Ed Mahoney picked me up at the Denver airport and drove us several hours west to meet Rob Graham, who was waiting for us at the Hancock trailhead, which is close to absolutely nothing, and where we intended to finish our 50-mile or so hike in Colorado’s Collegiate Range. This generosity amazed me, that Ed would pick me up and drive me all the way out there, and have cold fruit juice and beer in a cooler in his car just in case. And that Rob would be there, in the middle of nowhere, waiting on us just so we could leave Ed’s car at our terminus and drive Rob’s several more hours north to the start of our hike near Sheep Gulch.
I normally hike alone, so this trip was different for me. Rob and Ed allowed me to turn my brain off. They may have preferred that I leave it on, but bless them I just turned it off and let them do all the heavy organizational lifting. Me, I walked. Day One I asked “which way?” and that was about it for me. When we first started talking about this trip, I’d ask for details, try and decipher what might actually happen as opposed to what Rob and Ed said was going to happen, but I eventually decided that there were too many unknowns to be certain that Rob would not simply get us killed, and I surrendered myself up to all that was possible.
I don’t remember much of that first day’s hike up and over Lake Ann Pass. We followed Clear Creek’s South Fork past Huron Peak, past the Three Apostles, and things only began to climb as we passed Lake Ann.
The picture above was taken as I stood on what is called a cornice of snow. A cornice of snow is what you have in a high pass, where the snow hasn’t melted yet and the wind has created a sort of overhanging wave of snow that you really can’t get around or over. That cornice had made Lake Ann pass unpassable up until just the prior week, but Rob had “scouted” the route earlier that week (that means that Rob drove 243 miles each way from his home in Durango and then hiked 20 miles or so roundtrip just to look at the pass and decide that the three of us would be able to get over it in a week. Rob really likes to hike). That’s Rob in the yellow shirt, and Ed in the blue. Ed is very satisfied to be alive.
Rob basically ran up the corniche and was first over the top, followed by Ed. But Ed hit a spot just beneath the melting snow that had turned the underlying ground into a sort of slippery mix of rock and dirt, and Ed was ominously and inexorably moving from a vertical to a horizontal position. As for myself, although I had appreciated enormously Ed’s companionship and general good humor, I was directly beneath him, and so moved slightly to the left where the footing seemed firmer, and where I would not impede his apparently inevitable fall. As Ed struggled–undoubtedly picturing his wife, his two beautiful daughters, his upcoming grandchild which he would now never meet–I looked up and saw Rob evaluating the situation. I would like to think that Rob was rapidly analyzing how best to come to Ed’s aid, but I’m pretty sure he was thinking something along the lines of “let’s see what happens. It really comes down to how Ed takes the first bounce once he starts to fall.”
But Ed didn’t fall. I did not see Rob’s expression change from evaluation to relief–perhaps only a mild loss of interest–and we continued on and down the other side.
My Name is SCHOOLS 