INSIDE TONY'S HEAD

July 17, 2001

The Fool On The Hill

The thing about hiking is, it's easy to consider yourself an expert. Put one boot in front of the other and you've pretty much got it. Then, once you've hiked around a few state parks, why not take a crack at the Appalachian Trail? How far is it to Paraguay? You spend enough time on your feet, you get cocky. And that's when Mother Nature starts licking her chops.

I should know. The first time I hiked to the top of a mountain, I thought I was an expert. As it turned out, I was lucky I didn't come back down in a body bag.

It was October of 1994, and my friend Tom and I were wrapping up a month-long RV tour of the American West. We were in the best hiking shape of our lives, having hit the trails at Devil's Tower in Wyoming, Bryce Canyon in Utah, and Havasu Canyon in Arizona, to name a few. We were hooked on secluded grandeur, addicted to the up-close whiff of national treasure, and we were ready for our final score; a trek to the summit that inspired the song "America the Beautiful:" Pikes Peak.

There are a few ways to get to the top of Pikes Peak, but the hiker's way is to follow Barr Trail, which starts at the edge of Manitou Springs, Colorado. It's an all-day hike, so our plan was to get an early start. Being experts, Tom and I laid out our provisions the night before, then stayed up well into the morning drinking beer and playing gin rummy.

We woke at the crack of 9 a.m. and ambled across town to find the trailhead. The weather was perfect, but it would be cold at 14,000 feet, so we popped into a convenience store and picked up two pairs of cheap, ill-fitting garden gloves.

If you're a real hiking expert, you're already shaking your head. But consider this: lots of dumb hikers manage to get by on dumb luck. Want proof?

Leaving the store, we stumbled upon a hundred dollar bill, sunning itself in the parking lot. We snatched it up and started whooping about the feast it would buy us, then practically flew to the trailhead, where a wooden sign tried to curb our enthusiasm.

"WARNING: Barr Trail climbs 7300' in 12.6 miles. 8 hours to summit at brisk pace. Hike early in the day to avoid dangerous and common afternoon thunderstorms."

My watch said 10 a.m.. It sure felt early.

"Expect winter on top. Dress for it."

Although it was downright balmy where we stood in our jeans and t-shirts, we did have fleece jackets tied around our waists and, of course, cheap garden gloves tucked into our pockets. We were also packing a thin, crumpled-up metallic space blanket for emergencies. If we were ready for a moonwalk, we were ready for anything.

"How are you getting off the mountain? Cog R.R. may not, Summit House will not provide downhill transportation."

We were getting fidgety. We knew that the Cog Railroad ran less ambitious tourists up and down the mountain. In fact, we'd ridden the train a month earlier at the beginning of our trip. We had wolfed down cheeseburgers at the Summit House, a giant concession and souvenir building, and now felt certain that even if we were too late for the last train down, we could at least hitch a ride with one of the hundreds of tourists who'd driven up the mountain's long and winding road.

"Road can be closed by severe weather."

This warning worried us least of all. The sky was a blanket of glorious blue. The words on the sign did not apply to us. We headed up the trail.

The first 10 miles or so were surprisingly easy. An opening round of switchbacks gave way to gentle slopes and valleys. We hiked through trees, rocky outcroppings, and all sorts of mountain splendor, occasionally stopping to take pictures of each other smiling and pointing to the snow-covered peak, still far off on the horizon.

The view became ever more spectacular with each step. The town below became tiny. We were high on life.

Halfway up, we encountered a group of soldiers from the Colorado Springs Army base. They were striking camp and ending their exercise because, they told us, there was a storm on the way.

We paused to consider this. The sky was still cloudless. How bad could it possibly get? Besides, this was our one shot before we had to return to the flatness of Chicago. We decided we could handle it, and forged ahead. They didn't try to stop us.

Not long after, we ran into a couple who had gotten close to the top but turned back because the snow was "too deep."

How deep?

"Probably not impossible," the woman said. "You guys can try it, but it was too much for us."

Somehow the repeated warnings only served to steel us in our quest. We would at least see for ourselves and then decide. After a solid month of build-up, the summit of Pikes Peak had become a holy hiking grail. Anything less would be a defeat. In our haze of determination and self-confidence, we advanced when the US Army retreated. As my mother would say, we were hell-bent.

Soon after, we encountered the first patches of snow. Yee-ha! We threw snowballs at each other. Our garden gloves were wet, but our spirits were undampened. Gradually, the trees disappeared and the rocky outcroppings became rockier. I felt like I was walking across a planet from the original Star Trek set, only tipped at a crazy Batman camera angle.

The temperature dropped. The snow thickened. We donned our fleece.

The second-to-last mile was pretty hard. The last mile was really hard. As the rolling hills gave way to a steady uphill grind, a wall of dark storm clouds leaped into view from the other side of the mountain. Snowflakes began swirling around us. We shouldn't have been surprised, but somehow we were. Hiking up through the warm autumn sunshine, we had been unable to imagine such a sudden and violent change in the climate. It was almost 6 p.m., and the sky was nearly black.

