“The mountains are calling and I must go.” – John Muir

Although I had visited Colorado many times, I felt like I had missed out on one its greatest experiences – climbing a mountain. So when our friend Jason, asked us if we wanted to go on a camping adventure, I knew exactly where we should go – to the mountains.

Jason is a great friend and fellow church planter. Last year, he joined us for a backpacking trip to Elk River Trail down by Independence, Kansas. So when this year rolled around, he asked us if we were interested in another backpacking/camping adventure. Of course, the Ericksons couldn’t say no!

Jason, Tricia, and Josh ready for the adventure!

Jason has a really cool part of this story that is about more than mountain climbing. He had been saving up all summer for this trip when his car broke and he had to spend his vacation fund on car repairs. A week before we were set to leave, he called to let us know where he was at with things. He decided that he was still planning on going and was going to have faith that the money would come in that week. Later that week, we shared Jason’s situation with some friends and a generous lady gave $75 towards his part of the trip. When we let him know about the money, he told us that a family member had also given him some money for trip. And when we returned from home, there was more money from an anonymous friend waiting for him – God had provided for his entire trip. God had his back on this one.

Anyways, so about our adventure.

After seven hours of western Kansas – if you’ve ever driven this, you know the awfulness of that statement – we made our way up to Boulder, Colorado. I had never been to Boulder so we drove around the city a bit. I liked it for the most part. You could tell it was a college town, but, over all, a fun city. Although, we stopped at a grocery store that was sort of like a Whole Foods, and I had a pretty interesting experience with a lady coming into the bathroom singing “All you need is love.” Not helping your stereotype Colorado.

Onward.

We went west from Boulder to a town called Nederland. It was a decent size with a large lake that greeted you from the main road. We drove through town and followed a road to where our trail was. Let me tell you about this “road.” The pavement ends and it turns into a dirt road. The first few miles aren’t too terrible. We came to the Fourth of July campgrounds, but the hiking trails are another five miles or so on this “road.” Pretty much as soon as you pass the campgrounds, it turns into the path of destruction. Huge pot holes, jagged rocks, mud pits, and just rough terrain plagued us for the next five miles. To the local Coloradian in a jeep, no big deal. For the Kansas adventurers in a Jetta – sheesh. But the Jetta was a champ and we made it to the trail head.

The original plan was to camp at the base of the trail and just hike all day the next day. But, of course the Erickson (i.e Josh:) can’t stick to a plan. We arrived at the trail head around 5p.m-ish and it wasn’t going to be dark for a couple more hours, so we decided that we would backpack as far as we could that night, camp, and then summit the mountain the next day.

The Erickson’s camp for the night

The trail didn’t have mile markers, so we’re not entirely sure how far we went the first night. Our estimate is we went two miles or so. The trail was mostly through woodland at a moderate incline. Since we were on the side of a mountain, it was difficult to find a flat, open space to set up camp. But after nearing dark, we finally found a decent spot.

The view from camp in the morning!

Sadly, about the only pleasant aspect of that night was the view over looking the valley. We all were victims of altitude sickness – head aches, short breathe, dry mouths- making sleeping nearly non existent. After a looonng night of mostly no sleep, we packed up and hit the trail excited to summit a mountain!

We were so naive.

That morning was full of grueling inclines and a trail that seemed like it would never end. After leaving our camp, we found ourselves in a meadow/marsh area that was really beautiful.

The pretty meadow

After the meadows, the trail split – one going to Diamond Lake, a very popular day hike, and one to Arapaho Glacier that would lead us to Arapaho South Peak. It was after the trail split that things got really difficult. It was all switch backs up the side of the mountain. There were a couple of plateaus, so you would think you would be getting close to the end, only to discover there were more switch backs. At one point, I could barely hike for more than five minutes at a time because of sheer exhaustion and inability to catch my breath. So for a stretch, we hiked for five minutes, rested a few minutes, hiked five minutes, and rested.

almost to the saddle

After reaching one of the plateau points, we lightened our pack of the gear we didn’t need – like the tents and sleeping bags and just grabbed them on our way back down, and only continued on with food and water. This helped, but it was still exhausting.

The saddle looking down at the glacier

After a couple of grueling hours we finally made it to what they called the saddle. It was exactly that, a saddle, or a small valley type area between two peaks – Baldy, and Arapaho South. From the saddle, we could look down to Arapaho glacier – a small glacier that was melting into a lake in a large valley below.

To our left was our summit. Another 700 feet of scrambling up to the top of the mountain. When we reached the saddle, we weren’t convinced that we were going to go to the top. It had been so extremely difficult to even get to this point, I wasn’t sure I could do the last climb.

But the more I sat there staring at the peak, the more I convinced myself I could do it. I felt really silly coming all the way from Kansas, climbing all this way, only to look at the peak of the mountain. So we all dug down deep and found strength somewhere and started our final ascent.

I immediately regretted my decision…

I regretted my decision immediately.

My legs we burning, my body was trembling, I could barely catch my breath. It seemed like those last 700 feet were 7 miles. At one point, I was almost in tears because I was so frustrated with the stupid mountain. I wanted to reach the top, but I was so tired of being exhausted.

Mountain conquered!

