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Peak Experience

By Ken Wright

Found in: | Outside | Climbing | Mountaineering |

The fact is, we couldn't have picked a better day. It was one of those blazing autumn days when the high country pulses with hallucinogenic-quality colors, and there was not even the meagerest of chances of alpine weather bubbling into thunderstorms. If you got hit by lightning that day, you could be sure God Himself picked you off.
That was surely the day to be climbing Mount Sneffels. And my wife and I and the friends who accompanied us knew, as we walked up the wide tundra-carpeted, peak-ringed basin to the base of Sneffels, that we'd hit the mountain-lover's meteorological jackpot.
The three teens with us, though, weren't so sure. To hear them tell it, they'd been snared by the adolescent equivalent of Selective Service. Something about other things they'd rather be doing . . . a birthday party . . . the skatepark . . . numerous other teenly social demands. And we, in a reckless display of overzealous and overbearing parenting, had pressed them into this forced march. So even though for the most part on that cool, gorgeous morning, the approach to the climb was lovely and the conversation lively, the kids made sure to not let too much time pass between reminders that these pleasures were nonetheless enjoyed under duress.
Other folks were there by choice, however. It was surely a well-traveled trail we were following when we started huffing up the two couloirs that comprise the southeastern route up the sheer, ragged, craggy, volcanic-grey summit. Not too many were up there that day - we saw maybe a half-dozen other parties and individuals - but they say that in the summer there can a steady stream, like acolytes on pilgrimage, ascending Sneffels at the same time, kicking down rocks on each other and having to wait for their turn to rest briefly upon the relatively small top of southwest Colorado's highest peak.
I, for one, don't have a problem with that. Sneffels is a true Colorado icon - best represented by the incalculable number of photographic variations on the same view from Dallas Divide: A gleaming, snowy Sneffels standing at attention behind bands of golden aspen with the classic split-rail wooden fence framing the foreground. The fact that the ascent is only moderately dangerous and difficult makes it a popular target for a liberal range of walkers, wanderers, saunterers, and novice self-anointed mid-life born-again mountain climbers seeking to snag the bragging rights to a Fourteener.
I thinks that's a good thing. I am happy to share, and I enjoy seeing visitors and residents alike out earning - even if it isn't life-risking in desolate solitude - what is one of the Four Corners' most dizzying and mesmerizing vistas. It reminds me of hikes I've taken in the so-called "backcountry" of those mountain-blessed nations of Switzerland and Norway. There you'll find rich histories and deeply embedded cultural connections with walking in the mountains - and there are both the populations out there to prove it, and long-rooted and well-worn networks of footpaths to support it.
The mountain people who inhabit those landscapes know their homes first-hand, from physical contact, from personal experience, from an acted-upon affection. And, I would argue, they know themselves, as people who are shaped by a specific place, better than most so-called "residents" or "locals" or "natives" because of the time and energy and effort expended learning their home landscapes literally from the ground up.
And that's exactly why I force it on my kids.
I realize that perhaps the last thing most teens want to do is spend a day crawling across scree slopes and grunting up boulder fields to sit on top of a mountain (especially with their parents). But their wishes aside, I want - hell, I require - them to know first-hand the rewards of that physical investment and the "no pain, no gain" nature of many of life's coolest experiences.
But more than that, I want them to experience the expanded awareness of and love for a place - for their place - that that labor bestows.
I'm not sure if that's what the 16-year-old Webb was thinking as he sat quietly alone below the peak looking out over the waves of mountains that surrounded us on that peak that day. I don't know if he was savoring or fuming - but I do know that the information he was receiving from that scene was not fed, framed, or otherwise mediated through either machine or teacher. It's just there, and you think for yourself about what it means. And if forcing him up there is what it takes to get him to sit and reflect, to look out and take in the blessing that is his southwestern home, then so be it.
Now I'd like to finish this story with some cute zinger about how on the way back down that mountain, and on the ride home, and for days afterward the kids glowed euphorically with enlightment and appreciation for that day they were forced up Mount Sneffels. I'd love to brag that they're already begging us to march them up Grizzly Peak next week.
Not quite, though. Yes, we've heard a few reluctant "Yeah, it was a great view" or "That sure was a pretty day." But when they tell the story of our great ascent, it still comes out sounding like an alien-abduction tale.
And it reminds that the meaning of that and the many other adventures we have imposed on our kids while they're in our care may only lead, when they're older and on their own, to their proclaiming "I will never do that again!" (No pain, no gain? Hell, no pain, no pain, either!) But for now, my wife and I are still their shapers. And we believe that even if our kids end up deciding that climbing mountains is best left to those walkers, wanderers, saunterers, and novice self-annointed mid-life born-again mountain climbers, then so be it. But it's our job to make sure they at least make an informed decision.
Until then, pack your backpacks kids: Backcountry skiing season is coming!

KEN WRIGHT is the author of The Monkey Wrench Dad and other books (learn more at monkeywrenchdad.com). Wright, one of Inside/Outside Southwest's first editors, is a long-time contributor who this year retired "Neanderthal Crossing," a column he wrote for this publication for a decade. This is his first "San Juandering" column. For more of Wright's work, including his blog "San Juan Almanac," look no further than InsideOutsideMag.com