Pike Climb

     A few weeks ago my friend Dave suggested that we climbed Pike's Peak before he graduated from the academy. I quickly agreed with him, but the real question was when we should do it. As a Sophomore/ Junior I still had two long years at the academy to climb 14ers, but Dave's time at the country club was waning to days. We decided that we would climb Pike's Peak the next day since it was the weekend after finals, and there is nothing like frozen mountainous tundra to put a 26 credit semester behind you. Apparently the sun rise from the top of Pike's Peak is pretty amazing so we decided that whatever time we left we would climb to the top before the 5:15 sunrise. Not wanting to wake up early we decided to leave the day before around 11:30.

   It's tradition to go to REI before any big hike to pick up unnecessary hiking supplies. Keeping with tradition Dave and I went to the local REI in Colorado Springs.  

 The reports we got from some friends that had been up recently  noted between three and seven inches of snow so I went to the REI looking for some gaiters. Apparently the gaiters would help keep snow out of my shoes up to a few inches above your shoe/boot which didn't really matter since there was actually a foot of snow up there. I walked out of the store with the Black Diamond Storm head lamp which I needed since we hiked up in the dark. The light worked great it illuminated up to 100 feet in front of us so we didn't take a wrong step. It also has a red light setting, but there was too much moonlight for it to be helpful. I want to try out the red-light setting as an evasion instructor.

We started our hike from the Crags trail head near Divide, Colorado. It's about a hour away from the Academy. Dave and I argued most of the time about entering the way points into the GPS. I think we were both too exhausted to deal with the GPS at 12 am. Instead we just entered the way point for the summit, courtesy of 14ers.com, and the parking-lot coordinates. It worked out pretty well, but we winged a-lot of the hike so we ended up on some questionable terrain. Visibility was limited as we hiked from The Crags to the tree line, but the path winded through pine trees at a pretty steep grade.  We stopped a few times for food breaks so that we weren't completely depleted of energy once we reached the top. After about an hour of hiking and breaking we emerged through the treeline to stare at an unending ski-slope. It was steep enough that we slid down on our butts in a fraction of the time it took to climb up. Butt sledding turned out to be a bad idea for Dave since it tore his pants. On the way up we stopped for a break to look at Woodland Park below which we seemed to be towering over. The pitch-black sky was illuminated with billions of bright stars which is not a typical site in the DC area. At the top of the "ski slope" our elevation was about 12000 feet which was a 2000 ft climb from the parking lot according to my GPS. 

 This is a photo of the "ski slope", it goes on forever.  Dave took it from the tree line on the way down.

After the ski slope we hiked through frozen tundra to  reach the road that leads to the peak. It was filled with boulders and shin deep snow. We noted that there were bear tracks in the snow next to our own when we came back down. We were hoping the bear wasn't around on the way down. Past the bear prints the footing was questionable, one misstep could leave you tumbling into a valley. 

The road was relatively boring, but we were enthusiastic since the grade wasn't too bad, and there were no "boulder fields". After a mile or so on the road the grade became pretty steep, and it winded around

an infinite number of peaks. To cope I began intervals of sprawling out on the road face down, eating Pringles, and hiking 100 yards. As I abandoned the road to climb the slightly easier cog rail road I continued to wonder how David's family climbed this in their mamoth 15 passenger van. 

The Road                                                                    The Cog railroad, notice the precipice to it's right.

After only a few minutes of following the cog railroad we reached the top at 14115 ft. The Cog railroad takes up thousands of people every summer to the top. Many climbers on 14ers.com complain about it as a tourist trap, but if they climb at below zero temps like Dave and I they won't have to worry about tourists being at the top since everything is closed. I tried to cook an MRE at the top, but the heat source wouldn't work since it was so cold. On the way down Dave and I saw two hikers and a few at the Crags, but that was it for the entire hike. We took a total of 9 hrs to hike the 12.5 mile climb. Below are some photos Dave took at the top. The first is the sunrise from the top.    

GPS info: My GPS is in storage, but I'll update with the way oints when I acess it.       

