Notch Mountain – It was dark outside the window when froggy voice met groggy ear.
“You awake?”
“Duh.”
The crass reply was evident even to me, but it was the only statement my mouth could muster at such an inhospitable hour. I blinked, took a hard pull off my coffee mug, and made another attempt. “I’m ready. I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”
The clock was ticking. It had been since 4:40 a.m., the hour I’d chosen to arise for our July ski assault on nearby Notch Mountain, the 13,237-foot peak known primarily as the site from which William Henry Jackson snapped his renowned photo of the more celebrated Mount of the Holy Cross back in 1873. By the time I met Phil and started up the twisted dirt road to the trailhead, the darkness had faded like the memory of our early-morning phone call.
It was July 1, and the sun rose quickly over the surrounding peaks as we raced it up the mountain. It was an unusual vision, to say the least, the two of us clad in shorts and tennis shoes, sweating in the morning sun as we toted packs loaded with skis, boots, poles and avalanche equipment. But seemingly good snow remaining in a long, doglegged chute near the gap in the ridgeline the mountain is named for had caught our attention during a drive past it a few days earlier. And now, a week late, the road had finally opened.
Neither of us knew what to make of the chute, or, for that matter, the snow. Despite living a mere 15 miles from the mountain, I had never bothered to climb it, opting like so many others to head for the 14,005-foot summit of Holy Cross reached from the same trailhead. I’ve known my share of maniacs willing to ski the narrow chute of the cross through the years, but neither Phil nor I had heard of anyone dropping into the notch. This trip would serve as equal parts reconnaissance and adventure.
That we were there at all seemed enough, celebrating what a colleague of mine refers to as the “4 a.m. lifestyle,” something he defines as “an outdoor junkie’s ability to plow through lack of sleep, bad microbeer headaches and 7-Eleven coffee in order to harvest the best conditions.”
In fact, his public relations company, Base Camp Communications, is recruiting three such junkies from Colorado to live the 4 a.m.lifestyle for five weeks beginning July 19 just so he can live vicariously through their adventures posted on the Internet. The promotion, sponsored by Timex, pays the lucky adventurers $550 a week to have 4 a.m. kinds of adventures around Colorado and Utah, whether its climbing, biking, paddling, hiking, skiing, partying, traveling – whatever. They are taking applications from anyone older than 21 until Thursday at www.expedition4am.com. Think of it as a sponsor for your summer vacation, or the outdoor adventure version of ESPN’s “Dream Job.”
Unfortunately, I don’t qualify, because, deep down, I’m really not a 4 a.m. kind of guy. I’m more of a 4:40 kind of guy. At best, maybe a 4:20 kind of guy. The difference may seem subtle, but to my way of thinking, nothing is subtle at 4 a.m. Regrettably, this time my 4:40 a.m. lifestyle backfired.
By the time we reached the lip of the rugged notch and peered into the basin, neither Phil nor I could shake the feeling that we were late. It was warm for 9 a.m., exacerbated by our own overamped body temperatures, and the snow looked less friendly up close. Large piles of avalanche debris had congealed in mounds surrounding jagged boulders at the base of the couloir. At the summit, still a good 30 minutes above us, the chute looked surprisingly – perhaps prohibitively – steep from our angle. The skiing could be dicey.
The plan had been to get to the chute early, while the snow was still firm from the night cold, then ski it as it softened. But the sun was high already, and the menacing heaps of snow in the exposed bowl served stern warning of what might occur if we were late. We changed plans for safety’s sake, skiing two shorter pitches near the bottom of the chute before snaking our way through lower-angle snowfields at the base.
“That was pretty … good,” Phil said at the bottom.
“Kind of perfect,” I agreed, kicking out of my skis. Looking up at our coveted chute, it became evident that we had overestimated its difficulty. “We should have skied it from the top.”
“Yeah,” Phil said. “But now we know. Next time we’ll have to get here earlier.”
Staff writer Scott Willoughby can be reached at 303-820-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
