Henrietta Hay's Column

Thanks to my ongoing battle with clutter I recently found a copy of a letter, which I wrote to my kids back in 1971 about a mountain I almost climbed. It brought back a lot of memories. There are 53 mountain peaks in Colorado over 14,000 feet. So many people have climbed all of them that I am told there are well-worn trails to the summits. I never made it to the top of any of them on foot.

My one and only venture to the top of a fourteener took place a very long time ago. My Illinois grandparents spent many summers with us when I was small, and they loved to spend part of the time at Manitou Springs. Not surprisingly, they had to try out the cog railroad up Pikes Peak and one year they took me along. The only thing I can remember about it is that it couldn't hold a candle to the roller coaster at Elitch's.

Some years later I got within sight of the top of Mt. Evans. At that time the automobile road went only as far as Echo Lake. Even going that far was an adventure in the old Hudson, but we made it. Sure enough, if you could yell loud enough, there really was an echo.

A much more recent trip, some 20 years ago, took me within sight of the top of another Fourteener. I was visiting with some friends who have a cabin at Howard. He is a rock hound and wanted to show me his favorite crystal deposit, which is on the top of Mt. Antero in the Collegiate Range.

Mt. Antero is the Colorado mountain most noted for gems and minerals and is the highest mineral locality in North America. My friend told me that in 1970 a group of rock hounds doing their thing near its crest found a spot, which quickly became a hole, in which they found hundreds of aquamarines along with rock crystals and smoky quartz. He said that when the hole was discovered you couldn't take a deep breath in it because it was so crowded. He wanted to "get back into that hole one more time before snowfall."

So he and his wife and I took off in their Scout to see the hole. When we left the pavement, we had about 15 miles of fairly good road until we came to a sign, which said, "This is not a public road --impassable." Of course, we turned into it immediately. That sign is about 5000 feet above sea level, and seven miles later on what was originally a trail for mule drawn wagons, Mt. Antero tops out at 14,269.

We immediately went into low low and stayed there. The boulders were fair size (like medicine balls for example) but we either straddled them or went around them. Most of the time I thought of Richard Halliburton's reason for climbing the Matterhorn. If I had leaned out the window I could have spit a mile. On the few fairly level stretches there were streams so clear we drank out of them.

Eventually we emerged from the trees and there was Antero in her utter barren, ferocious, lonely majesty -- 3000 feet straight up. Now I am no flatlander, but when I saw that trail to the top, the one designed for mules, the one he intended to drive up in his Scout, I announced that I wouldn't go up that road if he paid me in gold bullion. My reputation for cowardice was intact.

Anne and I split off at timberline. I will never forget the absolute beauty of that afternoon as we walked through the talus. There were tiny wild flowers growing out of the rock, and icy streams underfoot. From that spot we could see seven mountains over 14,000 feet high, with their barren tops and lovely green flanks. Perhaps it was the altitude, but we became philosophers, discussing eternity, creation and life. This was not long after I had read "The Crystal and the Colloid," and I found myself thinking about my relation to the mountain, about the crystals which had lain there for millions of years and humans just a few years old. Surely without life the mountain would be as nothing. Wouldn't it?

But we had to come back down to earth and the road helped us back to reality literally and figuratively. Although I didn't do it the hard way, or get all the way to the summit, I knew then why men and women climb mountains. One friend who has climbed them all over the world told me the four reasons he does it: The Beauty, The Magnetism of the Mountains, The Challenge, and The Satisfaction.