Adventures of Jake & the Mountain

This is just going to be a quick post of our adventure yesterday (quick meaning pretty unedited and without pictures).  I don't have the time to create the creative journal I desire and hope to spruce it up "scrapbook" style in the future if even for my own memories...

History:
There is a problem in our math curriculum that just doesn't seem reasonable to solve.

                    150112
(add math symbols to make this a math sentence) - answer at the end

Ben was the first student to solve this problem last year; this year it was Jake's turn.

As a reward, I have told them that if they can solve the problem in 20 minutes with no help, I will take them anywhere in CO they want to go.

Ben asked last year if he had one help if I would take him anywhere in Colorado Springs.  I accepted that offer and he earned his trip - we went to Skyzone with a friend.

This year, Jake asked for a help and earned the reward.  He asked to hike Pike's Peak with both Ray and I.

IF YOU DO NOT WANT THE SINGLE HELPS THEY GOT DON"T READ THE FOLLOWING SENTENCE:  Ben got 1/2 and Jake got the % sign.

THE ADVENTUROUS MOUNTAIN:
I asked a friend how long it took her husband and 10 year old child - she said they made it up in 6 hours.  Another friend said it took her 6 hours to go halfway.  We decided it should take us a maximum of 8 hours based on our data points.  We gave ourselves 9 hours to catch the 4:40 train down the mountain.

Cliff note version:
5:45 am - out of bed
6:45 am - out of the house
7:15 am - out of the car
7:24 am - start our adventure
7:59 am - mile 1
8:38 am - mile 2
9:26 am - mile 3
10:05 am - mile 4
10:34 - mile 5
11:00 - Renee' gets dizzy and almost passes out
11:26 - mile 6
11:45 - Renee' gets stung by a ? (hornet?)
11:50 - Met men who had already hiked 23.8 miles UP the mountain and were on their way down.
----The mile marker signs don't go up past mile 6 and I don't have times here---
1:05 - Jake is really sore and asks for pain gel
2:28 - treeline - Ray is getting pretty sick
From 2:28 until 6:33, Ray is really - really sick
2:30 pm - a stranger gives us false hope that we will make the train
2:45 pm - mile 10.5 - Renee' is crying like a baby
4:40 pm - our ride down the train can be heard in the distance leaving the mountain
5:30 pm - water angels arrive
6:33 pm - Summit Pikes Peak
6:50 pm - strangers Liz and Josh from WA take us down the mountain
7:55 pm - Liz pulls off the side of the road for a sick Jake and drops us off (by request)
8:00 pm - call a friend to rescue us
9:00 pm - finally get to our car in Manitou by the Cog Rail
9:30 pm - dinner at Chipotle
10:05 pm - finally home

We each left the base of the mountain with our own packs - 2 liters of water, food, clothes for bad weather, and a small emergency kit.

The goal was to make it to Barr Camp, take a good break and get some great nutrition.  I got crazy dizzy around 5.5 miles and almost passed out.  Ray made me sit down and eat, take in some electrolytes, and took my pack.  I actually felt better after this stop, but Ray wanted my pack to "save me" for the end.

As we were hiking along, I suddenly felt pain on the back of my left arm - I reacted by swiping and sure enough, a large black bug of some type flew off.  I immediately had Jake make some mud to put on it wishing I had something else when it occurred to me, I had my "3-in-1 Summer Spray" in my backpack.  As I was digging for it, Ray told us to move quick - right next to us hanging in the tree was a huge nest with bugs swarming it.  We didn't stick around long enough to see what type.  I am guessing hornets as I know it wasn't wasps and the nest didn't look like bees.  Anyway, after moving on down the trail, I located my spray, wiped off the mud, put on the spray, put on more mud and moved on along.  As soon as I sprayed it, the pain was relieved.  I smeared the mud on to pull out the stinger or any poison as it dried.  You can't even tell I was stung today!

Not long down the path we ran into two men who were on their way back down the mountain.  They were sharing their stories with us as this is a regular occurance in their lives.  It was before noon and the guys were ON THEIR WAY DOWN!!!  But get this...THEY STARTED 11.3 miles away from the base of the mountain at Memorial Park.  This means that they hike 23.8 miles each way REGULARLY!  They said this was the second time this month.  They started at 12:03 am with the light of the full moon.