Spring 2011

I think a majority of the students at the academy either shudder at the prospect or their past experience of the daunting spring semester of sophomore year. Many say that it is likely to be the hardest, most challenging period of our time at USAFA. We take the second year of Physics, Chemistry, a hybrid mutant of Linear Algebra and Differential Equations, as well as manning the CQ desk around the clock. Trying to avoid absolutes my advisor and I were determined to take 8 classes this semester, 25-26 credit hours. I didn't think that would be too much of a challenge since many of the classes were fuzzy classes like Econ, Law and Spanish.
I missed the first four days of the semester because of the Botswana trip which didn't sit well with a-lot of the professors. As an example I emailed a Chemistry assignment from Botswana because of the very strict late policy that the Department maintains. I failed the, clearly perfect, assignment because it was emailed to the instructor. He told me that it was too much work for him to print out my assignment and grade it, but he was glad I didn't turn it in late..... Needless to say I had a rocky start to the semester, but it would only get better from there.
Although it caused me to be extraordinarily busy, debate took me across the United States this year through 9-10 tournaments. The first of my three favorite tournaments was our trip to Burlington Vermont for the United States University Debate Championship. The University of Vermont is located on beautiful Lake Champaign in a suppeeerrr liberal small tourist town. Most notably to me it is the home of the Ben and Jerry's factory as well as their first store. For those of you who know me at all you probably know ice cream is my favorite staple food. My infatuation and love of ice cream was however outshined by my friend Everett’s favorite food. On the trip to the Denver Airport Everett was determined that Vermont was known for waffles part of Everett favorite duo chicken n' waffles. We were all kind of confused since Vermont is known for Maple syrup, Ben and Jerry's and very open people. Everett stunned at the lack of logic in the vehicle explained that Vermont is known for syrup; therefore, it must be known for the medium, waaaaaaaaffles. So for the rest of the trip he was looking for waffles and maple syrup. Besides food the tournament was great. The debaters represented the top schools in both the U.S. as well as the U.K. bringing multiple perspectives as well as amazing talent. All of our teams did well; two of the senior teams to include myself were four points from breaking to the out rounds at the tournament so hopefully next year we will make it that far. Our novice teams also did great they missed breaking to the novice out rounds by a slim margin. I think they would have enjoyed debating the topic, “This house would allow brothels on military installations"; like I said there are very open people in Burlington. At the end of the tournament there were some parties at the local club. I think we missed out on most of the fun since we were eating out relatively late and we were still in debate clothes. At the end of the trip we went to IHOP so Everett disappointingly settled for their chicken n waffles.




     My second favorite trip, in no particular order, was to San Francisco with my friend Dave. This was a bit of a spontaneous trip, it was canceled at first because of the government shut-down, but eventually we were given funds to go. So the trip consisted of just myself Dave, and our coach. Dave and I went 10-0 at the tournament winning in the final on a 2-1 decision. This win secured a bid to the 2011 National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence which only invites the top 60 teams in the nation to compete. I always have a great time at the University of the Pacific, because of its wonderful campus, but this year the tournament ended relatively early so we were able to spend a day in San Francisco. We spent all of our time at Fisherman's Wharf eating a ton of seafood at pier 39. I think my favorite part of the tournament was returning to school Sunday afternoon and still having Monday off.

A few weeks ago we concluded the season with the annual "Dean's Team" dinner at the Dean's house. There were tons of burritos and desserts at the dinner, and we weren't in uniform so it was much less intimidating than usual. There was also a surprise appearance by General Clark which was interesting. He was explaining how he is trimming my class down which was a bit awkward. At the end of the dinner it was great to hear the Dean list off all of our accomplishments this year. To include top-twenty team in the nation, and NPTE qualifier. The Dean made sure we were back studying ion our rooms by 7:45 so that we didn't miss ACQ.

Now that I have made it through sophmore year there are a-lot of cool things I am able to do in the future. Most notably I am transferring to the US Coast Guard Academy for the semester which should be interesting. Additionally this summer I am going to Greece, Bulgaria, and Istanbul to learn about international migration which is good because I am doing an, ENG-499. Independent study about rhetorical empowerment and international migration concluded with a speech at the National Literature Convention in New Orleans.         

    

  P.S. Colorado Runner's Guide has hit the treadmill due to feet issues :-)