July 27, 2015

“We’re only a few hundred feet below the summit, and the forecast didn’t call for a storm.” I said to my girlfriend.

“If we get caught in a storm, we could die.”

I swore.

“We’re so close.” I said. My girlfriend and I were standing above the crux of South Maroon Peak’s climb, watching rain clouds form over the Elk Mountains. It’s not a technical climb, but the mountain and its shorter sister peak are nicknamed the Deadly Bells for a reason- they kill people on an annual basis. They’re also notable for being poorly marked, knee and foot torturing slogs.  We left too late in the morning, and we gave ourselves too much time for breaks and photography. We had only ourselves to blame for not having summited.

I was upset because I didn’t know the next time I was going to be in the area. On top of that, it was our last day together before I returned to New Jersey, so there was the pressure not to mar what was supposed to be a perfect day with defeat. She was getting nervous about the weather. I removed my climbing helmet and scratched my head.

“That guy said an hour and a half to the summit, and it’s almost noon.” She said, using a voice I knew that indicated maximum concern. By this point, we were both equal parts hellbent on summiting and concerned about the incoming storm. The clouds were only getting more ominous.

She continued. “We’re at almost fourteen thousand feet. It’s going to take us a long time to get below treeline.” She’s right, of course, but that doesn’t make the idea of coming home empty-handed any more palatable. We’d been hiking and scrambling since before dawn.

“If we start heading down, and the weather holds, we’ll hate ourselves.” I say. The weather clearly wasn’t going to hold, but I was pissed off.

“We’ll really hate ourselves if we get caught in that storm.” She said.

I let out an angry yell and stomp like a five year old. She sighed loudly and slumps into a ball. I ran through options in my head. None of the reasonable ones involved continuing on. We stood frozen in indignant indecision. We realized that we couldn’t continue, but we didn’t have the heart to turn around.

“It’s up to you.” She said.

“We’re turning around.” The words came out of my mouth like

One by one, the pieces were falling into place for the both of us to be in truly foul moods on the hike down. I attempted to cheer her up.

“You know what?” I said.

“Today was an unqualified success. We had fun on the hike up, we did the hardest part of the climb, we can always come back, and we took some great photos.”

I didn’t really believe what I was saying, but the act of saying it made me feel better.

“We had a great time.” She said.

“Best day ever?”

“Best day ever.”

We took some photos and began our descent. We decided that that our inability to summit didn’t negate our efforts, and it saved saved our outlook as we scurried down the mountain in freezing rain.

Most outdoor enthusiasts accept all manner of discomfort in the pursuit of their goal. I’m not an expert mountaineer, and I don’t claim to be one, but I know summit fever affects most of . For many outdoor professionals, there’s a financial aspect to summit fever which I won’t touch on. However, for us amateurs, we’re in the backcountry to be in the backcountry. Besides being unsafe, having a myopic view of what constitutes a successful day of adventuring can be self defeating when you’re surrounded by natural beauty. On the Bells’ sister peak, Pyramid, a series of predawn navigational errors prevented me from getting to the top. My successful second attempt saw me so focused on getting up and down that I forgot to have fun. When we compromise our safety and happiness to achieve an arbitrary goal, we forget the reasons we leave our houses in the first place.