Jake kept begging for the pain gel because his hip was bothering him.  Ray didn't understand.  Finally, Ray got the message and gave Jake the gel.  Jake was so thrilled.  As soon as he used it, he had immediate relief.  We got to learn some new human anatomy terms (sacrum, illiac, groin...).  This makes it in the story because this is the ONLY time of the entire climb that Jake asked for anything.  He was AMAZING!!!

Before 2:30 Ray started getting pretty ill.  He just didn't seem right at all.  I MADE him give me my pack back and tried to take his but he was not having any part of it.  We should have stopped at Barr Camp to fill our water bladders.  We thought we had enough and didn't want to increase the weight of our packs -- bad choice!!!  There were definitely some items we did not pack that were left at home that would have helped as well - our Nitro and our Ningxia were just sitting in the fridge at home - bad choice on our part!

We stopped for another hefty snack around 2:30 and realized we were completely out of water.  A nice man who loves elk hunting and snowshoeing stopped to dine with us.  He explained that he was out of shape and had to kick it into high gear to prepare for Elk Season.  We were just past tree line and he was excited to show us the great areas to snowshoe.  Apparently, if you hike out of treeline, the best fresh powder for snowshoeing is RIGHT there!  He told us we were 1.5 miles from the summit and our goal of reaching the summit by 4:00 was well within our reach!

We hiked on and saw a sign in the distance.  I wanted to run to the sign because according to this nice elk hunting, snow shoeing man, this sign should tell us we had only one more mile to go and if that were true, we would make it to the train in time for the ride down.  I got to the sign, saw that it said there were 2 miles to the top and sat down on a rock in front of the sign.  Jake and Ray were making their way up.  By the time Jake got to me, I was in a puddle of tears.  When Ray got to me, I was a sobbing, blubbering mess.  You see, this nice gentlemen also told us the store at the top closes at 5:00.  I didn't have too much hope that we would summit before 5:00 knowing we had 2 miles left and Ray was in BAD shape.

I didn't want to turn around and go down because we were 2 miles from the top, I don't ever intend to climb this trail to the top in my life again, and if I didn't go on, I would never achieve the goal of summitting Pikes Peak from climbing Barr trail.  However, if I DID go up and the store was closed, there was no filling up of our water and no way down other than our feet.  That would put more miles on our feet with no water.  If we turned back, we were 4 miles from water and climbing down instead of up a mountain.  But if we turned back, the mountain defeated us.  Ray found a patch of grass nearby and laid down to gather some energy.  We had a serious discussion as to when dehydration and altitude sickness turns from a feeling of misery to danger.  At this point I was also dehydrated.  Ray's lips were white and around his mouth was quite scary looking.  We decided to call the store at the top and found out a couple of important things.  1.  They didn't close until 7:00, so we had plenty of time to summit before they closed.  2.  We could get a ride down the mountain assuming we were there by 7:00.  We decided it was time to continue heading up the mountain.

We stopped about every 40 yards for a break before moving on.  A man on the way down the mountain stopped to check on us.  His wife had barely made it up leaving her pack behind to get rid of the weight in order to summit.  She took the train down and he was heading back down to gather her pack and see her at the bottom.  He was carrying two 16 oz water bottles and demanded we take one of them.  Each 40 yards we would take a sip from a bottle trying to hydrate a little yet conserve it as we still had nearly 2 miles to climb.

Jake and I would go ahead and give Ray a goal to reach.  He would reach us and we would move on.  One of these times, we waited and didn't see him for some time.  We had turned a corner a woman came around and I asked if I should go back for him.  She said, "We're giving him water."  They each emptied part of their bladders to give him a full bladder of water.  With this gift, I drank up the half full 16 oz bottle while Jake and Ray enjoyed a full mouth or two of the newly gifted water!!!  It was beautiful.  With the water, we were able to eat some nuts, some dried fruits, and peanut butter.

The altitude sickness lingered but there was definitely more expedient movement from our bodies!  Ray's lips got color back in them and he didn't look like a Zombie taking steps.  I have to admit that I was quite worried about him but didn't want to upset him or Jake - I just watched.  We turned a corner and could travel with a bit more ease.  Jake and I continued to create goals but Ray was reaching them quick enough that sometimes we actually needed a break ourselves!!!  This was GREAT progress!!!

