decalibross with emma

7/24/2022

On a whim, Emma said that she wanted to go hike a 14er with me this weekend. So after biking 43 miles on Friday morning with Sara, and spending the afternoon with Madeline in the pool, we packed up the truck and headed out to Alma and then up to Kite Lake. We got there around 8:30 PM and Emma pitched the tent and we attempted to sleep at 12,000 feet with the stars shining brightly down on us. At about 5 AM, we packed everything back in the truck and headed up the trail to the summit of Mount Democrat. Emma has Peter's ability to race up steep slopes with her heart rate staying below 100 and talking the whole time while I am completely out of breath in some sort of arrhythmia trying not to die. We gained the summit of Mount Democrat in about one hour 20 minutes. We passed about 100 people who noted that Emma was kicking my butt. It was really satisfying as a father to watch my little girl blow past people like she was going upstairs to grab a cookie. After Mount Democrat, we headed over to Cameron and then quickly on to Lincoln. At the top of Lincoln we broke out the Toblerone and it gave us the strength to head over to the top of Bross. After that, we did the miserable decent back down to the parking lot. We stopped for lunch at McGinty's pub in Divide (a favorite place of ours) and shared a pizza. Emma claims I ate more of it than her, but I'm not sure if that's true or not. Either way, there wasn't a crumb left of that pizza by the end. what a fun adventure!