My friend, Logan, and I went to Estes Park to record a unique podcast episode—hanging 90± feet off the ground on a portaledge (where we spent the night). We had no plans for the rest of the weekend. So, we followed whims and whimsies and got more out of northern Colorado than I could’ve hoped.
Portaledge
I’ve slept in some cool AirBnbs, some unique hotels, and some fantastic campsites. I’ve slept in a bivy sack burrowed into the snow of Antarctica and in a lighthouse in Norway. But I’ve never had a nocturnal experience like sleeping 90 feet off the ground, clipped into a cliff face.
Photo credit: Kent Mountain Adventure Center
Access to our sleeping spot was a little trickier than getting a finicky key card to work. Ha. I can highly recommend at least once in your life: sleeping somewhere that requires a repel.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
Wonder fuels me. It leads me to gratitude. Of the billions of people in the course of human history, a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of 1% has gotten to experience the excitement and euphoria inherent in some of my tourist adventures. Waking up on a portaledge washed me anew in all of that sentiment. “I’m alive for this! This is really happening! I just did that!”
Photo credit: Logan Patton
The headroom is selective if not precarious on a portaledge. All of your gear hangs from a ‘biner clipped to the rigging that’s clipped into the mountain. If you want a snack, a headlamp, an extra layer of clothes—your podcasting equipment—you’ve got to be careful not to drop it. As a klutz with butterfingers, for me, that affected my heart rate more than sleeping on the outside edge of the portaledge.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
I don’t know what this moment was, but I know what that smile means. “Can you believe it!? We’re doing this!”
Photo credit: Logan Patton
Outside of a bladder break, I could’ve slept through the night just fine on the portaledge—if Logan and I didn’t have to share it. We didn’t know we could strap the middle of the portaledge taught to separate the sleeping areas of each user. So, Logan and I kept sliding into each other. All. Night. Long. At one point, I hooked my ankle around the outside support strap just to keep my feet away from his head. Imagine two sleeping bags sharing a taught hammock, and you’re not far off. Apart from the sliding, though, the fabric had the right amount of give and would probably be comfortable for solo sleepers. After an oft-interrupted night’s sleep, Logan generously let this old man take a couple naps on the afternoons after this experience.
All good things come to an end. This bittersweet moment came with the tease of hot cocoa back at the equipment shed. While we were only 90 feet off the nearest ground (for the contingency of emergency evacuation), you can see we actually were a good bit up in the mountains.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
I like all of the lines in this shot: the trees, the etches in the rock, the ropes. Logan made this short repel look more epic than it actually was. Ha.
90 feet up is only three times higher than my house, but you wouldn’t want to land at the bottom at any speed faster than you get there with a belayed repel.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
Logan Patton and I sped from the airport to Estes Park, haphazardly unpacked our luggage, quickly stuffed needful items into backpacks our guide handed us, and then sped off to the mountain. We got on the portaledge about 5 hours later than normal paying customers do and got about half the conscious time most clients get on the portaledge. And you know what? I still had to pinch myself. “We’re sleeping up there!” Logan snapped this as I was watching our guide assemble our portaledge on the face of the cliff above us. I wish I had paid better attention. I wouldn’t ’t mind getting one and sleeping on more cliff faces.
Pouring out of a 737 into a bus then into a rental vehicle and then out onto a mountain trail 8,000 feet above sea level two time zones from home makes hiking feel like an abrupt challenge. Per usual, I was the slowest member of the crew. Even in the cool fall air, I sweat through my shirt from less than a mile of hiking. The hardest part of sleeping on the face of the cliff was getting to the bottom of it.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
Kent Mountain Adventure Center leaves a permanent ledge set up for their guides but sets up the customer portaledge every trip for an authentic experience. The colors in this corner of the mountain just popped. Logan and I shared the smaller Black Diamond set up on the right.
Logan took most of the pictures and definitely the vast majority of the good photos. Sadly, this was one of the better pictures I captured for him on this trip. The one thing the shortened time on the ledge stole from us was time in decent light to move around and set up cool photos. Logan did a fantastic job with the time and space we had.
Back in May, I finished writing the manuscript to my next book. (I’ve been shopping the manuscript to agents and publishers over the past month—spent five hours yesterday completing a form for one interested literary agent.) One of the chapters in the book tells the story of a time I was wearing this jacket in Pokhara, Nepal, and a black market shopkeeper asked me an inadvertently-profound question about the Patagonia label over my heart. I think of that encounter often when wearing this puffy. I’ve spent almost two years in weekly sessions with a counselor delving into questions that swirl around the one asked that day in broken English. My life is a grand adventure. Full stop. But the adventure isn’t just exploring new experiences in new places. One of the biggest adventures of my life is exploring my heart, trekking into my soul. Even if your response to portaledge camping is “Oh, hell no!” you can go to challenging and exciting places and be likewise better for it—and sleep in your own bed at night.