Although we have made better time in hikes, the remainder of our mile up the mountain was pretty uneventful.  We had whoops of excitement and wails of misery - but we saw it coming!

Jake ran ahead to see the top but stopped short as he wanted to hold each of our hands as we summitted the mountain!

I must tell you that Jacob Mitchel Hogan was a superstar.  He was an amazing encourager and extremely patient.  He never once complained and never once whined.  He wanted to spend an hour at the top before our train ride down.  At one point he learned if we got to the top in time for the train, but not time for donuts, we would not even get the world famous Pikes Peak donuts, and he had not one negative thing to say.  When we sat for a bit, he would encourage us to "just keep swimming."  When we got negative, he would remind us to stay positive.  He was such a terrific leader and made me prouder to be his mom than I have ever been!!!

So, when Jake stopped so that we could summit together, I cried...big old happy, proud Momma tears.  The top of that mountain was a beautiful sight when we summited at 6:33 pm.

When we walked in the store, Ray immediately asked the staff if we could get a ride down with the Rangers.  We found out that the way that this works is to first put a call out on the loud speaker to see if anyone in the store would be willing to take hiking strangers DOWN the mountain with them.  The deal is that they would drop us off at the gate and we would be responsible for finding our trasnportaiton at that point.

A young couple on vacation from Seattle, Washington offered to give us a ride down.   Liz is a Master's student working towards teaching teachers how to teach teachers to teach math.  Her dream is to live in Japan and study their method of teaching math.  Josh is a lawyer who currently works on "boring" litigation but dreams of doing law for microbreweries in the area of trademark and patents.

The agreement was for Liz and Josh to drop us off at the gate where we would have to find our own way back to our car.  We talked about having a friend come get us but that didn't make sense for a friend to drive 40 minutes to pick us up.  I suggested we should get a cab.  Liz and Josh were headed up to Denver and offerred to take us somewhere along their route.  The plan was for them to take us close to our home, drop us off at a Starbucks.  From there our friend would pick us up, take us to our house, we would drop Jake off, get our other car, and drive 35 minutes one way to pick up our car at the base of the mountain.

We did not have our best wits about us and found thinking clearly to be a challenge.  When we got to their car with our donuts and Gatorades, I realized I did not have my phone.  Sooo...the search for the phone commenced.  I went back inside the summit store to the 4 locations I had been in - NO PHONE.  Ray had looked through all the packs -- and then we searched again.  It was in the side pocket of Ray's pack so 20 minutes after starting the search, the phone was right where we left it beside us.

Liz did an excellent job of getting us down the mountain.  Jake did not feel well but held it all together.  Ray and I perked up quickly.  At the bottom, she pulled over for Josh to use the restroom and Jake jumped out to get fresh air and hopefully to feel better.  Everyone loaded back into the car for the drive to Starbucks.  We made it another 15 minutes down the road before Jake yelled, "I'm going to throw up."  Liz pulled over blocking traffic to get Jake out of the car.  He made it out of the car on time.  At this point, I felt so bad for Liz and Josh getting stuck in this situation.  I asked for them to leave us where we were and we would find alternate arangements.  Liz felt horrible about leaving us, but I assured her we knew the restaurant we were near and the gas station.  We would call a friend to help us.

We walked up to the restaurant and called in the calvary.  We canceled our first friend who lived 30 minutes from where we were dropped off.  And we called another friend who lived nearby.  Luckily Cindy answered her phone, picked us up, and took us to our car at the base of the mountain.  We got to our car at 9:00 pm.  We had eaten lots of healthy, nutritious snacks but were all famished by this time.  We had planned to eat a meal at the summit - but there had been no time for that AND we summitted 3 hours after we had expected.  Now with this extra fun, we were 6 hours past our planned meal time!

We found a Chipotle that was open at 9:30, ate some grub and headed for home.

We got home to the cheers of Zoe and Ben who were all ready to tell us of their adventures and excited to hear of our adventures.  Jake said that he has a day full of the best stories to share EVER - the day that he changed roles with the parents ;)



The Answer:
150% = 1 1/2