gotshoo?

Disclaimer: Momma Shoo and Momma GTG, stop reading now. You don’t want to know any of this. You’ll never let us go on vacation together again.

Told you I’m a trooper. A short walk to geocaching sites turned into a three-mile, 7200 foot hike. How did this happen, you ask (especially since I was getting ready to down a couple Sudafed after my last post)?

I did down the Sudafed. We started on our geocaching expedition, and that turned bust really quickly. We didn’t find anything. Shoo asked if I felt up to walking a bit further, and that turned into summitting a mountain while totally high off meds.

We ended up out at the Flatirons, a range that are like foothills to the Rockies. They were created by plate movement, then exposed by erosion. You can actually see the cracks in the cliffs and the boulders that have fallen off. They look quite a bit different from the mountains up in Estes. They’re more crumbly looking, I suppose. Anyway, we ended up summitting the peak of the first Flatiron. (There are five total.)

The hike was much more challenging than our first one out here. It began easily enough…just a bit of an incline, but it quickly got more difficult. I suppose climbing a mountain can’t be a piece of cake. To keep the incline somewhat manageable (if you’re a mountain man with legs the size of my waist who’s been hiking since you were three), the trail cut back and forth. We also had to cross a boulderfield at one point. (We will have pictures later to give you a visual of what I’m talking about.)

Then we managed to take a wrong turn and ended up accidentally clamoring up boulders to scale the mountain. We were about 7000 feet up climbing up the side of a cliff face. (Moms, this is why we told you to stop reading.) We realized our error, and Shooster had to talk me down the side of the mountain. With the Sudafed-head, I wasn’t feeling like I could make it down safely. I won’t lie, it was terrifying. We could look down and see what 7000 feet looks like (really high). We’ll have to show you pictures so you can really get the feel for what we were doing. Again, moms, don’t look!

We found the right trail and continued on our way through a series of switchbacks to finally make the last big push (climbing over boulders with footholes conveniently cut out for us). At the summit, Shoo busted out the video camera, and we made a short video. Then it began thundering (one of those afternoon storms that tend to roll into the mountains), and we hauled bottom to make it down below treeline so we didn’t get fried.

It rained on us a bit on the way down, but nothing too bad. We gulped Gatorade and water when we finally reached the car. Now we’re sitting in Panera (don’t make fun) eating a late lunch and blogging.

We’re off to Colorado Springs next…