course, hiking and driving all over the place that day, going from almost 13,000 ft. at the peak of Mt. Engineer to 9,300 in Silverton to 7,800 in Ouray. I felt like I had a horrible hangover, and it didn't let up until we got to our campsite that evening and I took a short nap at a steady elevation. Later, I looked up elevation sickness, and found that it is often described as similar to a bad hangover.
Between Durango and Silverton
Between Silverton and Ouray
Despite my headache, I enjoyed the drive. The highway twists around the mountains in hairpin turns, and there are remnants of old mining buildings clinging to cliffs and spilling down hillsides. Ouray is called "the Switzerland of America" and it is definitely picturesque settled among enormous peaks. We wanted to camp somewhere really awesome, but all the usual places were packed because it was a Saturday during peak tourist season. We ended up going back to a place where we had randomly pulled off the road between Silverton and Ouray which turned out to be the site of an old mining town that was mostly destroyed by fires in the late 1800s. It was perfect, really quiet and secluded. No bears, but when I got up to pee sometime in the early morning I could hear a pack of coyotes howling somewhere not too far away. It sounded as if they were singing.
We camped at the site of this old mining town
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