Boulder Field

Boulder Field sits at 12.5 kilofoot, about 5 miles up the trail from Goblin's Forest. Wake at first light, cold start, break down the tent and load up. Haven't carried the full pack for a couple days, but it sits well, and off we go. After the first quarter mile or so i settle into it. Breaks evry half hour or so, breathing heavily, and heart pounding, constant ache in flexors and extensors of back and legs, and i feel good. Haven't really done this kind of thing in a quarter century, but the body seems to remember.

Make Mills Moraine by 1000. VERY good time. So far we have been on the same section of the trail as we covered on the first day. This time we take the right hand fork at Mills Moraine. The trail leads over boulder covered shoulder (everything here is rock.. no vegetation). Below and to our right a snow field melting feeds a meadow with several dozen elk grazing. No stops to film today, we forge on.

Swing round the shoulder through Storm Pass. The gradient increases. We break more often. Ahead the trail has 3 giant switchbacks in it. Switchbacks are nice i say to myself, beats going straight up slopes. Wrong again.

Nice is not the word. By the end of the first switchback i am jelly, bathed in sweat, gasping like a fish out of water. We are going much slower now, stopping every quarter hour. Back, thighs, knees, legs, feet all hurt, but the balance and rythms are coming back. Breathe. Step up. Breathe. Step forward. Breathe. Step up. There is nothing in my world now except the trail, am very strongly focussed on the physical act, dromomanic. Still taking only about one breath per step, which is good. Have plenty of water. The switchbacks have to end sometime.

An infinite time later, they do. We are on Boulder Field. I look across a mile and a half of boulders, to a cluster of multicolored dots .. those are tents, we can see the campground.

Arrive at the campground, set up. The campspots have little rock windbreaks around them. These are necessary, but not sufficent, clearly, as TylMjk has to rescue a tent that rips loose from its moorings and takes off. We tie our tent down as well as we can, i am inspired to build up the windbreak until TylMjk points out the need to actually enter and exit ...

Minutes after we set up the tent, the weather which was beautiful, changes abruptly. Amazed, we watch as a storm sweeps in, turns to snow and then hail. It passes within half an hour, we are sobered at the sight of climbers still returning down the mountain, after being caught in snow while still on the flanks of Long's Peak.

We eat, wander around Boulder Field, shoot some footage. Eat, stare at the map. Big day tomorrow.