Via Ferrata
To get to the top of the cliff where we repelled down to our portaledge, we got to play on a fun and scenic via ferrata course. Via ferrata is one of my favorite ways of experiencing a remote location. It gets you up close and personal with textures in the rock and lets you experience some exposure that would normally require much more skill and strength than I hold.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
As I was saying, these rungs and cables let you experience some exposure you don’t get in most hiking spots. You’re clipped in the whole time, but that doesn’t always keep your heart at its resting thump rate.
Instead of at lunchtime, we got to the via ferrata course just before sunset. It made for a beautiful backdrop as we climbed.
Especially since reading John Eldredge’s Get Your Life Back, I’ve spent this COVID season out in the woods and in creeks—intentionally noticing sensations, purposefully lingering in moments to absorb details. This climb let me luxuriate in rocks, in the smell of the mountains, in the way sunsets are different in mountains taller than my ones back home. Our government restrictions have pushed me outside more, and that has better prepared me for the hours at my desk.
Photo credit: Kent Mountain Adventure Center
One of the things I’ve been learning and practicing since turning 40 is that it’s worth the work to get to places that give you a better perspective. That work comes with frustration and discomfort. Growing comes with growing pains. You might have to rearrange some things. You’ll definitely have to admit you were wrong. You’ll have apologies to make. But when you stand in places you couldn’t before, it’s worth it. And when you look around at who celebrates with you, you feel supported. This was a relatively easy hike and climb compared to others I’ve done, but this picture symbolizes more to me than where we were physically standing.
Photo credit: Kent Mountain Adventure Center
Logan and I have put some miles in this summer with our dawn “walk and talk” sessions on Candlers Mountain. I love his authenticity and the permission he gives to be the same. I thoroughly enjoy not just his perspective on the world but how he communicates it. He makes me think, even though we agree on most major topics. I smile when I think about how many books and podcasts get referenced in our conversations. I don’t want to be the same person at my next birthday as I was at my last one. I want my cement to always be soft, not set. I don’t ever want to stop growing. Friendships like the one I share with Logan keep me on that trajectory.
We were in a bit of a hurry to get back down to the portaledge before dark. (We still ended up eating dinner and recording my podcast episode in the dark.) So, we couldn’t linger here as I would normally do on a mountaintop. In other countries, these are called prayer flags; and I wish I could’ve had a significant conversation with Jesus right here. I’m grateful that a mountaintop prayer is only a 10-minute drive plus a 10-minute hike from my house. With work being slower this summer than usual, I’ve gotten to experience more of those than I normally would have.
Photo credit: Kent Mountain Adventure Center
Wildlife
One of Logan’s passions is nature photography. After we crossed my must-do (portaledge camping) off the to-do list, he and I just drove around looking for elk and moose and anything interesting. I made a split-second decision to brake hard and take a road whose destination we didn’t know. I’m so glad we did! It led us to this field we had to ourselves, this bull elk, and a pleasant woman with a British accent.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
Logan used a zoom lens to get closer to this ol’ boy. I just kept walking toward him. He was unphased by either of us but had to let his dudes up on the mountain know where he was, who he was. His bugle wasn’t as majestic as this picture would make you believe, but it was still a wonder to experience.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
I have too much faith in what my iPhone can capture. Even this fantastic image from Logan’s DSLR can’t compare with what our eyes absorbed. When I’m overwhelmed with beauty in moments like this and frown at my phone screen, I think about how our eyes are designed—how adaptive they are, the width of what they can capture. Heaven didn’t just give us a world beyond the pragmatic utility of chance. It gave us an incredible optic system just so we could absorb it, then enjoy it.
I made that quick stop and hard turn because I saw this crowd at the corner of an intersection. Everyone was competing for the perfect shot, their subjects at a distance. Then, almost everybody got back on the main road and returned to Estes Park. Parked on this side road, Logan and I made the call to see where it went. It led to some incredible landscapes and a fantastic riverside dinner—both of which we had mostly to ourselves.
I’ve seen a couple of coyotes here in Virginia, but I’d never seen one anywhere else until this dude jogged past us in Rocky Mountain National Park. Whether you call it a “KIE-yote” or a “kie-OH-tee,” I can’t imagine having to live and hunt and sleep at 12,000 feet above elevation where the winds sometimes clock out at 150mph. Nature is cruel and amazing, hardy and delicate. I’m thankful to encounter it as a 2020 spectator instead of an 1850 settler.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
Across back-to-back weekends in different parts of Colorado, I probably saw more chipmunks than I’d previously seen in four decades of life. In some places, they explored in packs of a half dozen. So frenetic! I cracked up at how fast and how often they switched from brave to timid and back to brave.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
I tried to get this big dude to bugle by playing YouTube videos of elk bugling. I thought I was successful with that tactic until we saw that another bull had walked into a space around the corner from us. This antler’d son of a gun did NOT want to share his harem. None of the males did. Their ladies never even hinted at leaving them or following another bull. I got the feeling that a lot of these dudes struggle with the same aspirations and insecurities of us human counterparts. We bugle in different ways: our vacation spots, the vehicle we drive, the home we own, the accomplishment of our kids’ sports, the tip we leave at restaurants, the toys in our haulers, the woman on our arm. This dude was ready for his episode of Cribs, his rap video, his Inc/Fortune/Fast Company interview. And he let us all hear his warning to anyone who threatened that. “You feel me, bro!? Good.”
