Who is ready to climb?
Our hiking adventures led us to Colorado for an exciting, and hard, hike where we would try to summit Mount Elbert. It is the second highest mountain in the contiguous United States only behind Mount Whitney in California. Although we had planned to do the hike in one day (AllTrails leading us to believe it would take us an average of 8 hours), we decided to fly out a couple days earlier to get acclimated to the altitude. Mount Elbert’s peak reaches an incredible height of 14,439 feet. The highest we had been was around 6,000 feet at Mount Rainier. We lucked out and had a friend’s family member let us stay with them while we were there. Their house is at about 8,000 feet elevation, so that definitely helped with the altitude.
The first day we flew in, we met up with another friend who was doing the hike with us and headed to the house. It was absolutely gorgeous there! We also decided to do a little hike that first day to stretch our legs after being in an airplane for a little while. I struggled a little bit, but I just took my time and was able to complete it. The views from the top were gorgeous! We finished the day going out to eat for pizza and wings!
The next day, we woke up early to pick up the final two friends who were going to join us on the hike. After we picked them up, we headed out for breakfast. We found a cute little cafe, Four Friends Kitchen. The atmosphere was perfect and our server was fantastic. As I had given up caffeine about a month prior, I opted for a hot chocolate to drink, which let me tell you was fantastic! We also started with some Classic Beignets. These were perfect and had a nice berry preserve and crème on the side for dipping. For our main dishes, my husband had the Chicken and Waffles, and I had the Berries and Cream French Toast. We also split a side of eggs and bacon. Everything was absolutely delicious. We would highly recommend this place.
After breakfast, we all arrived back to the house, and we were on to another hike. This one had a little bit of rock climbing with it. I was actually very impressed with myself on well I did. Again, the views were incredible! We must have burned off our breakfast, since shortly after we headed to Illegal Burger in Evergreen for some burgers!
Our evening was filled with getting our bags all packed for our early morning the next day. We got some snacks and cans of air to help with altitude sickness. Our hosts were also kind enough to prepare us a homemade Mexican meal of steak tacos, fresh guacamole and a really good bean soup. We are truly thankful for the hospitality they gave us!
We finally arrived at our big hike day. We woke up extremely early as we had a couple hour drive ahead of us to reach the trailhead. I believe we got there around 7 am and were ready to get started on the hike. I must not have slept well or something, but I started off rough. I think I made it about a mile in before I started feeling the effects of altitude sickness. I ended up having to turn around and forego the rest of the hike. There were six of us who started the hike, and only three ended up making it to the summit. My husband was luckily one of them, so he was able to share photos and his experience. It did end up taking about 12 hours for them to complete the hike. When everyone made it back down safely, we stopped at a near by town for pizza before heading back to our host’s house. We all definitely slept hard that night!
The next day was our final day in Colorado. We decided to spend some time in Denver before our flights were ready to depart. The four of us who were left headed to lunch at ND streetBAR. It is this really fun restaurant with posters and street art all over the restaurant. The atmosphere was perfect for what we wanted. Our server was also super nice and answered all of our questions. I ended up getting the Kimchi Fried Rice and my husband got the Brunch Burger along with a Hand Pie. For those curious, a Hand Pie is what it sounds like. It was a piece of apple pie that basically fit in your hand. The food was very good! It was exactly what we needed after a big hiking day. We then decided to walk around a little bit and enjoy our free time before heading back home. All in all, we had a very nice time in Colorado and cannot wait to head back for more adventures!
