The HighHug Route

All photos by Forest Woodward

Here we are: August in the Elk Mountains of Colorado, 9:30 p.m., headlamps shining bright. Approximate elevation: 12,500 feet. A plunging black slope of unconsolidated, perpetually shifting junk and, very close, perhaps scary-close, a treacherous cliff band, one of the route’s few obstacles, glassed with cheap, not-quite-focusablebinos, as opposed to thoroughly scouted in person.

My pal Forest, an intrepid photographer and indefatigable rambler, is trying to draw the hidden danger into visibility by craning his neck, stepping forward, stepping left, craning his neck differently than before, repeat, repeat, but the darkness is too vast, too thick and disassembles the light as it surely will our tired, achy bodies if we aren’t cautious.

He takes another tentative step, forward and left. I’m ­behind, poking right.

“Found it.”

“And?”

“Big,” he replies.

“Got a read on the bottom?”

“Nope.”

Not what I hoped to hear.

“Impassable, quasi-passable?”

Retreating, he smiles, snorts.

“Excellent recon of this section, jeez.”

“My pleasure, sir, my pleasure.”

Forty-five minutes of delicate, circuitous scheming brings us to a patch of reassuringly flat duff ringed by reassuringly sturdy spruce. Since leaving my house at 5:00 p.m. yesterday, we’ve spent 24 hours on the move, three hours “asleep” (I used a sack of granola for a pillow and a wad of flour tortillas for a ­pillowcase), and two hours pinned beneath a sopping, shuddering tarp, waiting for a thunderstorm to paste the nearby fourteeners with snow and rip itself to pieces. The pieces were gorgeous, fantastical, mist dragons and sparkle castles galore. Then came the heavenly rays. Then the umpteenth stiff uphill. Then the juicy bear scat, the epic toilet, the fellow-feeling for a fellow traveler. Then the sunset, pink and lingering. Then the half-blind, two-thirds-blind, three-quarters-blind descent.

It’s a treat to pause, to breathe, to collapse.

Following rice-salami-cheese glop, we recline in our synthetic bags and listen to midnight precip, a gentle pitter-patter on the trusty tarp, white noise for our drifting minds. Forest’s mind drifts into dreams of an attacking serpent. He groggily cuffs the serpent. I am the serpent. The serpent mutters a curse and scooches over, and a mere 17 seconds later, it seems, we’re roused by the beeping alarm.

Dawn. Fuzzy, drizzly. The clouds already grumbling and the morning’s initial objective—a tundra bump that segues to progressively tougher, craggier stuff—buried in swirling moisture, swirling thoughts: Given these fickle conditions, will the route, the hug, actually coalesce?

To explain, I’d better backtrack to 2016.

After a decade of the California Bay Area’s concrete and fumes and racket and strain, my partner, Sophia, and I loaded the car, said our farewells (bye, beach; bye, seals) and steered toward a valley in Colorado, a cute little town tucked between the Maroon Bells–Snowmass Wilderness and the Raggeds Wilderness. Driving across Nevada and Utah in an idiotic nonstop push conjured the ghost that haunts my lumbar, granted, but it was a small price to pay for the excitement of a strange new land, quiet paths instead of roaring freeways, less grind and more ground—not to mention zero plans for the future.

I met a local friend at the bar and asked where we might nestle in for a week, or the rest of summer, or forever. He suggested a snug grove of lodgepole pines at the edge of a fast silver creek: “Third of a mile from the road. Squirrels and songbirds. Trout. You’re psyched. You’re friggin’ psyched.”

That first Saturday, Sophia was away, hunting for a job, resupplying our larder of oats and pintos, maybe chasing butterflies, and I was feeling good, feeling great, unkinked, 8 inches taller, psyched indeed. I stocked my pockets with snacks and set off at a smart pace, straight from camp. No map, no phone, no beta. No itinerary on the kitchen table because there was no kitchen table, and there was no destination, no agenda.