And then we summited.

We had finally made it to the top of the mountain (13,400′). I’ll be honest, it wasn’t as joyful as I had expected, it was more just a wave of relief that I was finally done with that ridiculous mountain. But the more I sat there looking all around and seeing mountains as far as I could see, the more I realized what we had just accomplished.

It was gorgeous!

We didn’t stay too long on the top of the mountain because it had taken us longer than we expected and it’s easy to get caught up in storms the later in the day it is. So we started our descent down the top of the mountain. We were able to cut a straight path going down instead of following all the switch backs, which helped shave off a lot of time on the initial descent. After making it back down to the meadows, it was a fairly uneventful jaunt back through the wooded trail and we got from the very top of the mountain back to our car in less than two hours.

After traversing the 5 mile path of destruction once again, we made our way back to the town of Nederland and immediately found a place to eat the biggest burgers we could find. We just climbed a mountain, we deserved a burger.

Sweet summit

So we jumped out of an airplane.

That’s right. We went sky diving.

We went with our great friend Becca who was the instigator of all of it! Well, we just like to blame Becca 🙂 She had mentioned to us earlier in the summer that sky diving was something she had always wanted to do.  At the time, we didn’t have much planned for the summer, so we decided we would all save up and go sky diving at the end of summer.  I think the thing I loved most about it was our attitudes of “let’s not just talk about doing something, but actually do it.”

So August rolled around and we jumped out of an airplane!

The sky diving group!

We went to a sky diving company outside of town that seemed the most reputable. (I mean, we were trusting them with our lives after all!) When we arrived, we watched a video that tells you about 14 times that you could die doing this. It was only then that I realized I forgot to ask our friend Chelsea to take in Gus if anything ever happened to us. But, don’t worry, she has since agreed to do so.

After the doom and gloom video, we had some hands on training which involved learning how we would be strapped to the instructor, practicing the position you take when you’re in the initial free fall and then also how to get to the edge of the plane to make the jump.

Then it was time to suite up!

The Ericksons!

Josh and I went together in the first plane. I was actually most nervous about the airplane ride up to 10,000 feet. Last time I was in a small airplane, it did not end well (throwing up, losing all electronics in the airplane, shutting down Honolulu International airport, making an emergency landing…but that’s another story) so I took my dramamine and hoped for the best.  The ride wasn’t terrible, I just closed my eyes and tried not to focus on the jolting as best I could. Next thing I knew, it was time to start getting hooked to the instructor.

Then the door flew open.

Whew! It’s chilly 10,000 feet in the air! Josh and his instructor inched to the edge of the door way. And I saw my husband disappear out of the airplane. Let me tell you, that alone was an unnerving experience. Then it was my turn to edge my way to the door. I looked down at the ground, 10,000 feet below me. That was the only time I second guessed my decision to do this, but there wasn’t any going back….so the next thing I knew, I was flying through the air at 160 mph.  I’m really glad my instructor reminded me to breathe, because it’s hard to catch your breath diving that fast!

After about 20-30 seconds of intense free fall, the parachute opened and it was nice gently cruise through the sky. I saw Josh’s parachute under neath me. So that was a nice relief knowing he was safe. We glided through the air for several minutes, and even flew through a cloud!

Cruising through the air

The instructor pulled the ropes controlling the parachute hard to one side which sent us in to a fast spiral turn. After a few times of that, I was done with fast turns (remember the whole motion sickness thing…) and with 1,000 feet left we started getting aligned to make our landing. I popped my feet up to make an “L” shape with my body and we made a safe landing on the ground.

Coming in for the landing

After we got all of our gear off. It was time for Becca to suite up and make the same journey!

We had so much fun crossing that off our bucket list. It was definitely worth it.

Wohoo!

So we’ve done quite a bit of traveling and adventuring in the first two years of our marriage which is part of the reason we wanted to start a blog to start chronicling them. So here’s what we’ve been up to.

– Mexico – Hello all inclusive resort for our honeymoon. Best decision ever.

– Colorado – My sister lives outside of Denver so we visited her the first spring we were married and drove all over, stopping along the side of the road to climb some mountains.

– Hawaii – We were dirt poor, but Josh’s brother was stationed there and it was the last year his family would be there, so we saved our pennies and had a fabulous time in Hawaii.

– Elk Trail – We found this really cool back packing trail in southern Kansas that makes you forget you’re in Kansas.

– Niagara Falls – Thanks to the Army for a free weekend at Niagara Falls. (Even though we had to endure a torturous conference) We even got to walk to Canada!

– Lindsborg – Camping at Lake Kanopolis and spending the day in the cute town of Lindsborg. Favorite part – discovering Black Smith Roastery. Mind=blown

– Puerto Rico – This was a spontaneous trip planned in less than two weeks for our 2nd anniversary.

– South Dakota Road Trip – This was a result of us realizing we hadn’t taken a road trip in a while and had Memorial weekend free so it included visiting the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota, Iowa, and Kansas.

Colorado mountain hiking/backing adventure – We climbed the mountain Arapaho South Peak – 13,400′. epic. Read more here.

Next for the Erickson – not sure yet, probably a weekend camping trip with our eyes set on a bigger adventure next year!