Jem van Tyn
Sneffels
An adventurer races a storm up a mountain.
Online it said that it was a moderate mountain climb. Well, I hadn't even gotten to the trail yet and this certainly didn't seem moderate to me.
We were biking up a long, winding dirt road, and it had just started to rain. Well, of course it was raining. I mean, this was the Telluride area in the beginning of August, and everybody knows that in Telluride in the end of July and beginning of August it seems like Telluride has its own ecosystem. You can drive around the last bend in a pass and see Telluride, and above that there are constantly dark clouds. It's always raining in Telluride.
We had thought we would beat the rain, but we hadn't. So there we were, biking in the storm. But this rain wasn't the kind of rain that came pouring down. It was the kind of rain that you almost didn't know was there, because it was so fine that it was like a mist. However, it carried with it a cold that I could definitely notice because the rain would hit my skin and transfer the cold right through into my bones. This made my fingers so numb I couldn’t feel my brake levers, and any muscle in my body that I wasn’t working constantly froze.
We had planned to make it to the top of Sneffels by mid-morning and come back down before it started to rain. We thought that it wouldn’t take long to summit because the internet said, “It's only a moderate mountain climb, nine tenths miles from the trailhead.”
But then we decided to bike. Now we were biking through the rain, and it started to rain harder and harder. It went from the freezing mist to a downpour, which meant that the rocks on the road were so slick that for every time I pulled myself up the road, my bike would slide backwards. This made us finally decide to hop off our bikes, lock them together, and toss them off the side of the road. So we walked, and finally, we made it to the trailhead. What seemed like six or seven hours later was probably only about thirty minutes.
Yes, we thought, we’ve made it to the trailhead. Less than a mile left to go. This is going to be easy. We're almost there, and we can make it up there before the storms come. Triumphantly munching on our granola bars, we marched down the trail - but then the trail disappeared.
We’re thinking, Wait, what? There's no more trail in front of us! To our left is a deep gorge waterfall, that's definitely not the way to the top. In front of us is a sheer cliff. Then we look to our right say, “Ah man. We don’t have to go up there right? We don't have to go up there right?” Then we see people coming down.
“Man, we have to go up there.”
Because up to the right was a steep slope of rock and wet granite sand, rising more than 1700 feet in less than a mile. Either we could go up wet sand and for every step forward take almost an entire step backward. Or we could try to go up the boulders, which were jagged granite, so we could cut our hands up and cut our shins open, although our hands were so cold we couldn't feel it. Every step risked dislodging a bunch of rocks to come down on top of the people below.
But we decide, we're here already, might as well start climbing. I could see the saddle there, all we have to do is make that saddle and we're almost at the top.
And so, for the next hour that was our mantra: Make it to the saddle, make it to the saddle, as we hiked up and up, slowly, walking progressively slower as we got more and more tired.
Finally we did it! We made it to the saddle and we thought: Ha! Look at this, storm down there, us up here, we beat it. Cool! So, well, the peak should be right over... there. To our left was another slope. The same steepness, if not even steeper, and climbing almost as far toward the peak. Except this time, our thighs were already burned out from the climb before and it seemed like we didn't have any steam left in us.
The storms were also getting closer, too close for comfort. This is where one of us mentioned going down. We'd both been thinking it for a while: If this storm catches us we're going to have to get down from here quick, I mean this is the highest point for miles.
But we decided hey, it's not every day that you get to climb a fourteener and we're already here, so we'll just keep going slowly and see how far we can get, on one condition: that as soon as we hear thunder, we're gone. So we kept going, and now we're going about as fast as one of those teacup chihuahuas going up an escalator that's going down. At least that's what it felt like.
We passed the last people coming down the mountain. They said, “Yeah, from up there you can see we're surrounded on all sides by storms. I can't believe that it's not raining hard here anymore.”
So we said, “Well, we didn't expect to make it to the top,” but we decided to push through and maybe, maybe luck would hold with us and we'd make it to the top. And then, suddenly, we made it to the top, right as the rain started to reach us and before we heard any thunder in the nearby area. Allegedly, Sneffels is so high that you can see on a clear day all the way down to Arizona, but today was definitely not a clear day.
We could see, however, the jagged outlines of the mountains around us through the rain, and look down on the Telluride ski slopes. Everything was sort of surreal because we couldn't see any of the colors. If we thought that that trip was going to be a long one, it was longer and if we thought it was going to be hard, it was at least twice as hard. But because of that, the view was twice as worth it.