Photo credit: Logan Patton
While I slept under a tree, Logan explored the Flat Irons in Boulder. On this trip, I learned that Logan paints plein air. I’m learning that most of the artists in my life have multiple lanes of expressing themselves, and all of them use the bonus talents just to enjoy beauty. In a culture that’s constantly seeking to monetize and scale, it’s refreshing to see people chase new art just for the pleasure of the pursuit.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
In addition to a lot of new music that Logan introduced to me in the cab of our Toyota Tacoma, you’d have regularly heard:
“I can stop. If you want a shot, just let me know.”
“I’m good. Thanks.”
Photo credit: Logan Patton
The colors of this flora intrigued me. On one of the interpretive signs, we read that plants up on this mountaintop don’t grow taller than 3 inches because they any further height wouldn’t withstand the 150mph winds that frequent the tundra.
Jeep
After Logan and I encountered closed national park campgrounds, we approached a “dispersed camping area” on the map and drove up a hill until we came to a point where the road suddenly got very rocky. The leader of a group of short-wheelbase Jeep Wranglers asked us why we were there. We told him we were just looking for a place to set up our tents. He explained that there was a great campsite probably available at the top of the hill. I explained that I wasn’t sure that our (RWD) rental (Tacoma) could make it up there. He asked, “Did you get the insurance?” I nodded. “You’re good. We can get you up there.” His energetic passenger brought us a two-way radio, and then we were off. With their coaching and encouragement, we got all the way up the hill.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
The bumpiest roads in life often get us to fantastic overlooks. Logan and I laughed uncomfortably and heartily all the way up this stout (off) road.
Photo credit: Logan Patton
Our new friends got us to a spacious, scenic, hilltop campsite. Logan and I erected our tents as the sun fell below the horizon. Our Jeep guides returned an hour or so later on their way back down and wished us a good night. That we had. We celebrated with hot beverages and open-shutter photography. I got the Taco stuck the next morning, trying to get it somewhere it shouldn’t have been. Thanks to Logan’s experience with a Virginia overloading outfit, he was able to coach me off a boulder back into the road, where we jiggled and weaved all the way back to flat roads without any guides.
Tourists
While driving a canyon highway, we came up on a bunch of cars on the side of the road but couldn’t see people. So, I braked hard and pulled over to the shoulder to park. As we followed a beautiful creek around this large rock, we found climbers being belayed on multiple pitches across a couple of different faces. Logan and I both fell entranced by strangers and trying to figure out if we could climb the routes they were on. (I probably couldn’t have climbed any of them. Ha.)
Back-to-back mornings in Estes Park, we hit up Kind Coffee, the breakfast spot our portaledge guide had recommended. The line to the register snaked out the front door. Out the back door, a sidewalk and benches lined the Big Thompson River. With orders in hand, we let the new day come to us next to this tranquil stream. Downstream, this river turns into some stout whitewater. Here, it played the faintest soundtrack to two buddies getting to know each other better.
I’ve not been to a lot of places in Colorado more than once, but I’ve been here twice—once with my brother and his wife and then again with Logan. Both times, we pulled in pretty much exclusively to take a picture. Colorado mountains have color schemes I don’t see back here in Virginia, and I just could not get enough of what Colorado was throwing down.
Our mountains back home are beautiful. I try to intentionally sit and stare at them or hike in them at least a couple of times a week. But Colorado has some views we can’t get back home, and I felt like a glutton for how much I drank in its beauty.
Logan snapped this picture of a church on the Peak to Peak Highway, a stretch of road that doesn’t need a sign to tell you it’s a “scenic byway.”
Photo credit: Logan Patton
This was my shot with my iPhone 8 Plus. I like this image because of the reflection in the water. Right now, I’m not so sure the church is reflecting well in American culture; and this made me hopeful for when it will again give a good picture of what the church can and should be.
These two different kinds of rock have been stacked atop each other for millennia. Every time I see an odd juxtaposition of rock, I think of my time in Linville Gorge with my pastor Woody. He explained what different layers in the rock mean from a historical perspective and left us with a mystery to ponder for the rest of our lives.
I don’t know if I’ve ever splurged for the airport hotel before this trip, but COVID-discounted pricing made it a no-brainer. This was the view from our room and the pool+hot tub. COVID has taken some experiences from me, but it’s offered some fun new memories in return. Before we got to the hotel, I tried a couple of other new things: eating dinner at a vegan restaurant and exploring a city on bird scooters. Like a good set of improvisational comedy, I’ve found some great fun on the other end of a “yes and.”
