Mountains

Over the past few days I've been out mountain climbing with some friends. There is a mountain a few hours away that is 17,707 feet. It isn't a very technical climb, but once you factor in the snow and elevation it definitely isn't a walk in the park. Actually I climbed it about this time last year with some friends, but this year we didn't make it to the top. The weather didn't exactly cooperate. The hike is broken up into two days. On day one we hiked from the village at the base of the mountain up to Base Camp (13,500 ft). Day two is the hike from Base Camp up to the peak and then back down. About an hour into the hike the first day it started raining on us. It was a VERY long trip though the mud up to Base Camp. The trip there last year took us about six hours. This year it took us over eight. We also didn't make it in before dark. I'm sure we were looking pretty ragged when we finally made it to Base Camp. And I'm also sure that freeze dried chicken breast never tasted so good as it did that night. Day two we decided to take a rest day and hiked over to a high alpine lake. The weather continued to worsen also. The lake wasn't so much fun considering that it was about four and a half hours in rain and mud. And when it wasn't raining it was hailing or snowing. After spending a few hours sitting by the fire drying out all of our gear we heard stories from some of the other climbers that there was a lot of snow all the way up to the peak. Last year the weather was about perfect for me and it still took around four hours to reach the top. This year there was waist deep snow the entire trek to the peak, and it would have taken at least six to seven hours to reach the top. After talking to our guide he encouraged us to not make a summit attempt. Considering that none of us wanted to spend ten hours hiking through waist deep snow (and considering that two people died up there last week) we decided to just blame it on the weather and come back down. On our final day before we headed down the weather cleared, but the damage had already been done with fresh snow everywhere. It made for some great views and pictures on the way down.