Many rotten logs, waterfalls, mossy terraces, marmots and talus fields later, I balanced atop a stubby gendarme and looked down, down, down to our spot in the woods. And I looked out, out, out to four or five dozen peaks. Each separate, distinct, yet connected to its neighbors by broad tundra ridges, narrow sawtooth ridges, towering corniced ridges, low-slung evergreen ridges, red ridges and gray ridges and ocher ridges and beige ridges and variegated ridges, momma ridges nursing hungry baby ridges, sister ridges teasing brother ridges, timid ridges whispering and drunk ridges shouting, sound-of-music ridges, rock-and-roll ridges, every conceivable type of ridge plus a bunch that refused categorization.

Insofar as it connotes woo-woo metaphysics, I’m wary of the word “vision.” But I’m also wary of the intellect that rejects the possibility of astonishment and inspiration arising spontaneously, in a tingling flash, from the shapes and textures of the immediate, elemental world. So call it a vision, I guess. Of raw geography. Of the complex earth-puzzle that promised to keep my legs and lungs, my heart and brain, busy for a long time to come.

I returned to camp at dusk, hobbling, the ghost in my lumbar rattling pots and pans, a giant grin on my face. Re-spasm? Who cares? I had a project to buoy my spirits, a task of such overwhelming magnitude that it enveloped and neutralized the pain. Trace the skyline. Run and hike and crawl and climb the entire horizon. Touch everywhere.

Nine years have elapsed (Sophia and I rent in town now), and though I’ve by no means achieved the patently absurd goal of touching everywhere, my knowledge of the Elk Mountains, especially the alpine zone’s sketchy nooks and sublime crannies, has reached a level that previously I associated with literal backyards. Season after season, outing after outing, I’ve engaged the maze of zigzagging divides, motivated by a fierce and joyous and obsessive and insatiable curiosity.

As I’ve done so, a loop has formed in my imagination. A linkup of my favorite summits and cirques, benches and ramps, fairy gardens and infinity pools, goat beds and ptarmigan nests. A circle starting and finishing at my front door: dusty alley, paved street, human trail, game trail, no trail … basically, the rim of the Slate River and East River headwaters, the lofty, sprawling terrain I regularly catch glimpses of from the library, gas station and grocery store. Because it stays almost totally above treeline, I call it the High Route. Because it is born of my loving commitment to exploring this rugged range, I call it the Hug Route. Traversing the thing in a single exuberant burst is, for me, primarily, an emotional experience, a way of praising that which holds, which uplifts, my tiny life.

It isn’t my style to interpret or appreciate mountains via numbers and statistics—there’s something magical and thrill-preserving about obediently, unquestioningly pursuing the horizon and never translating that somatic experience into an abstract mathematical understanding—thus I struggle to estimate length, cumulative vert, etc. “Could be 50 miles, 15-ish peaks and a couple of bivies,” I told Forest in a conversation that was both invitation and entreaty to join an August attempt. “There’s considerable Class III scrambling, trickier cruxes, meadows, relaxed run-y portions, sweet scree surfing and a helluva lot of miserable slogging. We’ll briefly drop into the timber at three passes. On the whole, we’ll be riding the ether, flying through thin air.”

Thanks to last night’s plunging-black-slope escapade, the idea of flying through thin air is suddenly rather unappealing.

Will the route, the hug, actually coalesce?

On our second full day in the backcountry, without conscious effort, we establish a pattern, a simple albeit half-cocked method of stealing miles between chilly, windy, rain-and-graupel squalls. Cinch the packs tight and charge. Stop on a prominence and squint, spin, survey. How long until that soot-purple smear—that terrible, incredible, mesmerizing soot-purple smear in the west—engulfs us? Eat sugar, drink salt. Charge with renewed vigor. Bail? Nah. Bail? Nah. Bail? Nah. Bail? Yaaaah! Swap a tilted catwalk for a flowery chute, an eroding ledge for a chossy gully and race to the krummholz, ­jury-rig the trusty tarp, dive under, laugh.

“11:15. Solid progress.”

“Agreed.”

“Reckon we oughta do a coffee, boost the caffeine.”

“Reckon your reckoning is correct.”

“And hot Tang?”

“Wouldn’t hurt.”

“Cookie? Cookies, plural?”

“Please.”

“This is awesome.”

“I’m so happy.”

“We’re so lucky.”

“Dude, so lucky, so lucky.”

