Father's Day this year wasn't a card and a cookout. It was eleven miles, 14,440 feet, and a mountain that had no interest in making it easy for us.
The plan started simply enough. My son Anderson wanted to climb a mountain the summer before his senior year of high school. If we were going to do it, I figured we might as well go all the way, Mt. Elbert, the highest peak in the Rockies and the second tallest in the contiguous United States. I started training. He started getting ready in his own way, which mostly involved being seventeen and invincible.
The first mile of the Mt. Elbert trail lulls you. It's manageable. Then the switchbacks begin, the elevation starts stacking, and somewhere around mile 2.8, you break through the treeline and the mountain finally shows you what it is.
We were coming from 735 feet above sea level. Round Rock, Texas. Even after a few days in Santa Fe and Breckenridge to help the body adjust, hitting 12,000 feet on your feet is a different thing entirely. We had already gained 2,000 feet. We had another 2,440 to go. And we had already burned through half our water.
You look up from that point and see what you believe to be the summit, towering above you, impossibly far, and the entire negotiation shifts. It's no longer about enjoying the hike. It's about making a decision.
In all good stories, there's a moment where the character either pushes forward or turns back. We had that moment. We had come a long way. We could see exactly how far was left. We could have turned around and said we tried.
That's not how we're built.
I'll be honest, I had trained for months. Anderson hadn't been able to train the same way, and he had essentially sprinted up and down sand dunes the day before. He was running on empty before we even hit the treeline. But this is what I love about him: there is zero quit in that kid. And he proved it with every step he took above 12,000 feet.
What followed is hard to fully describe. The number of times we stopped to catch our breath. The number of times I said just a few more steps or let's get to that rock or one more push. The wind that pushed back at us. The loose rock underfoot. We were passed by virtually everyone who had started behind us, and some of those same people were already on their way back down while we were still going up. There's something uniquely demoralizing about that.
But every single person coming down encouraged us. Every one. There was one man in particular, just past the last false summit. He stopped and said, "I was where you are a few hours ago — just grid it out and you can get there." Former athlete. That's exactly the language I needed in that moment. Isn't it funny how God works.
We got to the rock pile just below the summit. From there, it was a steady, gradual finish to the top.
Months earlier, when we first set the goal, we had dreamed about this moment. What we couldn't understand then was the cost of it — the specific, physical, grinding cost. Getting to that summit was the reward for everything that had gone into getting there. And for not quitting.
What the mountains leave you with
We woke the next morning sore, reliving every step.
There's something the mountains do that flat ground doesn't. They show you exactly where you're weak. Not in a cruel way, in an honest one. Every muscle group you've been neglecting, every gap in your preparation, every place where the training stopped short, the mountain finds it and marks it for you. You don't leave guessing. You leave with a list.
That's not a bad thing. That's the whole point.
The summit is the reward. But what you carry back down is worth just as much, the knowledge of what broke, what held, and what you're going back to fix before the next one.
Anderson and I drove home through Taos and back into Texas on Tuesday, sore and quiet in the way you only get after something hard. We love the mountains. We love the air and the cold and the absence of mosquitoes. But Texas is in our blood.
We'll be back. The mountains will still be there, and so will the list.