So I was naked, standing at the top of the tallest mountain in Colorado, when a middle aged man and his wife walk up from behind me.

There are those situations in life that come about and you say to yourself, “wow, this will be a great story,” this was one of those times. Great stories come about not because of great situations or feats, but irreplaceable moments. This you cannot, nor will I try to replicate.

We had been climbing for 25 day straight when we decided that we would hit one last resupply and attempt climbing Mount Elbert . Myself, Tyler, Nate, and Rebecca, my climbing partners at the time, had been pushed before, but this attempt would kill our bodies. We were in the Holy Cross range in the San Isabel national forest in Southwest Colorado, some 38 miles from the base of Elbert, not taking into account the 14,500 feet to the top. Our packs were heavy with food, clothing and gear, but mostly food. In the mountains hunger is death. Of course you can live a week or so without food, but you sure as hell cannot carry a 80 pound pack that week. Without a constant stock of food to your body, your pace slows and your energy plummets (a word not used lightly in the climbing community). The good thing about this, however, is as the days go by, your load gets lighter. The classic response come meal time in the mountains when someone asks what’s for dinner…”whatever’s in my bag”.

We moved quickly for two days, clearing nearly 35 miles of ground. We awoke the next morning at 3:30 AM, on three hours sleep, to make the final push up Elbert. Moving quickly to the base of the peak Tyler and myself decided to ditch our packs on the trail, planning to retrieve them on the way down. The other two in our group, for some reason, did not trust the area (in their minds, I’m sure full of thieves and bandits) and decided to carry the packs up. Less then two hours in to the accent Rebecca ditched her pack in a much more elusive area, one that I was not sure we could find again. Nate did the same within an hour. After, six hours, of climbing, and my first assent up a waterfall, we reached the peak in the afternoon sun. Seeing no storms around we decided to lay down and eat lunch. Somewhere in the middle of our Raman Nate had the great idea that we should all get naked and take our picture at the top of the peak with a sign saying “Mount Elbert” hiding certain areas. I agreed with the proposed plan and we did what we had to do. So there I was standing at the top of the tallest mountain in the Rockies with two other naked guy and a naked girl when a man and woman summated from the other side and saw us. Not wanting to go back down they walked slowly in our direction and we scrambled for our clothing. When they said hello I apologized and said we were just having “a little bit of fun”….most likely the worst thing I could have said. The man was on his cell phone within minutes and, while I did not know for sure, I assume the person on the other side of that line wore some sort of badge and carried some sort of gun. Needless to say, we booked it down that mountain, found our bags and camped in the aspen forest with no fire…hiding at the end of the day cold, wet and alone in a forest is usually an indication that you most likely could have chosen better words on that particular day.