Mount Pugh

You know what is the most painful part of hiking mountains? Being forced to turn back. It hurts so much, especially when you can see the summit just lurking around the corner. A couple weekends ago, I missed the Gothic Peak summit because of the creepy loose gravels, this time it was just straight-up fear. I freaked out near the summit of Mount Pugh.

The Sunday morning started with a slight foreboding hint. Both Daniel and I were oddly out of sorts, just tired. I was extremely sleep deprived because my sorry ass went out and got smashed on Friday night which for some reason, alcohol has a way of fucking with my sleep pattern. Daniel had been up packing for his trip out to the east coast. Still, after a mile or so into the trail we both felt better. The first 3.8 miles of the trail was extremely easy. Then it climbs aggressively toward Stujack Pass, this is where most people would stop. I couldn’t figure out why so many people would get so close to the summit only to turn back, this rarely ever happens on these types of hike.

Then I get to the knife-jack ridge leading up to the Pugh summit. Ever watch a movie where some chick was stuck on a crumbling balcony and some random dude would tell the chick to give him her hand and she sits there like an idiot staring down at the ledge? That was me. I have never been completely stupid struck like this in my entire life. The ridge up to Pugh wasn’t even technical at all, I’ve climbed way worse stuff, but the problem is, at some point, the ridge narrows to about two feet wide with crumbling dirt on each side, and I can see the steep drop on each side. I knew it was just my mind playing horrible tricks on me, and I knew it was easy enough to just keep moving, but my body would not respond. We stopped on the ridge for lunch in hopes that maybe I’ll get over my fears during that time, but it only made things worse. Sitting on the ridge and staring down at the valley some 6000+ ft below (keeping in mind, our Columbia Tower which is a 76 stories skyscraper is only 967 ft tall) made my stomach queasy as hell and it actually made the return trip off that ridge extremely slow, my limbs where stiff, retarded and doing just about everything it could to kill me.

So in the end, we didn’t hit summit (which stands at 7,201 ft tall) even though Daniel could have easily tagged it if he wanted to…the guy used to rappel and doesn’t understand acrophobia at all. We were less than half a mile from the top and had climbed 4800ft out of the 5400ft. Sucks, I’ll have to find a way to overcome this phobia and come back next year. This is one that will haunt me for a while, because it’s really one thing to have the trail get medieval on your ass, but it's an irritating something else when it’s your mind betraying you.

Slide of hike here. The entire world looks a bit hazy this day because of some major forest fire nearby. I highly recommend this hike if you don't have paralyzing fear of heights. It really was a fun hike.