Hike the 58 14ers (mountains exceeding 14,000 feet) in Colorado

“Favorite attributes from them all: the knife’s edge on Capitol; the red gully bacon strip on Crestone; the hourglass on Little Bear; the plaque on the summit of Challenger; the leap of faith on Pyramid; the views of Leadville, where I lived for 3 years, from Massive; the solitude on Culebra; the views from the summit of Sneffels; everything on the standard route of Longs (including the outhouses in the boulder field) Other favorite memories: the wildflowers on Columbia (and what smelled like a forest of Christmas trees when I first walked into the Horn Fork Basin); summiting Capitol Peak 4.5 months after my joint tibia/fibula fracture; riding the train from Durango to Needleton and backpacking to the Chicago Basin; the countless pika squeaks and sightings; baby marmots playing with one another on Lindsey; my one and only sunrise summit on Bierstadt; only having to drive up Lake Como Road once… …and—most memorable of all—all of the friends and climbing partners I met along this crazy, whirlwind of 5 years.”

“So, it takes a stubborn person. Whether you spend decades or years working on a goal, it’s something that you’re fixated upon completing eventually. “Flexibility can be crucial. Having plan Bs and Cs for the class 3 and 4 peaks is super helpful and makes it easier to adjust on short notice when weather is being weird. “It takes some degree of stupidity, aka reasonably high risk tolerance. You need to be aware of when you’re in a dangerous spot, but also able to mute that part of your brain and proceed calmly and logically (using fear productively as opposed to panicking). “As others have mentioned, I don’t think physical fitness plays into it quite as much. Yes, you definitely want to be sure you’re somewhat acclimated, but folks of all shapes and sizes and different types of fitness have finished the 14ers. If it’s something you value, endurance training certainly helps, and being at low elevation, intervals can help you as well, but those pieces aren’t mandatory per se.”