By this time we were up to our knees in hard-packed snow, sucking wind up serious switchbacks. We gasped for air; there was progressively less of it. Turning back was no longer an option. We were close enough to toss a football over the top. It was below freezing, and although we may have been well-prepared for planting carrots, our cheap garden gloves did little to stop the numbness setting into our hands, faces, and soaking wet feet. Our fleece jackets might as well have been made of paper.

For the last twenty minutes, the summit was rendered invisible by a thick sheet of fog.

When we finally dragged ourselves up over the last rock, we didn't bother to celebrate. Visibility was about 4 or 5 feet, and for a few tense moments we actually lost each other in the fog and swirling snow. We were more than a mile above the sprawling vistas of the American West, but for all we could see, we might as well have been standing in a parking lot in Peoria.

The flat, groomed expanse of the mountaintop, packed with cars on our initial train trip up the mountain, was now desolate. The Summit House was dark, locked, empty. We pounded on the windows for what seemed like an eternity.

For the first time, I felt real, life-threatened panic. Hurriedly, we discussed our options. Hiking down into a dark soup of fog and rocks seemed like a decidedly bad idea. If only we had a phone, maybe we could call the cops, a S.W.A.T. team, a cab.

One more desperate peer in the window, and a choice quickly presented itself: icy death or petty larceny. The windows of the Summit House were big enough to climb through, and if you're looking for a big rock, I can tell you: Pikes Peak is a good place to find them.

Swiftly and unanimously, we voted against icy death. I picked up a softball-sized rock and heaved it through the window. The glass shattered easily. Before the echoes of our vandalism had subsided, two teenagers, a boy and a girl, came running out of the depths of the Summit House into the room we had just ventilated.

"We're calling the cops!" they shouted, flying through the room like chickens.

We could have easily scrambled in through the broken window and had our conversation with them in the warmth of the building. But we stood patiently outside, trying to convince them that we were dumb hikers, not teen killers. They didn't buy it. They were scared, and who could blame them?

We begged them to let us in out of the cold. They said, "No way," like teens will. The police were coming, but it was a two-hour drive to the summit. Eventually, they let us into an unheated glass foyer, where we huddled under our emergency space blanket, counting the extremities we could no longer feel. I tried singing to distract myself from the cold, but Tom told me I sounded like Hal, the psycho computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, crooning "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer please," as he is being unplugged, and that it was downright depressing. We decided we wouldn't mind being tossed into the pokey, as long as it was a hot pokey.

A couple of miserable hours later, two Colorado Springs police officers showed up with the owner of the Summit House. We greeted them with the biggest dumb smiles our frozen faces would allow and started babbling about our innocence. They told us to be quiet and lie face down on the foyer floor while they handcuffed us. I was far too relieved to be indignant. Anyway, they said it was only procedure, and after they had patted us down for assault weapons or Swiss Army knives, they let us into the warm insides of the building.

We didn't care that we were shackled. We didn't care that the Summit House owner was glaring at us like we'd ruined his year. We were out of the cold and we weren't going to die. We told them our story, using lots of words like "stupid," and "idiots." The owner interjected words like "goddamned window" and "whole lotta money."

Then the cops and the owner had a pow-wow, we were uncuffed, and they proposed this: pay for the broken window, and no charges would be pressed.

"How much?" we asked.

"A hundred dollars," said the owner.

Was he joking? I searched for a Candid Camera crew and didn't see one.

I turned to Tom. We were grinning like apes. Somebody was watching over us, and his last name was Franklin.

It didn't seem prudent to mention the coincidence, so we lamely muttered, "Thank you," as we handed over the bill we'd found that morning. I thought about asking if those crazy teens could whip up a couple of hot chocolates, but decided not to press our luck.

Tom and I rode down the mountain in the back of a squad car, the heat cranking. I've never felt so cozy in my life. The officers were downright friendly. They said the teenagers at the Summit House were staying there on a three-day workshift. It took so long to drive up and down the mountain, the building had been equipped with an apartment to accommodate bunking employees. They also told us that our caper wasn't a new one. In fact, it had already been pulled once that year.

At the police station, there were a few formalities, then the cops bid us an almost fond farewell. Our feast stipend gone, we wolfed down canned chili in the comfort of our RV. It wasn't long before we were dreaming sweet survivor dreams.

Years later, Tom and I tried to redeem ourselves with another hike up the Barr Trail. About three miles from the peak, we ran into a big, Yogi Bear-looking hiker who had ridden up on the Cog Railway in bicycle shorts, then slid and rolled off the summit for hundreds of feet, trying to hike down through what he described as impenetrable snow. His bare legs were covered with scratches, bruises, and blood.

I shook his hand. He was one of us.

We decided to heed his cautionary tale and turn back, but it wasn't easy. We took a long, wistful look at the Peak and then accompanied our new companion down the mountain.

I knew from our conversation that this man's experience was well worth his embarrassment. He will happily tell his tale a thousand times, and so will we. After all, we made it to the summit of Pikes Peak, which is something its namesake, explorer Zebulon Pike, couldn't manage to do.

My current theory is that if I learn enough hard lessons, I'll earn the right to call myself an expert hiker. Until then, maybe I'll get a decent pair of gloves and take another crack at Pikes Peak. The way I figure it, that mountain still owes me fifty bucks.