A blast from the past & happy times. Winter camping, Rocky Mountain National Park, January 1976.

Later in 1976, a late spring assault on Longs Peak, Lady Washington, and Mount Meeker, Rocky Mountain National Park. Without the ice axe & crampons I would have died on the traverse to Meeker. Stopped a slide on snow covered ice. We settled for two out of three & called it a day.

Summit of Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park, May 1976, before trying a traverse to Mt Meeker. My name is in the summit register a dozen or so times, but all other climbs were later in the year. Camped in the Boulder Field the night before—in a freezing thunderstorm.

My best buddy Gary was at the other end of the rope as I slid toward a cliff (which we couldn’t see until the clouds lifted after I stopped, thanks to the crampons). I still remember seeing him scramble to brace himself for when the rope tightened. Thankfully, it never did.

A couple weeks later a climber in a north section of the park, in the Mummy Range, went over a cliff in a similar incident. He didn’t survive.

We learned a lot about ourselves on that climb, lessons that continue with me to this day. Bottom line: I’m eternally grateful for a friend like Gary and the bond that exists, even at a distance, especially in times like these. Close friendships are to be treasured.

Gary and me visiting his girlfriend during a national cheer-leading competition at CU in Boulder. I've had better haircuts. But it was the 70s...

The view Gary and I enjoyed every day over four summers from where we worked above Estes Park. Longs Peak is in the middle, Lady Washington to the right, Mt Meeker hidden from view on the left.

Gary's brother Duane, friend Danny, me and Gary. Camping in Colorado. We worked together for part of a summer in '76 on removing a section of diseased pine in the Big Thompson canyon. Gary & his family barely made it out alive on July 31--the flash flood that killed 143 people.

I was elsewhere on the day of the flood, four-wheeling back in the woods for a staff picnic. We drove out in the thunderstorm that flooded the Big Thompson, arrived at camp soaked to our skin about the same time Gary & his family pulled in with a tale of their escape.

We spent the next couple of weeks as part of the volunteer fire department staffing roadblocks, keeping curiosity-seekers away. It wasn't until much later in the summer that Gary, his father & brother, were able to return to their timber tract in the canyon.

Needless to say, the summer of '76 was a memorable one. I'm not exactly sure what prompted this thread, but hope you didn't mind this blast from the past and all the things that happened that winter, spring & summer and continues to inform who I am to this day.