I flew from Tampa to Colorado Springs on Saturday 7/12. I called Mary to make final arrangements for our backpacking trip, then picked up propane for my stove (more about this later), groceries for the backpack, and dinner from McD's. On Sunday I got up for the free breakfast at the Quality Inn, then stumbled back to the room until checkout at 11.

I drove to the post office to meet Mary, then we went to the airport to drop off my rental car and threw everything in her Jeep Cherokee. We headed for Durango, stopping in Walsenburg for lunch from Subway while a long train rumbled across the only road through town (see Culebra Peak for similar experience). It was a hot & sunny day.

We arrived in Durango at 5:30, checked into the Best Western Rio Grande, picked up our train tickets, and went to a fine dinner at Henry's in the Strater Hotel. Then we finished packing our backpacks for the next day's hike.

On Monday we got up at 6, got another free breakfast, and hauled our packs (via Jeep) to the train station. I watched the packs while Mary parked the Jeep several blocks away. Then we threw the packs on the train and took our seats for the 2.75-hour ride through town and a deep gorge to the wilderness drop-off at Needleton.

The conductors threw all the packs and backpackers off the train, and Mary & I started up the trail at 11:00 ahead of the others. The 6-mile trail up to Chicago Basin gradually got higher, steeper, hotter and buggier. I was struggling from the altitude change and Mary had to wait patiently for me to catch up several times.

Eventually we arrived at the extreme lower end of Chicago Basin, and I was exhausted and having dizzy spells, so we picked out a campsite, set up our tents at 4:30, and napped a bit.

I drank as much as I could and had some beef jerky, then started getting ready to cook dinner. I took the cap off the propane canister and started to screw the stove onto it when I noticed it didn't have any threads. Oops, wrong gas can. Next time I will try it out before I pack it in.

Anyway, no amount of jury-rigging would make it work, so we walked uphill to a camp of 4 Philadelphians and traded a liter of freshly-filtered water for two cups of boiling water (THEIR stove WORKED). That was enough to make our freeze-dried chicken & rice. Not very tasty, but it was food. Then we organized our daypacks for climbing the next day and went to bed.

Tuesday at 4:15 we were both up. We each had a pop-tart for breakfast, dressed for climbing, and started hiking at 4:50. It was more than a mile from our low campsite to the turnoff for Twin Lakes, then very steep uphill for 1300'. I couldn't keep up so we got out our walkie-talkies and Mary went on ahead. She got to the lakes and took the first right-hand trail up towards Windom Peak. By the time I got to the lakes she was approaching the Windom saddle.

I took the second right-hand trail and headed toward the basin between Windom & Sunlight Peaks. Meanwhile Mary neared the summit of Windom but was having trouble locating the route. I said 'take your time', she did, and shortly afterwards she summited. Yay!

I moved up to a shelf at 13,300' and she came down a steep snow-and-rock couloir to meet me. At some point she dropped her walkie-talkie, and though she was able to retrieve several pieces, it was not enough to make it work again. Fortunately by that time we were in yelling distance. When she got down to where I was, we took a short break and then contoured around the basin and into the red couloir on Sunlight.

We went to the top of the couloir, turned left and contoured for a bit, then turned right and back up again, following cairns. There was some difficult scrambling in this part, and about 200' below the summit my legs couldn't stretch far enough to do some of the moves, so Mary continued on alone to the top. While she was climbing, I was shooing a pesky marmot away from my pack.

Yay! She made her second summit! Then we descended back to the red couloir, and angled our way back down into the basin toward the lakes. At a waterfall above the lakes we tried to replenish our water supply, but it took a while to make the filter work. Finally we refilled our bottles and headed back to the lakes, where we took a long break and watched clouds rolling in. We decided to try Eolus tomorrow, and headed back down to camp, arriving at 3:45.

It was raining on and off, so we stayed in our tents all afternoon. The Philly guys were gone, so we experimented with making freeze-dried chili-macaroni palatable with cold water. It wasn't bad, and we polished off the whole thing. I was still exhausted and nauseous and I went to bed at 6:30.

Mary was up at 4, I was up all night, so we had cold oatmeal for breakfast and started back up to the lakes at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday. I was completely useless - I made it about 2/3 of the way up to the lakes and took a long break, but couldn't climb any more, so I went back to the tents, taking flower pictures along the way.

Meanwhile, Mary got up to around 13,800' on Mt. Eolus before calling it a morning. She was back in camp by 10:00, and suggested that we try to make it back down in time to catch today's train back to Durango. So we packed camp and got back down the hot, sunny, buggy trail at 1:30, then waited by the tracks for the 3:00 train.

At 2:15 it started to rain and we took shelter as best we could until the train arrived at 3:10. The Bad Conductor didn't want to let us on because our return tickets were for the next day, but the Good Conductor welcomed us and gave us our own private baggage car to ride in.

On Thursday Mary got up early and ran errands while I slept in (until 7:30). Then we packed up again and hit the road. We drove through Silverton, Ouray and Ridgeway, then turned east on a scenic dirt road to Cimarron.

We arrived back in Durango at 5:30 to find all the in-town hotels full, so we went up the road and found the barely-adequate 'Day's End' motel. We washed up and drove back into town for a second fine dinner at Henry's, then went to bed around 10:30.

We had lunch at the Cimarron Cafe and drove on through Hotchkiss and Carbondale up to a condo in Snowmass. We picked up a pizza and salad at the nearby mall and watched TV, Ah, civilization!

On Friday we were up at 6 and had a light breakfast, then left at 7 and drove up to Independence Pass where we took a short hike. We saw some immature bighorns on the descent into Buena Vista, and drove straight back to Colorado Springs, where Mary dropped me off at the airport and I picked up a car. She went home and I drove to Salida and got the last room at the Super 8.

Saturday I was up at 6 and went to the free breakfast at 6:30. I checked out at 7 and drove to Poncha Springs, then south on 285 to a dirt road leading to Marshall Pass. From just below the Pass (at 10,800', where I saw more bighorns) at 8:00 I bushwhacked up onto the west ridge of Mt. Ouray (13,971'). Just above treeline I saw a deer.

I hiked the long treeless ridge to the base of the summit cone, then scrambled up steep but reasonably solid rocks to the summit at 11:20.

I took a long lunch break, then noticed the clouds were starting to build, so I started down at 11:55. About halfway down the cone I could hear thunder in the distance, so I ran the exposed 2-mile ridgeline as fast as I could to get back into the trees.

I aimed towards the Pass and bushwhacked down, arriving about 100 yards below where my car was parked. It was raining by this time, but the thunder was still distant. I hopped in the car and drove carefully down the slick muddy road to Poncha Springs, where I picked up chocolate milk and Squirt before driving back to Colorado Springs in the expanding thunderstorm.

I arrived at the airport Comfort Inn at 5, washed up, made calls, ordered a Mexican dinner that I couldn't finish, and went to bed at 10:30. Sunday I got up at 5:40, checked out at 6:30, and flew home to Tampa via Dallas. The shuttle ride from the airport to my house took over two hours because there were 5 other frustrated people on board and I was the last drop-off.

Take me back to Gary's Base Camp.