Heading for the Colorado 14ers!
WIN THE NAME OF ACTION
2025
From Ben Lomond Peak to my first Colorado 14er
Strictly speaking, this will be my third Colorado 14er, but I’m not counting those childhood ascents of Pike’s Peak and Mount Evans (since renamed to Mount Blue Sky). They were done in my dad’s Ford pickup truck. Anyhow, time to announce my 2025 Win the Name of Action goal.
Handies Peak
What is a win-win goal, even if I don’t achieve it? A goal with enough complexity, demands, and risk, so that if I should come up short in the attempt, I will still have grown a great deal and increased my odds for future success. Hence, following my summit of Ben Lomond Peak in Utah in August of 2024, I reached out to a cousin in Colorado and said, “We need to talk about the 14ers.”
After some texting back and fourth, comparing some of her summit images with information from 14ers.com and AllTrails, I zeroed in on Longs Peak via the treacherous Keyhole route… and then I got real. With trails starting at altitudes higher than the summit of Ben Lomond, and with little scrambling experience (let alone rock climbing experience), I decided to pick from the Class 2 mountains. That’s 2 out of 4 on a class system with 1 being the easiest and 4 being the hardest. Quickly, Handies Peak came into view as the summit to risk developing a fever for!
The Quest Begins
Today, I did my first workout with a Step aerobic platform I purchased—a very short workout due to coping with some ongoing nerve pain in my torso (for which a doctor has been consulted and a care plan implemented). The plan is to exercise regularly through the winter, walking and hiking here in Michigan as weather allows. When the 2025 hiking season begins for me, it’s back to conditioning hikes in Waterloo and Pinckney Recreation Areas. Then, if the budget, calendar, and body all agree, it’s a flight to Denver and trip into the Rocky Mountains. There may even be a stretch goal of a second Class 2 14er after Handies Peak. Updates to follow!
Handies Peak Image Credit: Mitchtobin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons