View from a mountain top

When I was in college, over the summer of 1953 I attended the University of Colorado with my older sister, a school teacher working for extra education credits. I studied Shakespeare's plays, contemporary poetry and square dancing (PE credit). At that time they had a wonderful Department of Mountain Recreation that sponsored mid-week hikes up Flagstaff Mountain in Boulder and weekend mountain climbing for novices and amateur climbers. The guides were experienced climbers and also experts in botany (wildflowers), geology (rock formations) and more, an interesting mix of people of all ages and walks of life. My sister had a boyfriend, so I got into the mountaineering, one of the greatest experiences of my young life. I went on many trail hikes and climbed three mountains by the easier routes: first Sawtooth (12,303 feet, then Neva (12,814) (I'm at left in the photo) and Jasper (12,923), which are connected by a ridge. On Jasper we experienced a hail storm with thunder and lightning, the scariest thing I had ever experienced. To descend, we jumped off a cliff sliding down a rope until we landed on a huge snow field. Then we "skied" on our feet to the bottom of the snow field and continued our hike to base camp. Everything about the trip was awesome, but especially the feeling at the summit when I looked out over the majestic Rockies instead of up at them. My little Everest.

Our youngest son loved the Colorado mountains passionately because of our frequent visits to my parents, who had retired to Boulder. We registered him for a survival course with Colorado Outward Bound the summer he was sixteen. My Ohio friends were aghast that we would let him climb mountains at such a young age. I wanted him to experience that feeling I had on top of the mountain and he was thrilled to go. It was a life-changing adventure for him. He eventually went to Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood Springs and finished his degree at Fort Lewis College in Durango, where he now lives.

Along the way, he kept on climbing mountains--too many to name here--and eventually became a part-time instructor, then a course director for Outward Bound Wilderness in Colorado. Recently he was asked to teach courses in rock and mountain climbing at Fort Lewis College. Talk about a dream job....