What it’s like to run up a 13,000-foot mountain

We were halfway up the final summit to Jones Peak when I panicked. Resting on a tiny patch of flat earth atop a monstrous collection of loose talus, the peak seemed miles away.

In reality, I had barely 20 yards left to scramble but the scree was extremely loose and I felt the rubble give way with every step. It was like digging in a ball pit, but with rocks the size of shoes, 13,800 feet above sea level.

“I don’t think I can do it,” I said to Avery Collins, my trail partner, who was waiting for me at the summit. He remained calm and positive.

“Dude, we’re right there,” he said. “You got this.”

Rising east of Silverton in the rugged wilderness of southwestern Colorado’s San Juan mountain range, Jones is one of the state’s 637 13,000-footers. For most people, the distinguishing characteristic of 13ers is that they are not 14ers. Compared to the superstar peaks, 13ers are their punk rock cousins, experienced only by those who make the effort.

Jones is no one’s idea of a destination climb, and that makes it just exactly perfect for Collins, an accomplished ultrarunner, aspiring mountaineer, and backcountry snowboarder who enjoys nothing more than going where others don’t bother to tread. It was his idea to come out here — he had never tagged Jones — and for someone who lives in a densely populated city at sea level, Collins makes the ideal trail guide.

We arrived early in the morning at a trailhead unlike any I had ever seen. An avalanche that buried the gravel access road had only recently been cleared, leaving behind massive snow walls. After climbing over the walls with help from tree limbs mounted in the snow like steps on a ladder we came to a wide path and began marching straight up to the basin.

We were already over 10,000 feet and the thin air made my breathing faster and deeper, as if I was sprinting up a hill at peak speed. Only we were walking and the hill was actually a mountain.

My aerobic fitness was strong enough to allow me to handle the altitude without getting sick, but not so strong that I could realistically keep up with Collins, for whom this was quite literally a walk in the park. He was recovering from a first-place finish at the grueling Fat Dog 120 in British Columbia a few weeks earlier and allowed me to set the pace.

I’d like to think I kept it brisk, albeit with frequent stops so I could hydrate and catch my breath. Most of my climb was spent in power hiking position with hands on my quads.

Collins walked upright, eyes constantly scanning the horizon looking for a line to the ridge.

We worked our way through the valley dotted with wild flowers and scurrying marmots, over boulder fields, dried up creeks, and never-ending patches of scree. The trail was barely a rumor at this point and we were the only ones in the valley, completely alone in the San Juan backcountry surrounded on all sides by distant mountain ranges.

About three hours after we began, we finally made it to the saddle where Jones sits on a ridge between two other summits — American and Niagara. The original plan was to tag Niagara and then hit Jones if the spirit moved us and the altitude didn’t get me first. Plans change quickly up here.

While technically not as high a peak as Jones, Niagara actually looks like a mountain mountain, with a long, steep climb up the face. “I’d be a little concerned for your safety,” was Collins’ summation. Jones Peak it was.

To get to Jones we traversed two smaller not-quite-officially mountains, before making our final approach. The narrow singletrack trail was clearly evident, cut as it was into the side of the rock made by either the Utes or mountain goats or both.

The terrain was porous and my feet sank in the dirt, sending tiny bits of gravel careening over the cliff into the valley below. I managed to break into a light jog once it leveled off until we reached the final ascent. That’s when my freakout began.

These are the things you think about when you are too scared to move while sitting in a pile of loose rocks 13,800 feet above sea level. You think about death, a little, but this isn’t Everest and you’re not going to die. You think you’re being ridiculous for thinking about death. You think about failure, about being strong enough to get all the way up here, but not enough to make it to the top. You think you should stop thinking and get on with it already.

That’s when Avery said he had a trick to settle my nerves. Turn around, slowly stand up, and look back at the ridge.

“Are you feeling anxiety?” he called out from the summit and I had to laugh. “Pretty much every day, all the time,” I called back. That broke the tension.

I centered myself with a few deep breaths, while Collins found a new line and instructed me to edge my way over to a spot where he was directly in front of me. The new approach felt like a gilded staircase and I scrambled up in a matter of seconds, exhaling with equal parts exhilaration and relief.

At the summit, everything suddenly becomes shockingly clear. The valleys that extend for miles, dotted with clear blue lakes like backyard swimming pools that exist for no other reason than they can. The narrow ridge lines connecting surrounding peaks that rise up in the distance forming a geological chain that stretches endlessly across the horizon.

Once settled, Collins noticed a handful of people atop Handies, the resident 14er, and waved. Whoever it was appeared to wave back. “The difference is that I know exactly how they got up there,” he grinned. “But they’re over there wondering how we got up here.”

Then I felt the wind. On top of a mountain, the wind reigns supreme. It is power in its purest, most awesome form. It’s at that moment when you say quietly to yourself, and then louder directly into the all-encompassing wind, “I just ran up a fucking mountain.”