I did a thing last week. I hiked up a 14er.

A 14er is a mountain whose peak is 14,000 feet or higher from sea level. I decided quite a while ago that I wanted to take this on and then the opportunI expected the hike to be a bit…difficult. It was. The mountain is called ‘Quandray Peak‘ and by most estimations that I have seen it is one of the easiest of the 14er’s and has a total elevation of 14,272 feet.

The hike broke down into 3 parts. The first part was a trail from the parking lot to the tree line. The second was from the tree line to where the summit starts and the third part was the trail to the summit.

I took the East approach and below is an image from the ‘14ers.com‘ web site showing that approach.

The effort that I put in was a lot. From the beginning to the top I was stopping every 5 minutes to rest, sip some water or have a bite to eat. The last part of the hike was just ‘put one foot in front of another’ the rest of the way up.

Coming down was pretty straightforward but I had to be extra careful and watch for loose rocks on the steps which could, and did, cause me to fall…twice. However, I got down the mountain without injury and I’m pretty proud of the accomplishment.

I was impressed by the hikers on the mountain. When they saw me sitting they asked how I was, etc. Very nice community.

Get out and go!