Update from Handies

After I left Telluride last night I drove up to the new Rock of Ages trailhead. I had never been there before. Homie told me that it just opened up a couple of years ago. It was a lot longer of a drive than I expected and was having my doubts but the trailhead was clearly marked when I got there. I couldn't find the second stove and had to make up two separate portions of angel hair pasta in the JetBoil instead. I put the meat sauce on it and was all prepared for Homie to arrive at his earliest estimate. But he didn't arrive then. Or at his original estimate. I knew from chatting with Mark that Homie's SPOT track had him hunkering down below El Diente in a steady rain. He's say that that he almost gave up right there. He was just squatting down in the rain, waiting for it to ease. He was a couple hundred feet above the trees and some modest shelter, but he didn't want to give up the elevation.  He had early fallen off a log into the stream at the crossing. At the time he cursed the mistake that soaked his feet, though soon he would have been just as wet anyway.

He moved on, tagging El Diente by the easier north passage instead of sticking to the ridge. Things were obviously soaked. He had all his clothes on at this point: pile, hat, gloves, all underneath his rain paints and shell. He didn't even have tights with him, but his calf sleeves and shorts had never the same coverage, though not the same warmth. The traverse went well and he found it not nearly as soaked as he expected. The last moves up to the summit of Mt. Wilson will incredibly wet and he went carefully and slow here. The descent to the north, down endless, steep, technical, physical, wet talus took a lot out of him. He made the saddle on his way up Wilson Peak, but it got dark on him before he was able to reach the summit and this slowed things considerably. Tricky, wet, slab climbing and scrambling forced him to be very cautious and he crept toward the dark summit.

He had left the trailhead at 2:21 p.m. and took 3h18m30s to make the summit of El Diente, then just under an hour to Mt. Wilson's summit (4h16m22s elapsed, 6:37 p.m.). Wilson Peak took nearly 2.5 hours more (6:16:59 elapsed, 8:38 p.m.) He got a bit lost on the descent but the GPS in his phone helped him regain the saddle, where he found the trail down. He arrived at the trailhead just a couple minutes before 11 p.m. I was sleeping in the back, having decided to wait until 11:45 (two hours past his original prediction) before driving down the road until I could get a 3G connection and check on this SPOT location. 

I had slept for maybe an hour, but my mind was whirling. The last okay message I got from him was from the summit of Mt. Wilson. I wondered if the rain was too much for him and that he had gone back out the way he had come in. We had met a couple of bow hunters at the Kilpacker trailhead. They had come up from Texas that day for elk season starting this Saturday. They had planned to hike in a few miles but didn't want to do it in the rain. I figured they would give Homie shelter until I could drive back around and pick him up. Around 10:15 p.m. or so another vehicle came roaring into the parking lot and three guys got out, chatting loudly. My mind raced again. What if Homie had fallen on the tricky descent and injured himself. He might have pressed his "Rescue Me" button on the SPOT and here these guys were to do just that. But they probably didn't know about me. I though again about driving down the road to check the SPOT location but decided to give him two hours. But if he was hurt or going the other way, then I was wasting time. The bow hunters had rented a satellite phone for two weeks for just $250. Having a couple of those babies would have sure eased my mind on these mentally challenging point-to-point hikes.

I was relieved when Homie banged on the truck before heading off to the porta-potty. When he returned I had the car running. He mentioned how tough that group was but was remarkably alert, in good spirits and surprisingly high in energy. The cold rainy conditions had caused him to not eat or drink much. He knew a crash in energy had to be coming and tried to eat some of the spaghetti I made for him. Once again, even though I was just following instructions, it seems I had made the wrong thing. He ate some and remarked that it was good, even though it was quite cold now, but most of it is still in the container now.

He hopped in the back to sleep, though we chatted for quite a bit before he came quiet. I drove down the long 4WD road, liberally using 4-wheel Low to avoid riding the brakes. Once the pavement it was over to Ridgeway, then Ouray, then up towards Yankee Boy Basin. When we got close I roused Homie to turn on his phone. He had the starting waypoint programmed into it and it even talked to me, telling me how many yards until "Sneffels Start". Per the rules of this crazy adventure, he had to start at least 3000 feet below the summit of Sneffels, so I couldn't drive all the way to the trailhead. In fact, I stopped maybe a hundred yards too low when Homie told me we had arrived at the only semi-flat spot. 

Homie got his stuff together and I was glad to see him in tights. He had to be tired and it was cold and foggy out. He took around 1:15 a.m. and I set the alarm for 4:30 a.m. When my alarm went off I hit the snooze for 9 minutes. I should have got up and turned the vehicle around, as that proved to be a bit of a trick on the narrow, very steep road. When I eventually did it, I had to go back and forth a few times, each time grinding into the steep slope. I snoozed one more time and then Homie arrived before it went off again. He had made the summit in 2h05m, feeling like he was moving really slowly, but came down in just 1h19m, feeling good and moving well. Now he was truly tired and he laid down, sleeping in fits, for the long drive back down to Ouray, over Red Mountain Pass on the Million Dollar Highway (paved) to Silverton and then up and over the steepest, rockiest pass so far: Cinnamon Pass. Topping out this pass at 12.,640 feet at sunrise was incredibly beautiful. The steep, super tight switchbacks on the descent proved a bit taxing on my arm driving (I had rotator cuff surgery 3 weeks ago and cannot use my right arm). I was getting pretty good at steering, braking, reaching across my body with my left hand and shifting into neutral, then into 4-wheel Low, then into 1st, then 2nd, then back to first, steering with my thighs while shifting. Probably not the AAA-approved method of negotiating Cinnamon Pass, but it worked.

We hit the junction to American Basin and instead of turning right and going uphill towards Handies, I turned left and headed downhill, away from Handies, in order to abide by the 3000-foot rule. This time I parked a touch high, at Homie's recommended flat spot. After he geared up, he head downhill about 50 more yards until his phone told him it was the "Handies Start" and then headed back uphill, dropping his phone off with me on his way by. 

I tried to sleep for another hour, as I had had only four hours total so far, in 1-hour and 3-hour bursts. It was light now and despite my efforts I only slept for maybe 15 minutes. I know this because I was listening to an audio book and that was all I needed to remind when I woke up. I was typing this report when I heard "Yo!" It was Homie, already back from Handies. He had taken a direct route up to the summit, covering the 3000 feet in just 1h36m04s. He had found a perfect dirt/small talus slope to surf on the way down and  descended in just 49 minutes! (2:25:54 for the roundtrip). He ran right by the truck, has he had to return to the starting point and I scrambled to pack up my computer and drive down the hill to pick him up. He was in great spirits, moving really well. While there are many remarkable things about Homie, what really sets him apart is that he can recover and go so much faster without getting much sleep, food, or water. He was still running well behind on his calories. Despite moving well, he knows that can't last unless he starts upping the intake.