Despite much happiness and luck, including multiple rainbows and a gimpy ankle that improves apropos of nothing, by early afternoon there’s no denying that I am just shy of officially crushed. In part, it’s the spotty sleep, the lactic burn, the rollercoastering adrenaline, the ­unrelenting attentiveness—hopscotching lichened ­cobbles, stumbling on friable mudstone, cruising and stressing and stressing and cruising. But it’s also the ­constant reminders, emerging from every compass point, of my intimate history with the range. The parade of present-tense moments superimposed onto the pageant of vivid memories. The layered beauty.

Hour 44. We dunk bottles at a secret teacup tarn, a puddle of purest snowmelt, and I think: Where I once watched fawns gambol … an eagle is soaring on thermals.

Hour 46. We scamper a slabby shelf, sprint a grassy corridor, the rowdiest weather yet nipping at our heels, terrifying and exhilarating and exhausting, and I think: Where I once smelled phlox and skypilot … ozone is pricking my nostrils.

Hour 49. We approach a dramatic Class V mini-pitch, the exposure extreme, the rock garbage, and I think: Where I once was a bold primate, five summers ago a blithe monkey, three summers ago the same … I’m nervous, badly spooked, doodying my shorts.

Hour 51: We tag a shadowed notch, rumpled tundra spreading below us, sponging the evening’s fading bronze light, and I think: Where I shivered in November, where my visiting father sipped Merlot from a Nalgene in May, where a coyote hit me with a spine-sizzling howl in July, where a spider wove me into its web in September … it’s glowing, singing, dancing, overbrimming.

Tears flow—sweat and sunscreen tickling the corners of my eyes are not the cause—and a mantra pulses in my chest, courses through my blood as I run, leap, careen, limp: Motion and place, motion and place, motion and place. You can build a life out of these, I swear.

The moon sinks, the stars jump and jive and get jiggy with it, the temps corkscrew into the 20s, and the pikas chirp at unwanted guests, i.e., us. Hour 53: On a frosty pad of sedges and cushion plants, approximate elevation 12,500 feet (a recurring and cherished contour line), we set the alarm for 4:30 a.m., tell ourselves to rest, disregard the sage advice and sit up chatting, stretching, scratching, staring. A ruler-straight ridge punctuated by an easy but striking knife-edge extends from my dripping nose, my reeking dopey-socked toes, to the distant silhouette of a chunky pyramid, the route’s apogee, tomorrow’s fatigue and fun. Beyond it, we’ll jog a buffed trail to a nice dirt road, to a nicer dirt road, to an extra-buffed trail and onward to town. Sophia will have fixed a yummy meal. I’ll embrace her, ditto Forest and sense—for a fleeting instant, for an eternal instant—the land around us, its brawny ancient arms.

“One last hot Tang?”

“Please.”

“This is awesome.”

“Dude, so awesome.”

Or an electric howdy-do from above will zap our asses and serve them for breakfast. We shall see.

Here I am: Alone, a month after the trip. Balanced atop the stubby gendarme with a view down to my dear old camp in the woods. Pondering the past, the then that becomes now, the layered beauty. Ultimately, the High Hug Route did coalesce, but it took a toll, left a mark, and my knees remain swollen and sore. Trotting up to this perch was a decidedly crooked, ungainly endeavor.

I’m pondering the wide-open future, too. Housing in a mountain town is precarious, freelance work all swerves and surprises, existence ­inherently uncertain, a crapshoot, today guaranteeing not even tonight (to paraphrase the Zen master). And so, as usual, I can’t predict what’s next. Just like back in 2016, when I arrived in Colorado, I can’t say where I’m going, where I’m being led.

Or maybe I can, sort of.

I raise the cheap, not-quite-focusable binos and scan the eastern horizon, the hazy bluish waves of the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness. Recently, in addition to the Elks, I’ve been bushwhacking and ridge-running the Sawatch Range, the Continental Divide, toying with that earth-puzzle, developing a potential route. It would require at least a week of continuous giddyap. It would prioritize obscure humps and folds, weird cols and crests, and avoid the popular summits. It would mix scrambling and speed and drudgery and elation in equal measure. It would start at my front door and—well, you know the deal.

I lower the binos.

Blink. Swivel. Blink.

Again—always—motion and place.