We were biking up a long, winding dirt road, and it had just started to rain. Well, of course it was raining. I mean, this was the Telluride area in the beginning of August, and everybody knows that in Telluride in the end of July and beginning of August it seems like Telluride has its own ecosystem. You can drive around the last bend in a pass and see Telluride, and above that there are constantly dark clouds. It's always raining in Telluride.
We had thought we would beat the rain, but we hadn't. So there we were, biking in the storm. But this rain wasn't the kind of rain that came pouring down. It was the kind of rain that you almost didn't know was there, because it was so fine that it was like a mist. However, it carried with it a cold that I could definitely notice because the rain would hit my skin and transfer the cold right through into my bones. This made my fingers so numb I couldn’t feel my brake levers, and any muscle in my body that I wasn’t working constantly froze.
We had planned to make it to the top of Sneffels by mid-morning and come back down before it started to rain. We thought that it wouldn’t take long to summit because the internet said, “It's only a moderate mountain climb, nine tenths miles from the trailhead.”
But then we decided to bike. Now we were biking through the rain, and it started to rain harder and harder. It went from the freezing mist to a downpour, which meant that the rocks on the road were so slick that for every time I pulled myself up the road, my bike would slide backwards. This made us finally decide to hop off our bikes, lock them together, and toss them off the side of the road. So we walked, and finally, we made it to the trailhead. What seemed like six or seven hours later was probably only about thirty minutes.
Yes, we thought, we’ve made it to the trailhead. Less than a mile left to go. This is going to be easy. We're almost there, and we can make it up there before the storms come. Triumphantly munching on our granola bars, we marched down the trail - but then the trail disappeared.
We’re thinking, Wait, what? There's no more trail in front of us! To our left is a deep gorge waterfall, that's definitely not the way to the top. In front of us is a sheer cliff. Then we look to our right say, “Ah man. We don’t have to go up there right? We don't have to go up there right?” Then we see people coming down.
“Man, we have to go up there.”
Because up to the right was a steep slope of rock and wet granite sand, rising more than 1700 feet in less than a mile. Either we could go up wet sand and for every step forward take almost an entire step backward. Or we could try to go up the boulders, which were jagged granite, so we could cut our hands up and cut our shins open, although our hands were so cold we couldn't feel it. Every step risked dislodging a bunch of rocks to come down on top of the people below.
But we decide, we're here already, might as well start climbing. I could see the saddle there, all we have to do is make that saddle and we're almost at the top.
And so, for the next hour that was our mantra: Make it to the saddle, make it to the saddle, as we hiked up and up, slowly, walking progressively slower as we got more and more tired.
Finally we did it! We made it to the saddle and we thought: Ha! Look at this, storm down there, us up here, we beat it. Cool! So, well, the peak should be right over... there. To our left was another slope. The same steepness, if not even steeper, and climbing almost as far toward the peak. Except this time, our thighs were already burned out from the climb before and it seemed like we didn't have any steam left in us.
The storms were also getting closer, too close for comfort. This is where one of us mentioned going down. We'd both been thinking it for a while: If this storm catches us we're going to have to get down from here quick, I mean this is the highest point for miles.
But we decided hey, it's not every day that you get to climb a fourteener and we're already here, so we'll just keep going slowly and see how far we can get, on one condition: that as soon as we hear thunder, we're gone. So we kept going, and now we're going about as fast as one of those teacup chihuahuas going up an escalator that's going down. At least that's what it felt like.
We passed the last people coming down the mountain. They said, “Yeah, from up there you can see we're surrounded on all sides by storms. I can't believe that it's not raining hard here anymore.”
So we said, “Well, we didn't expect to make it to the top,” but we decided to push through and maybe, maybe luck would hold with us and we'd make it to the top. And then, suddenly, we made it to the top, right as the rain started to reach us and before we heard any thunder in the nearby area. Allegedly, Sneffels is so high that you can see on a clear day all the way down to Arizona, but today was definitely not a clear day.
We could see, however, the jagged outlines of the mountains around us through the rain, and look down on the Telluride ski slopes. Everything was sort of surreal because we couldn't see any of the colors. If we thought that that trip was going to be a long one, it was longer and if we thought it was going to be hard, it was at least twice as hard. But because of that, the view was twice as worth it.