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Monday, April 20, 2015

Q: Quandary Peak




For the letter Q, which I thought I might have trouble filling, I bring you: Queets Mountain, the Quinault River (valley), and the Quilcene range, all part of the Olympic Mountains in Washington state (see "O"). Also Queen Charlotte Sound, which is in British Columbia, along the coast and is more or less a fiord--which I would say fits the "mountains and valleys" theme.

But most of all, I bring you Quandary Peak, Colorado. Why? Because it's the first I climbed that was over 14,000'. Actually, though I spent many nights last summer over 14,000', Quandary is still the only summit I've been on that was up so high.

So here it is, even though as peaks go, it's not really anything wildly special. Except they all are.

Elevation: 14,271'
Location: Colorado, USA. Rocky Mountains, near Breckenridge
Climb: trail walk
When: I climbed it in Sept. 2012, with a large party of friends from an internet backpacking forum. Several of us had flown from sea level the day before. I don't recommend that.

Quandary is the 13th highest of the 53 Colorado summits over 14,000'

Nice reminder. It's a walk, but things happen at high elevations.
Running out of trees. What you see up above is...almost...the summit.
There was a lot of company on the trail. Some of it was better-looking than others.
The scene on the summit.
Our gang on the summit. I can't help noticing that the sign has the elevation wrong.
Literary tie-in: not this peak, but the Rockies of Colorado. Check out A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird. She was a 19th-Century adventurer, who at home was too sick to do anything, but somehow managed to travel the world, ride horses up the Rockies, and climb some of their summits. She wrote a number of books about her travels--what we today would call Adventure Travel (it all was, then!).

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015





10 comments:

  1. YOU are AMAZING! Wow! Was it over one day or several?

    Maui Jungalow

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    1. That was a dayhike. 10 miles or something, if I recall. We were all pretty trashed afterwards; I remember that it was a party camp-out but that I had one drink after dinner and went to bed :D

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  2. Good one, I managed to vine a village not far from me begining with Q

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    1. Those can't be that common in England. Obviously the PNW indian languages liked that "qw" sound, because there are a lot of names around there starting that way (as my Mom reminded me when I was struggling to find something).

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  3. My stomach is rolling just looking at those pictures--probably not a good climb for people with fear of heights.

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    1. That wasn't an edgular climb at all, Melanie (to use a word we coined back in my Seattle peak-bagging days in the 80s. We rated peaks as "facely" or "edgular" or maybe just "is there a good chance I will die today?"). Just a walk up a big round mountain. Up, and up, and up, but the altitude was the real problem, not any fear of falling!

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  4. I can imagine the view at the top was worth the trip. Amazing pictures.

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    1. Cool view, and bragging rights helped ease the pain :)

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  5. I remember the time when I used to hike things like that. It was a long time ago!

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    1. Hard to find things quite like that where you live!

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