How I Ended Up on a Mountain All by Myself (mostly)

The story of the last man on a mountain for the next two years. Seriously.

It turns out that 14,271 feet up in the air is pretty darn high. If you’re flying, by that altitude the captain has told you that it’s safe to turn on your handheld devices (and someone has probably headed for the lav. Already.). But if you’re in Colorado, you are probably on top of Mount Blue Sky, one of the famed 14ers: 58 peaks rising over 14,000 feet.

Blue Sky has been in the news lately. It is the 12th tallest in the state and pretty easy to get to—it’s not far from Denver so hikers often visit, plus you can actually drive almost to the summit and then make a short hike to the top. Of more news is that the mountain has a new name in Blue Sky. It was until last year known as Mount Evans, named for territorial governor and superintendent of Indian Affairs John Evans, who helmed both posts during the horrendous Sand Creek Massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho families on November 29, 1864. Out of respect to both the Arapaho and Cheyenne peoples, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names renamed the mountain.

I have been very serious since joining the United States Forest Service about learning the landscapes here in Colorado and western Kansas that many tribes call home. To me, this is my due diligence. I see it as my obligation to visit these spaces, commune with them as best I can, see what I can understand of them because it is my honor to serve the needs of tribes out here. These places matter to them. And I damn well better get out there and pay them the respect they deserve. I had always had this in mind, but I’ve been encouraged by the folks I’ve been lucky enough to befriend not to just see these spaces, but to feel them as well.

One of the places I had wanted to see was in fact Mount Blue Sky. There are many tribes who call this particular area special, so now that I had a little time on my hands, I thought maybe I could get out here sooner or later. Just one problem: Mount Blue Sky is closed to the public until 2026.

Remember that road you can take almost to the summit? Well, it turns out that Colorado climate is just brutal on roads, especially those that freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw all over again. They get rain and hail and snow and unending sunlight. So the Colorado Department of Transportation, thinking that maybe having decent roads two miles up in the air would be a good thing, made the decision to repair them. This meant that as of Tuesday, September 3, making the summit to see this space would not be possible for two years.

BUMMER.

So what to do? Well, Mount Blue Sky is on US Forest Service land and administered by the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland. (You may remember this as where much of Red Dawn took place.) Now, I don’t work in the ARP. I work for a different set of forests called the Pike-San Isabel National Forests and Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands, which are pretty darn big and majestic in their own rights. But I really wanted to see if I could get up to Blue Sky. So I reached out to the ranger distric there, explained why I’d like to visit the mountain, and asked if there was any chance that I could.

It turns out that my colleagues in the ARP are just wonderful folks and welcomed me to come visit, thinking that we could all benefit from some mutual collaboration. We’d have a window of exactly one day: Thursday, September 5. As with the mountains out here, there was no guarantee that we could make it to the summit, but at least we could try.

I made the three hour drive from Pueblo this morning (everything is a long drive in Colorado. This state is huge). Arriving at the ranger station, I met with the team and we made the drive to the base of the mountain about 15 miles away or so.

One of the things I always tell people now that I’ve had a chance to be in the mountains a little bit is to slow down and enjoy the views on the way up the mountain. There’s often a rush to the summit and you’ll miss some amazing vistas. One of our first stops offered this view, including some bristlecone pine trees, which I was told are over 2,000 years old. Amazing.

Another stop offered this view:

We made our way to Summit Lake Park, which is the highest park by elevation in the United States at 12,830 feet. As you can see, the cloud cover set in pretty good, meaning that we thought we were pretty well done for the day. No need in pushing to the summit in bad weather. But I was happy for the experience and we walked around, getting some really outstanding views. Plus, it snowed.

Ok, so you know what we don’t have in Colorado? Turtles. I haven’t seen a single one since I moved here. But you know what we do have? Marmots.

Marmots are fat groundhog looking things that live where the ground is actually 12,000 feet high. I remember a bunch of them laughing at me and my buddy Eric when we climbed the Spanish Peaks last year. Shitheads. But I digress. Anyway, I’ve decided to embrace marmots. They’re fat, they’re covered in hair. They’re like the parts of Jersey that moved to Florida in the last 15 years. And we were lucky enough to see a bunch of them today. Marmots. Not Jerseyans.¹ I took a bunch of pictures for you.

You know what else we have? Pikas. Don’t know what a pika is? Me either, but they are exceptionally cute. Imagine rabbit-mouse or a mouse-rabbit that lives really high up and its only mission in life is to remind you that you’ve never seen anything so adorable. Folks, pikas understand the assignment. Here’s one.

Nevertheless, we persisted to the summit. We didn’t have a lot of time. I wanted to be a good guest and not impose so I was thankful for the time we had up top. At 14,000 feet you don’t wanna spend a bunch of time fooling around, but I was happy to see an old WPA-looking building that set my little historian heart aflutter. I took this high school yearbook photo there:

And of course we had the short jaunt up top to be the only folks up there for the next two years. And yeah, the pics were worth it.

So that’s it. A great day on Mount Blue Sky in Colorado. I met some great colleagues and learned more about the tribes I am fortunate to serve. Not a bad way to spend a Thursday.

1. Pro tip: don’t stand downwind of Jersey. That explains Philadelphia.