Pictures from Mt. Elbert

Here are some of the pictures from our Mt. Elbert hike.

I neglected to finish the story of our Mt. Elbert hike out, so I'll finish it now.

Did you know that most fatalities happen on the hike down rather than the way up? As you can see from the pictures, the sky was gray and rainy while we were on the summit. As we descended, one rain storm passed right in front of us, but moved on through as we continued down. We were feeling pretty lucky to have missed the storm, then our luck turned bad as we saw a big lightning bolt strike in front of us. The thunder was so loud Corban put his hands over his ears. After we saw the lighting, we started really hustling to get down into the trees.

We both had our rain gear on by now. As we were running down the trail, we were being hit by rain and sleet that was coming right into our face. We opted to venture off the trail to both cut our route to the trees shorter and to prevent running directly into the blowing rain and sleet. Soon, with great relief, we made it down to the trees. It probably kept raining for another 15 minutes and then tapered off. Soon, the sun was out again and we could shed our rain gear. We were both very tired when we got back to the car.

As is the tradition, we stopped at Beau Jo's for pizza you can buy by the pound. That is always a treat after a long, hard hike.