Well it's nearly the end of April here in Colorado as it also is almost everywhere else in the rest of the world right now, and so naturally last night I paid little attention to the weather forecast and crawled right into my tent and fell asleep expecting just another regular night out in the woods—in the morning I'd wake up to maybe a few scattered patches of snow here and there assuming none of the gods opted to smite me in my slumber and then I'd make my usual breakfast of instant coffee and some hashbrowns with scrambled eggs onions and of course hot sauce. Now, those with any reasonable understanding of what it's like to live at 8,000 feet above sea level will perhaps not be surprised to hear that I did not experience quite what I expected to experience. And so it was that sometime between 3 and 4am I awoke to the soft insistent sound of heavy wet flakes crashlanding on my rainfly, and I realized that my tent was actually in a bad state of being about halfway collapsed under what seemed to be approximately one or so feet of very wet spring snow. Cursing the gods for delivering me unto such an unfair state of weather affairs, I extracted myself from the disaster waiting to happen, confirmed the amount of snow was about one or so feet, postholed over to the spot next to my car where I was pretty sure I'd left the big stick I've been using to prop up the rear hatch door ever since the lift supports kicked the bucket, successfully unsnowed the big stick, and then proceeded to use it as an improvised shoveling device to madly excavate the area around my severely at-risk backcountry bedroom before it imploded and totally ruined my life. There isn't much more to the story—that's really about it, but instead of wrapping this thing up I'm just gonna keep rambling my way along right onto this conveniently located downward spiral staircase into what I suspect is some sort of deep-seated psychosocially dysfunctional state of mind in which I'm at considerable risk of complete cognitive collapse under the stress of existence in much the same way that my aforementioned tent was at risk of complete functional collapse under the stress of wintertime precipitation. Hmmm. This analogy strikes me as bit too easy and uninteresting to bother exploring any further. Those with any reasonable understanding of what it's like to be a writer with chronic writers block and a very mild and 100% manageable case of alcohol dependency will perhaps not be interested in bothering to explore it either. And so it was that sometime between 3 and 4pm I threw back the last of my beer, shat out a few more words to get this thing just a little bit over that magical 500 mark, closed out my bar tab, smashed my way through the swinging saloon doors and went sashaying down main street mostly sloshed with my middle finger way up in the air aimed at the gods as all the clouds above began to softly swirl and twist together in happy nontrepid preparation for tonight's half an inch max.
Hey that's a really nice wordcount you got there. Glad it didn't get snowed under.
Thank you. It was close but fortunately the worst case scenario was avoided. !BEER
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BEER.That tent could take many more inches I am sure of it!
You should have seen it before I cleared all the snow off ;)
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Lol!
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BEER.Hey @meesterboom, here is a little bit of
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BEER.I understand that feeling of having your tent crushed by snow and I think you have wonderfully encapsulated it in this story of at least 500 words.
Thank you for the comment. Would you believe that two days later all of that snow has melted away, much like my recollection of ever having written this story of at least 500 words in the first place? April weather is weird.
Living at 8000 will take your breath away sometimes. I spent most of my time in college trying to drink my way past writer's block. Didn't work but it did get me into rehab before I ever turned 21. Which didn't work either but did give me a shiny new hatred for twelve stepper bullshit. At this point I should probably write something encouraging but neither of us would believe it anyways, so yeah, FUCK YOU
WEATHERGODS!I lived at 10000 for like 4 years and just about lost my mind. I feel like 8000 is a bit more reasonable but the atmospheric oxygen concentration is still probably too low here for optimal writing conditions. The scenery is outstanding though, so maybe it balances out? At least until you die of a pulmonary edema while trying to get that sick mountain sunset shot for your next blog post.
I went to AA a few years back because I couldn't afford rehab and figured it would be a good free alternative. Man, fuck that idiotic bullshit. AA is basically church for alcoholics. I know they have good intentions but so do most people who go to church, and look how much damage the church has done over the centuries. Goddamn if the whole AA experience didn't just make me want to drink even more.
nonalcoholic !BEER time
Wandering that ghost town by Independence Pass, I couldn't figure out how anybody could live at 10K for long periods of time. I know it's doable but I damn sure wouldn't want to. Where were you at when you were at 10K? You know HAPE or HACE is just a small price to pay for that sort of scenery...
AA just pissed me off. I was still in grade school when I came to the conclusion that God fit nicely in with Santa and the Easter Bunny in the 'lies the grownups told me' category. Being told I had to ask a higher power to make me not want to drink just seemed patronizing and insulting. Half the AA meetings I went to I just came away with new ways of talking myself into drinking again. They started to be much more enjoyable once I started getting baked beforehand. Then I realized getting baked did a lot better job of making me not want to drink and I just stopped going entirely.
Well in most cases towns that high only existed because of the mining activity during the Colorado Boom Days that started around 1860 and extended into the early 1900s, but you probably already know it was because of the mining. I lived in Leadville which is two miles high and was founded during a gold rush. I have been out exploring in the mountains all over this area and it's common to find old cabins way up near treeline along with mining ruins at like ~12000 feet. People would work and live at that elevation long term. Not surprisingly a miner's lifespan was often rather short.
I bought the lie till I was about 20. Wish it hadn't taken that long but I'm grateful it didn't take me longer.
Silicosis, elevation, they had all the fun stuff to deal with. I wonder if they did the 'company town' thing there like they did back in the hills where I'm from? I only drove through Leadville on my way to Aspen but it seemed to have the same decaying, depressing, desperate for the tourist dollar vibe that my hometown has. You ever do the Leadville 100?
I was lucky, nobody in my family gave a rat's ass for religion and we were surrounded by people who overindulged in it. Kinda like hanging out in a bar when you're not drinking, it was a good object lesson in why you don't want to participate.
Unfortunately, Leadville has since turned that old tired look around in a remarkable way. Most working class people can't even afford to live there anymore because the housing and rental markets have exploded. You're lucky to find a piece of shit studio for $1000/month. Half the town is second homeowners and Airbnbs now. There are fucking Teslas driving around town, you certainly didn't see that 10 years ago. Leadville was awesome when I first moved there, but now its appeal is drastically reduced for me because it's turning into just another ski town for the wealthy. I prefer my mountain towns rough and desperate, and Leadville isn't like that anymore.
I've never run the Leadville 100 myself but I've paced other runners overnight several times throughout the years. It's an iconic race for sure but I think it's way overpriced and a bit too full of itself for me to be interested. Only way I'd ever run it would be if they comped me in which is never gonna happen.
What's that?
I was passing through in 2017, it didn't seem like it had quite made it to that point yet but it was damn sure trying. Another Boulder with even less oxygen?
Sounds like the Appalachians are your kind of place. I used to make more working as a server in Louisville than the median household income back where I grew up. Plenty of poverty, meth, and jesus but not much else. It's just down the road from Red River Gorge and they're trying to similar shit to get tourist money but they're not having much luck as of yet.
I run into a European couple at a hostel in Silverthorne that were getting ready to compete in it. Fuck running at that altitude...
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BEER.Hey @coloneljethro, here is a little bit of
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BEER.The tent please.
If it has uncapped highspeed bandwidth send a pin or a helicopter asap