Monday, 11/15/21 — Taos Ski Valley, NM — What's the point?
The traffic on 150 started at around 4am and there was no way I was sleeping through that insanity so I said fuck it and got up and made coffee and sat there in my car reading the rest of Eiger Dreams waiting for the sun to come up. When it finally did I went wandering around the gravel turnout I'd made my temporary residence the previous night after killing time online in the Taos Ski Valley overnight parking lot till 10pm, looking at all the litter and wondering why I even bothered trying to leave campsites cleaner than I found them. What's the point? I can spend two hours bagging up all the garbage I find here and then drop it off at the closest public dumpster and then what, some fuckwad comes along 20 minutes after I leave and trashes the place again? Sometimes it feels so pointless.
After setting up my tent to lay claim on the spot I drove back up to Taos Ski Valley and made my way up the steep dirt roads to the Wheeler Peak trailhead and climbed Wheeler via the standard trail. It was a perfect day with not a cloud to be seen and very agreeable temps, although everything from trailhead to treeline was an icy disaster waiting to happen, and would have been quite difficult to navigate without the microspikes I'd stupidly forgotten in my car.
Approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes after departure I made the summit and stayed up there for a while enjoying the view and trying to communicate with an interesting fellow of apparent subcontinental heritage named Arkash (?) who I'd spotted from below and who had been observing my approach. I was not expecting any other climbers on a Monday so I was a bit intrigued. When I approached him to say hello and exchange pleasantries, he made an odd grunting noise and motioned with his hand. I didn't understand so he pulled out his phone and opened his Messages app and typed a draft message:
hearing and speech impaired
And I said Oh okay!
He continued typing:
I'm attempting to climb the high point in every U.S. state. This is my 8th. Just came from Elbert yesterday
And I said Wow! Dude that's so cool! I'm actually from Colorado, been up Elbert who knows how many times!
He smiled and typed:
I'm from Brooklyn New York.
And I said Damn you're gettin' pretty high for a sea-level guy! You rock!
We continued talking/typing back and forth for a few minutes, then I wished him good luck and began my descent peeling off along the Mt. Walter ridgeline and then eventually dropping down some random avy chute to pick up the trail about a half mile above the trailhead, because fuck if I was gonna suffer all that treacherous ice on the way down without spikes when I could just make my own path back.
I drove back to camp, cleaned up a bit in the creek as cars went flying by on the highway, then headed back to Taos to the public parking lot and did laptop hotspot stuff for a while including discovering that the LEO-BLEO gateway was down which meant I had 700 LEO lost somewhere in the ether. Wonderful. Now watch the price of LEO tank while I’m waiting for it to appear in my wallet. Beer at The Cellar, all the way back to the ski valley overnight lot for more laptop time, and now as I type these words the moon is nearly full and quite bright and I’m wondering what in hell I should do with myself tomorrow.