One of the most dangerous mountains in the country. I'm extremely cautious about that park because the afternoons in summer almost always include a storm. Up that high you're the tallest thing, everything is conductive wet rock, and the hail is fierce enough that nearby it once killed a baby. Luckily today conditions were slated to be perfect and I only had gusts of wind to contend with. Still incredibly dangerous when you're trying to shimmy up a mountain but not the existential terror I feel when I see a single storm cloud come out of nowhere.

Also are you referring to Chasm Lake beneath the mountain? After Sky Pond and Shelf Lake it's probably my favourite in the park. The columbines on the path to it above Peacock Lake are so beautiful that I would have suffered a detour today if the sun wasn't too high by the time I got down from Longs.

I was so pleasantly surprised by The Narrows. Despite hiking in that park regularly and specifically to places like Shelf Lake in those photos which is following animal trails up the side of a mountain (also doing psilocybin on the cliff above Black Lake), I've got a big fear of heights. It's big call of the void energy for me and exposure is something I try to minimise. There is certainly a huge ledge to The Narrows and if you gain momentum when falling or fall in the wrong spot you're cyberdead 2077. What the video and descriptions of a 3' walking area don't capture is the gradient of ledges before the big one. There is only one main path but it's all boulders so you can shift between higher and lower horizons. So many options that I followed the wrong set of boulders to the wrong Keyhole, and that time confidently enough that I could scramble all over them as if there wasn't a cliff below. When I redo the hike that section won't give me any more anxiety than the sketchy waterfalls scrambles elsewhere in the park. The only intimidating thing left is the Homestretch, which is a 100' climb up cracks in a granite wall at a 45 degree angle. But after the rest of it my only anxiety there is the uncertainty of the experience and knowing how hand-polished so much of the granite on other sections is. It's the part that requires multiple days of perfect conditions for me to trust the rock.

I had plans for those things but then they kept getting interrupted. And I ordered the wrong kind of burrito so my caloric strategy was ruined. Normally that's not an issue with dayhikes around here but even the Keyhole Route is so much more climbing than it is hiking. The physical aspect of it was so much more than I was anticipating. Now I've got to treat it like a prolonged 5 mile scramble with very little uninterrupted ground. All the muscles I built for hiking stresses did nothing for the real toll of that route. With subsequent 14ers I'm getting a climbing gym membership before I attempt anything more technical than this.

At least before the final section there are only a few good opportunities for it. Lots of broken bone territory, maybe five places (to that point) where you could accidentally go splat in good conditions.

If we start it as a community challenge and the rightful place to shitpost, it makes people more active hikers. Everything about hiking is good and slaps ass. Any insurgency is like 90% hiking with the weight of a loaded daypack.

I have confidence in boulders if I know what's around them. Skipping around the wet creek boulders running off of those lakes for wildflower photos is fun, climbing an isolated scramble of them is like a full-body puzzle, if they're big and embedded I can deal with any shifting that does happen. Scree and smaller rocks scare the shit out of me because I'm always seeing things in terms of how long it would take to get a helicopter with pain meds there if I had a compound fracture. At least an hour. I viscerally hated nature for making the whole Boulderfield until the actual bouldering. It's just everything falling off the mountains so it's nothing but scree, boulders partially crushed to scree, and boulders resting on it. Nothing is stable so it exists to fracture ankles.

The treeline is where things get really interesting. Ecosystems that take centuries to regenerate, where all of the trees on the approach grow horizontally because of the snowpack and wind, where bryophytes and tiny wildflowers become fascinating because they can survive such an extreme environment. I'll probably never be comfortable enough with capital M Mountains to chase 14ers but everything up there is as fragile as it is impressive. The risk and effort of getting there usually deter hikers that aren't naturalists with good etiquette so it's 50% more friendly above the trees. One storm cloud though. Especially in the Rockies, I see one cloud up there and it's a safety time-out until it changes. There's nothing worse than being caught in a hail storm and knowing you can't hide anywhere that won't kill you if lightning strikes in that general area.

Highly recommend the Rockies. Rocky Mountain National Park is such a grand cathedral to me that the moment I saw it I had to move to within day-trip distance. Mills Lake, with Longs Peak being the largest mountain on the left and Mount Pagoda in the centre, is peak serenity. Loch Vale is clear enough that you can see trout 6 feet down and the lakes up in that snowy bowl on the left are surrounded by wave after wave of wildflowers. You really suffer to have that sunrise coffee and joint but when you do it's a genuinely perfect morning.

edit: Plus you climb mountains to climb mountains to get to the mountain you want to climb.

I can't without reservations that only sell for like the first half hour of one day a year.