I’m back from a spectacular trip to Colorado where I hiked some 14ers, did some whitewater rafting and drank some great, fresh from the mountain, Colorado beer. The mountains we hiked were Mt. Elbert, the tallest in the Rockies at 14,433′ and Quandary Peak which is 14,265. It was great to experience the Rockies for the first time and graduate from 4000 footers of the White Mountains to 14ers.
Inbetween the big hikes, we did whitewater rafting on the Arkansas River in Buena Vista. This was the perfect change of pace and equally as scenic as the hikes. We rafted a section of the river called Brown’s Canyon which was amazing because it had massive brown and red rock formation all along it’s sides.
The altitude made breathing a little harder than I thought it would be out there. The mountains were over 14,000′ and even where we slept was up pretty high. We stayed in Leadville (over 10,000′) and Breckenridge (over 9,000′). When I arrived back in Boston and was able to breathe oxygen in an unrestricted manner I felt like Superman!
