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snowmass epiphany

Yesterday, I shared briefly about my climbing Snowmass Mountain. Not twelve hours later, I get a Facebook message (oh Facebook, how I love/hate you) from one of the guys I met up with along the way. He tells me that his friend, Joel, who was climbing with us made a short video of their experience on the mountain.

In a word… stunning.

Worth every second of your four minutes. Yours truly even makes a blink of an eye cameo appearance.

Snowmass Epiphany from Joel Pilger on Vimeo.

I don’t want to ruin it with too many words, but two quick observations. One, I had no idea that he was videoing all this. Granted, I was pretty busy with what I was doing, but come on. You think I would notice a dude whipping out his camera every few minutes. Two, you just have to appreciate the art of telling a story through video. Of course, not anyone can pull this off. Joel obviously knew what he was doing. Great angles. Great material. Great music. Even great words. But a four minute video tells a story that I couldn’t have even if I had all the paper and ink (or screen space and pixels) in the world.

 

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Snowmass Mountain

While we were all in camping heaven, our ever so enjoyable time at Crested Butte needed to come to an end. The Chino-lings attend a “year-round” school which meant that summer was being cut short for them. We loaded up and the family began the long drive home. The whole family minus one… or two. Craig and I would be staying to wait for the college folks from our church to show up for our annual backpacking/climbing trip. However, they weren’t due to arrive for another couple days. So what do you do when you have a little time to kill in Colorado?

Go climb a mountain, of course.

Our destination was Snowmass Mountain (not to be confused with the ski resort). I should say it was my destination. Craig has climbed all of them and didn’t necessarily feel the need to hold my hand up the mountain. So we loaded up our packs and hiked a couple miles up to a pretty typical (meaning gorgeous) mountain lake high in the Rockies.

We set up camp.

We feasted on a few trout that Craig caught and turned in early.

The next morning, I was up before the sun and began the climb. Snowmass is a pretty straightforward mountain. It is Class 3, which means it is on the challenging side. Route-finding is a little tricky, but not overly so. I met up with a team of three other climbers and was grateful to have some company on the mountain as well as a few more sets of eyes. We made it to the top around 10 or so. Snapped a few pics and headed back down.

All in all, it was a great climb. People always ask me how many “fourteeners” I’ve climbed and I never really remember. I tallied them up when I got home and Snowmass was #28. Or 26. Or 29. All depending on which ones count.

Back at base camp, Craig had caught and prepared another fresh trout feast which I swallowed in two or three bites. We quickly packed up and headed out. We were eager to get some rest for our next big adventure with our friends from back home!