Princeton

The beginning of our first expedition was a bit of a charlie foxtrot. There were six of us altogether, three of us in each vehicle driving up the road to the trailhead. Unfortunately, the three of us in the one truck didn't know where the trail started and the people in the other truck who did didn't wait for us. One of us did see where they went and in order to catch up with them decided to take a "short cut" (which, of course, was nothing of the sort), and the last two of us (Damon and I, who'd already been separated from him) followed, thinking he was on the trail (which, of course, he wasn't). Or at least we tried to, as we lost track of him fairly early.

The upshot of all of this, of course, was that we ended up climbing to the top of Tigger Peak, which turned out to be an awful grind, and was certainly the hard way up, since the slope was trail-free, steep, and covered with loose boulders (fairly typical terrain at the top of most of the fourteeners I've climbed, but normally I hadn't had to cover over a thousand feet of it on that much of a slope, and it was brutal on the ankles). The route did eventually meet up with the main trail on the ridge that led up to Princeton's summit, so it wasn't a fatal blunder, but we hadn't started early enough, and about 500 feet from the summit we ran out of time and had to turn back because of the weather.

Another thing of note is that during the descent, Damon had gotten above me on a fair slope, and so I told him to be careful not to drop any rocks on me. Of course, immediately after assuring me that he wouldn't, he knocked a rock loose that managed to not only hit me, but caromed off both of my legs on the way down. I, of course, thanked him appropriately.

Still, all that said, and despite the disappointment of failing to bag the peak, I had a really good time that day.

About two weeks later, Damon and I (just the two of us this time) decided to try it again. This time we knew where the trail was and made it up without real difficulty, although I got a little hypoxic at the top (something that had never happened to me before -- I turned noticably blue). It wasn't serious or anything, but I was surprised and we (including the few other people at the top) were properly entertained.

The weather was never really all that great for photography, so I didn't get many pictures (two of the ones here were from the previous attempt). We had lots of fog early that day (most of it forming on our side of the mountain and passing down the valley next to the trail) and throughout the day we almost always had at least some clouds, but the weather held out until the usual afternoon thunderstorms (which weren't particularly heavy, not that it would have mattered since we were off by that point anyway). At the very end, there was a lightning strike well below us, which was a bit disconcerting, especially since there hadn't been any other lightning anywhere remotely near us up to that point, but obviously it didn't hit us or anything.

When we got back to the trailhead, we gave a couple of people we'd seen along the trail a ride down to their car at the bottom of the road (they'd been driving something that didn't have four-wheel drive, which is recommended up there). There were two of them, a father and his adult daughter; Damon and I were fairly impressed since the dad hailed from Iowa and had only been acclimating for a couple of weeks, and he held his own on the trail just fine.

Anyway, Princeton's a real pain to climb, and with the possible exception of Pikes, it was the hardest fourteener I'd yet done. Pikes is more a question of endurance, since the trail is very, very long and you cover a tremendous amount of vertical, but at least the trail is quite good. With Princeton (on the other hand) there are lots of seemingly endless fields of loose boulders you have to cover, the trail is hard to follow, and it isn't terribly good even when it's obvious. It's not that it's so terribly physically difficult at any point or anything, but the terrain tends to saps your will to go on, and it's the first mountain I've climbed where my first thought on reaching the top was "crikey, now I have to go down that crap?" instead of the usual "woo hoo, I'm here!"

I doubt I'll climb this one again.

Wait, that's Princeton over there?

The start of the right trail -- note the fog

Damon, with Antero "peeking" out of the clouds

Damon and me at the top

Looking back at Tigger Peak, the trail along the side, and the Arkansas Headwaters below

I'm on top of the world!