No, I did not try to climb Everest on my first foray into this new life of mine. After coming out of what amounted to shock after my wife passed, I had plenty to do in terms of busy work – there are so many things you have to take care of when your spouse dies, aside from the obvious (funerals). It’s exhausting. All of these while you are suffering through waves of smothering grief. OK…this is getting way too sad. At any rate, later in the summer, I decided it was time to get out of Dodge for a while, and accepted an invitation to stay with our close friends back in Colorado (Denver suburbs). My wife and I lived there for decades – it has always been home for us – we always seemed to return there when work forced us to live elsewhere.
Through the many years we lived there, I was always drawn towards alpine sports – we were both obsessive skiers, and took the alpine obsession to a higher level – rock climbing, back country skiing, ice climbing, and hiking the Colorado Fourteener’s (14K peaks). We lived at over 5000′, and I spent countless hours at much higher elevations. Heck, even our golf trips were at ski resorts. Needless to say, we were both well acclimated to life in thin air.
Whatever that actually means from a physiological viewpoint (more red blood cells), that seems to last for quite some time, even when you move to sea level. I found that the altitude was not a problem when we moved away for a year or two.
Now fast forward to September, 2024. I had been living at almost sea level for about four years. I flew into DIA, drove out to my friends house in Aurora, and scheduled a number of hikes for the week, starting with a drive up Mount Evans (Bluesky now). That’s a 14,000′ peak, a state park, just West of Denver. You can drive up pretty close to the summit, and then hike up a path the last 250′ to the top. So, my friend and I motor up to the top, I get out of the car, and walk about 10 steps before gasping for air. I tried making it to the top, and did not get close. This was depressing – we had moved back to Denver during COVID, and we both walked up to the top without any problems – this was 2 weeks after I had heart surgery.
We gave up on the summit, which I did not really care about, and I staggered around for a while photographing the friendly Mountain Goats for a while. That’s all I really wanted to do anyway. I also decided that maybe I should spend some time at a lower elevation for a while, before heading up to the high country again. Good idea.
Colorado has a number of great state parks along the foothills, all at more reasonable altitudes (6000′ or so), and I focused on these for a few days. Roxborough State Park has stunning vista’s, with large formations of red sandstone. Lots of nice, long, relatively easy trails to wander around (as in parents with strollers….I have no pride). I also spent a nice day in Castlewood Canyon, a bit higher up, with trails meandering along cliffs and down into a shaded river canyon.
To cap off my altitude stamina training, my next hike was to a park which brought back some not so great memories from my rock climbing days – Eldorado State Park. Gorgeous place – this was my rock climbing hangout when I was into that crazy stuff. It’s also where I had to be rescued after a disasterous fall one pleasant summer afternoon….picture Clint Eastwood in the Eiger Sanction.
So, after a week of training, I was ready to try my luck at over 10K again. Off to Rocky Mountain National Park, and Trail Ridge Road. RMNP is still one of my favorite parks, even if like most other National Parks, you have to buy passes for a specific time period during peak travel months. It has just about everything – peak climbing (Longs Peak…14K), rock climbing, various level of trails for hikers, and the highest continuous road in the lower 48. It also has great wildlife viewing, with a bighorn sheep, deer, elk and moose wandering around in different parts of the park. I have done quite a few peaks climbs in RMNP, and my wife and I used to go there frequently, just for light hiking and wildlife viewing.
So, now that I was (hopefully) acclimated to altitude once again, I headed off with my friend to do a few short hikes at 10K. It was a cloudy, drizzly and cold day – but worth it for the views. Nothing major in terms of hikes, but it was nice to be able to make it up some of the short tourist walks at 11,000′ without coughing up a lung or two.
This was a comfortable trip for me, given my mental condition. I was staying with close friends, in a place I was intimately familiar with. No surprises here. It was a great trip all around – I discovered that being outdoors, hiking on trails, taking photographs, was a happy place for me – I was able to focus on the tasks at hand, a needed respite from what I’d been going through the past year. I understood now, why many widows/widowers adopted a travel lifestyle, and decided this too was my future.
The Traveling Widower 