Acclimating Day

Date to Climb: June 12, 2009

Event: Getting Ready to Go, Traveling to the Crags

Pre-Acclimating Day Comments

Last chance for showers, suds (laundry) and shopping. We will finish all of our last minute chores and rest. Tomorrow we start the real deal.

Other than walking the dog we are not planning on hiking or doing anything strenuous.

Post-Acclimating Day Comments

We are not preparing to do Pikes Peak tomorrow, but instead we are heading south of Buena Vista getting ready to climb Mount Antero early Saturday morning and then Princeton on Sunday. Mounts Antero and Princeton are close to each other. Luckily, we were found a campground an equal distance between the two mountains. The campground is the best we have used in quite a while.

We are hoping for better weather. It is unbelievable how cold and wet it has been. We are looking forward to finally getting the normal summer weather pattern, where it storms or threatens to storm every afternoon. Today, Friday, was a great weather day, it did not rain or storm. Maybe some of the snow melted out of the mountains. We did not climb anything today as we used our last day organizing and preparing ourselves for the big push. If all goes as planned we will climb nine days in a row.

Though we have been trying to acclimate for a week and have climbed two of the easiest fourteeners, we still find ourselves panting if we try to walk too fast. After all of our training we know that we are in better condition than our breathing indicates. It should not be long before we can hike with an easier gait - that is after we are acclimated.