Home again, Home again

It's very hard to blog when you can't hook your laptop up to that sweet, sweet internet juice. Not that I terribly mind not blogging, or not spending 5 hours a day on the internet everyday for two weeks. That was kind of nice. When I'm in Colorado I get in a Luddite funk where I want to reject all technology, which works out since half the time I have no cell service or internet anyway.

Part of "not being plugged in" means "spending time with other humans." Who, in this case, just happen to be my family. Everyone gathered from seemingly all points of the earth for my famous grandparents' famous 50th-anniversary-and-shed-cleaning. That's how we do things--we're very practical: let's have a party AND ALSO get some work done.
Meanwhile, we decided to hike Mount Marcellina, which is on Kebler Pass, near Crested Butte. For those of you unfamiliar with Colorado, that's code for "it's in a gorgeous place." (We picked wild raspberries on the side of the road, if you need proof.) Marcellina itself, however, is sort of terrifying looking (as you can see). And a little terrifying to hike. There's no trail, and half the hike is a scramble over sliderock which is, according to my sagacious grandfather, "slicker than shit through a tin horn."

But it starts out so innocently, it's easy to convince yourself the hike will be a piece of cake. See? a pretty flower!
And look how happy everyone is! Look how the sun shines! This will be easy-peasy.
But. But. But he wasn't lying about that sliderock. And the other half of the hike is an all out, straight up, scramble through the brambles, pulling yourself up a sheer face by grabbing on to the trunks of scrub oaks and other shrubs, and then using the base of those trunks as "steps" to go further up. As Mita said, "Well, I needed to reopen the cuts on my legs." It's a badge of honor.
I was at the head of the pack and there are seven people hiking directly behind me in this picture. Can you see them? Neither could I. We had to continually play "Marco Polo" to make sure that the people in the back hadn't plummetted off the mountain face to their demise. Or something like that.

However, when we made it through the scrub, and up to the sliderock, the view was breathtaking, and I billygoated my way to the top of the nearest rock for a better look. Here is my family on the ground below:

And here is the valley. It's a shame that no camera can ever really capture what you see up there. Colorado Rocky Mountain Hiiiiiiiiiighhhhhh...

After monkeying our way up nearly to the top, the lightning began. Lightning has a funny way way of declaring: "YOU HAVE REACHED THE SUMMIT! CONGRATULATIONS! GO HOME NOW" when you're up at 11,000 ft and feel a little like a human lightening rod. Just as we got to the bottom of the sliderock, the sky opened up and it rained as hard as I've ever seen it rain in Colorado. So... rather than climbing up the brush like a ladder, now we're sliding down it... in buckets of rain.

At one point I lost my footing while holding the trunk of a young Aspen and slipped about ten feet down the side of the mountain. The whole tree bent over and I slid down the trunk, hanging from it with both hands, yelling, "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!" like a girlie Tarzan.

About 30ft down the hill I heard my Aunt Tanya yell back, "WOOO HOOOOOOO!"

And then it began to hail on us. Yes, hail, as Colorado is wont to do in July at high elevations. If you're wondering why I didn't take any pictures of everyone rolling down the mountain in the rain... that's why.

But when the rain cleared up and we got back to base of the mountain, where the scrub oaks are only waist-high, and the mules ears smell so good, and everything is normal, and you don't feel like gravity is your enemy anymore, we looked behind us and saw that the peak where we had been standing not 20 minutes before had turned into a flash waterfall. There was another waterfall on the west side of the peak. Both of them were gone by the time we got back to the car.

I've never seen anything like it in my life.

Perhaps the best part is that, unanimously, when we got back to the cars, everyone in my family said, "that was awesome!!" Except maybe one rebel, who said something like, "God, I have to pee." But you get the point. They're good people, my folks. If I was ever in a pickle, they're the ones I'd want to be stuck with.