This has been a crazy year! To sum it up, injuries, snow, and early monsoons! Ugh! We planned another 14er record attempt early and once people commit to it and take vacation time and schedule flights it becomes very difficult to change the intended start date.
I have been driving my crew crazy this year. Going back and forth on whether we will start as planned, delay the start, or just cancel all together. So I just want to apologize to them for all of that.
In the end rather than cancelling the attempt altogether this year I have decided to just go ahead and get started (with a one week delay) and see how it goes…But with a huge DISCLAIMER that because of the conditions I may just decide to call it quits even within the first couple of days. I fully understand the difficult conditions I will face in the mountains this year. All of my scouting trips have been epic with miles of deep snow, slush, avalanches, and early morning lightning storms all taking part.
I have mainly been shaking in my boots because of all the late season snow, but lately the early onset of the monsoons has me scared. One of the reasons I like late June and early July is the likelihood of finishing the record before the nasty lightning storms start to roll through.
Add to all those ominous signs, just two days ago a nasty hailstorm dented all 3 of our cars and caused significant damage to our house, while a tornado actually touched down and caused significant damage about 1/2 mile from my house in Denver. Chris Tomer (thanks Chris!) has been sending me weather updates and his last one sent an ominous tone for the front range as he warned of a cold front moving in to make the monsoons extra wet.
So anyway here we go! I will be starting on June 29th in Chicago Basin. I will be bringing snowshoes and lots of rain gear. I don’t know what is going to happen but I will once again do my best and see if I can put a dent in the 14er record! Thanks to everyone on the team who has been putting up with my unwillingness to commit to a schedule!
I appreciate all of you who decide to follow along. We will do our best to update the blog and keep the 14ers.com thread. I had really intended to be much better organized this year and take up some offers of help from people who followed along last year but with my inability to commit this year I just ran out of time…