My First 14er, Race Report, Throwback Thursday
Some time ago, my friend Chris did a summit ascent of Mt. Elbert, the second-highest mountain in the 48 states at 14,439 feet. It was, by all accounts, tough work, requiring ice axes and special shoes and whatnot. It was pretty much the main focus of his life for three-quarters of a year.
I thought about doing it for a while, even going so far as to make plans with a friend to do so, but who am I kidding? I prefer to do things in style if I can. So instead of climbing Mt. Elbert in painful, perilous fashion, I borrowed a 650-horsepower turbocharged supercar and drove to the summit of Mt. Evans (14,265 feet) instead. They are both what are called "14ers", meaning they are among the fifty-something fourteen-thousand-foot summits in the 48 states. Mount Elbert is taller than my reference point for big mountains (Rainier), Evans is a hundred-some feet shorter.
For the last three thousand feet of the ascent and descent, I put a GoPro on the car and got some absolutely stunning pictures. I can't share them with you right now because this is all the service of the October issue of Road&Track, but trust me, it's all gorgeous stuff and the minute I'm allowed to, I'll put it up.
I also need to put a link up to my race-that-wasn't this past weekend.
The race report is here. I have a good team of people and I'm expecting good things. We just didn't get them this time. But I'd rather fail in public than stay home and not try.
This weekend I'm off to Texas to race with the Property Devaluation guys at TWS. From there, I'm indulging myself with a sentimental trip to my favorite place on Florida's Atlantic coast. More on that later. We can wrap this wrap-up post with a photo my friend Kamil just found: yours truly, in mid-thirties arrogant form, at the CTS-V Challenge in 2008.
The last six years haven't been kind to me. Maybe I should crash fewer cars or something.