Mat and I drove up Thursday night to camp out and get a good night sleep, yea right. I already drank about 8 beers at OC in Denver before we left. We took a six pack each of Fat Tire and figured that it would be enough, and if it wasn’t too bad. Well around 11:00pm we decided it wasn’t enough so we went to town. The only place to drink was a place called the Saloon. We got there about 11:30 and started pounding. We drank about 5 more Fat Tires and left about 1:00am. By the time we crashed it was about 2:00am. We got up at 4:30am and we’re still hammered. I threw up a few times before I even got in the truck. We started hiking about 5:00am. My head was spinning badly for a while on the trail. A couple of miles in I puked a few more times. We still hadn’t really eaten. The mosquitoes were terrible the whole way. Past tree line the trail turned to talus, this sucked. At about 13,500’ I started puking again. It was painful and loud. After heaving about 7 times I continued. We made it to the top at 11:30am. We stayed for about 15 minutes and left. Going through the rocks sucked. Once we got down to tree line Mat was moving pretty fast and I couldn’t keep up. I was also out of water. I was so dehydrated I couldn’t stand it. The sun was killing me, it was so hot. Finally I reached the river but I still had to wait for the water to cure. I could only walk a few steps and had to get shade. Finally the water cured. I slammed a quart and took a bite of a cliff bar. This was right at the bottom of the way back up the pass. It wasn’t so bad but it seemed to take forever. Finally I reached the pass at 3:15pm. Some dork was going in and asked if he had time to summit. He would have summited about 8:00pm, what an idiot. I stopped again and got two more quarts of water. I made it back to the TH at 4:00pm. I can’t believe we made it. We did it drunk, on two hours sleep, no food, and in the baking sun. It was brutal but a good accomplishment. When I got home I took a nap and went to the bar.
|
Sawatch Range
