Four Peaks Hike

We were suckered!!! That's our story and we are sticking to it. Florence and I were invited by a friend, Jeff Slater, to go and hike all four peaks of Four Peaks, located just Northwest of Mesa. Since we fly right over it on each of our trips to Durango, and since neither of us have hiked even one of the peaks before, and since it is in our own backyard, we thought, sure. Mistake. After work on Friday, we loaded up the red pickup truck and headed to the trail head to camp the night before. The temperature was expected to get up to 107 degrees today, so I was already a little worried about water. So we wanted to be up there for an early start. It took around 2 hours to drive to the trail head. We slept pretty well in the back of the truck on an air mattress We all woke up at 4 am, and were on the trail by 4:45 am. We hiked two miles with our headlights and then broke out of the trees with the sunrise coming up over Roosevelt Lake.

We then hiked straight up, hand over hand to Browns peak. We were told over and over this would be the easy one. And it was. Easy compared to the other three. The problem was, we didn't know how really hard it was going to get after peak # 1.

Here we are on the top of Peak # 1.

Here we are on the top of Peak # 2. There are no photos of peak # 3 and # 4 because we were desperate to just get down off the crazy mountain. No pictures were taken.

As you can see, our pants didn't make it through the hike. Actually, this was what they looked like half way through the hike. At least it helped when the breeze started blowing to cool us off a little more.

The best description of the trail was "there was no trail" We bushwhacked our way up and down cliffs, mountains, draws, saddles, and any other mountain term you can come up with. Boulders, sharp loose rocks, and lots and lots of brush, thick brush. As you can see, lots of blood, bandages, and messed up legs and arms.

Eleven hours later, we were back at our truck. Bleeding, banged up, mentally and physically spent. But our prayers were answered, we were alive, in one relative piece, and smarter for it. Trust me on this one, we will never go back!!! Famous last words? Time will tell.