So we stop at a cairn to have some scrum-diddily-umptious (I just wrote that word to see if I could. I couldn’t) Balance Bars, which, surprisingly enough, still taste like it came out the back of a Pudgeweasel. I have about a quarter of one and it doesn’t get any better. I was going to have a cliff shot, but I decided to save the best for last. So if you haven’t been keeping track, the only thing I’ve eaten in 10 hours, and hours to come, is a quarter of a Balance Bar. That’s a recipe for bonkage (if anyone knows what part of speech a word ending with -age is, please email my mom at woodfairy@adelphia.net. I am completely serious, and that doesn’t happen often).
We head up the trail tediously for longer than planned, and eventually get to a group of people hammering temporary trail markers into the unforgiving rock and sand. For the last thousand feet I was wondering what those little markers were for. They had scrawled on them: XX 2+100 (XX being initials of some kind) and the number 2 rose by one every 100 feet. Anyways, they are hammering these little stakes into the ground after measuring it out with a tape measure. We ask what for, and they said it was a week-long project to mark the trail for renovation. I am completely out of it by this point though. I was running on fumes.
The rest of the trail could’ve been the coolest portion of a 14er I’ve ever done, but it wasn’t fun then. Every rock I stubbed my toe on made me think, why put myself through this? Then we got to the top. I Hastily unzipped the portion of my dad’s pack that held all the goodies. Once I polished off my second Cliff Shot, I looked at my options: A high protein bar that probably sucked a peanut butter power bar, and prunes. I figured, how bad could they be? Not bad at all, I discovered after my first one. They’re pretty good, at least when you’re hungry. We ate and then head on out. I felt good.
I wasn’t feeling good anymore. The trail was steep and had oddly scattered rocks and I kept on stubbing my toe and tripping, but never actually falling. The closest I came was when I did a Neo and was parallel to the ground, but grabbed a rock with my right hand and righted myself. From there I was too scared to actually run. I kept on having this feeling of being out of control. I walked down to timberline for what seemed like hours. It might have been hours. Then we got to Teletubby Land and urinated, and had to cut ourselves off as a couple people rounded a bend in the trail.
Timberline was easy and fun until we ran out of water. Even then it was fun, just uncomfortable. But, in the end, we made it down to the safety and comfort of the truck, finished off an eight-pack of Gatorades and waded in a mountain stream that was on the edge of being ice, and drove back to the Hostel. I should really learn to eat more. Nick out.
Getting to the Mt. Massive trailhead: From U.S. 24 just south of Leadville, turn onto Colorado 300 and cross the railroad tracks. Drive 0.7 mile and turn left onto County Road 11 toward the Halfmoon Creek. After another 1.2 miles, turn right on the dirt road to Halfmoon Creek. Drive on for 5 miles to the Mt. Elbert trailhead on the left and then 1/2 mile past the Mt. Elbert trailhead is the Mount Massive Trailhead on the right. Overflow parking for the Mt. Massive trailhead is on the left side of the road just prior to the main trailhead parking.
