How Danoff, Denver, and Nivert saved my life at 14,000'
You can’t always pick your mantra
How many times have you fallen over while sitting on the ground? Twice inside a minute is my record. The second fall came with tunnel vision and a spiked heart rate.
The signs had been there for days. It all made sense now. I had altitude sickness. The strange fatigue, lingering headache, and the addition of these new symptoms all pointed to a bad outcome.
I told my hiking partner to go ahead, no sense in holding him back from the second ascent. The trail was littered with people who could offer just as much help as anyone, so I didn’t want to be a burden. After reassuring him that I would be fine, we parted ways. We would each hike the 5 miles back to the truck on different paths.
After the first few steps down the crumbled Redcloud Peak in Colorado with slippery footing and tunnel vision, I started to freak out a bit. My heart rate shot up out of fear and the tunnel vision instantly grew worse. The hours that followed were some of my scariest but this is the story about how the song Country Roads saved my life.
The Trip: A week in the sky
We charted a strenuous week of Colorado 14ers. For anyone who hasn’t hiked at high altitude, a 14er is just a mountain taller than 14,000ft. There are plenty of mountains taller than 14k (Everest is upwards of 29k) but it’s no walk in the park. For perspective, the Federal Aviation Administration requires oxygen to be provided to crew members if they are above 12,500' for more than 30 minutes. Oxygen isn’t required to hike at this altitude but you should be in good shape and know the signs of altitude sickness. These mountains are about as gnarly as you can get without requiring specialized high-altitude gear.
Months of training were going to pay off with many miles of trails, six 14,000' ascents, and a few other 10,000'+ hikes. Cardio is the easiest part of training for a trip like this; your legs require miles of hikes to get the joints ready for carrying weight even if it is minimal, your muscles familiar with different angles, and the mind tuned to your body so you can understand the difference between an injury and fatigue.
Without prepping your body, anything from your back to your ankles will become the weak point and end your trip early. My hip joints always give me trouble if I just drop into a 10+ mile hike, so preparation was paramount.
The Training
Shenandoah National Park in Virginia is nearby and beautiful, but it’s a little close to sea level for any kind of a meaningful training ground for western, high-altitude mountains.
For the months leading up to the trip, I hiked Hump Back Rocks 2–3 times per week for two months. With nearly 1000' of ascent in 1 mile, it’s the closest training hike around. Filling a backpack with water jugs is a great way to add cheap weight that can be poured out if needed. I worked up to 60 lb packs by the end of the summer and was in the best shape of my life.
The Acclimation
My wife and I spent two weeks in Glacier National Park in early August that summer. We hiked upwards of 70 miles, ascended to 10,000' a few times, and averaged 7,500' at one of the prettiest places in the world.
From an acclimation standpoint, this was ideal. Overkill probably, but still useful. All the preparation was worth it — I felt like a superhero even after this ‘introductory’ two weeks. This was going to be a week in the sky to remember.
I flew to Denver late at night, got picked up by my hiking buddy, and we drove through the night to set up a late camp and wake up in the San Juan Mountains.
Day 1 — Blue Lakes
We started out on the Blue Lakes trail: 13 miles to the summit of Sneffels with plenty of dispersed camping opportunities. Aside from stirring up the hornets in a tree at a river crossing, it was a perfect hike. We set up camp before sundown for an early night’s sleep ahead of a 3 a.m. ascent.
Camping at elevation usually means falling asleep to the white noise of the wind trying to rip apart your tent. This night was pretty calm which let us hear the wolves howling in the distance. Normally that would be the most unsettling part of the night but we camped at the bottom of a bowl.
In the middle of the night, we woke to the sounds of crashing rocks. Somewhere in the bowl, a massive rock had dislodged from the ridge and was crashing down somewhere in the bowl and the echoes made it sound like it was happening all around us. There were no options to do anything but just hope the falling rocks weren’t coming close. It was pitch black and the sounds were too disorienting to judge our surroundings. After a few minutes, all the pieces finished falling but it made for a rough sleep.
Day 2 — Mt Sneffels
My friend calls Mt. Sneffels by Eleanor as an homage to Gone in 60 Seconds. The unattainable. The mountain always brings a problem. Every single time he’s attempted to climb this mountain has ended in some kind of mechanical or weather problem that forced him to turn around. For me, this is the mountain that filled my adventure cup. She certainly lived up to her unattainable namesake that morning.
We woke at 3 a.m. to ascend and get down before any chance of rain. The forecast was showing 0% but everything at altitude can change so fast that it’s common practice to get down before any possibilities of afternoon thunderstorms manifest. The drastic change in pressures from valley to peak can turn a pocket of humidity into a thunderstorm with no warning.
Our plan was to pack ultra light, reach the summit shortly after dawn, enjoy the views, and break down camp on the way back to the truck. With headlamps and helmets, we started climbing the switchbacks at 10,500'. The rest of the hike was nearly straight up to 14,050' over sharp rocks, scree fields, and thousand-foot drops. Helmets are a good idea up top because you are basically walking up a precariously stacked tower of boulders covered in slippery dirt that turns to lubricating mud with the slightest amount of moisture.
About half way up we could start to see the sun illuminate the sky to the east. It would have been a breathtaking sight had it not been for an odd darkness a few miles away. It was flickering light kind of like summer heat lightning down south. The forecast called for 0% chance of thunderstorms but we decided to keep an eye on it and keep pushing.
For another hour we pushed through terrain that felt like a granite hell in the dim morning light. Every corner was sharp, every surface slippery, and every breath labored. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the Earth just didn’t want us there like we didn’t belong. We were no longer hiking — we were hopping from solid granite to solid granite trying to avoid stepping on a loose boulder and taking an early exit.
At only 50' shy of the summit, the mountain started to shake.
The small clouds were now a black thunderstorm that crept up on us, silent until the first rumble. We turned to look in unison just in time to watch the wall of rain and hail reach us. The slippery dust turned to a more slippery mud that coated everything. It felt like the Earth had sprung a trap on us. We were completely exposed and the hail felt like we were being assaulted with airsoft rifles. Thankfully the helmets blocked the hail but the impact noise was deafening. Or so I thought.
Then came the lightning.
The dimly lit world flashed like fireworks were exploding all around us. A constant drumbeat of lighting flashes and thunderous explosions rang out like an artillery barrage. I’ll never forget looking at a nearby false summit that looked as if it was glitching from the steady interruptions of pure white lighting landing all around.
We were exposed. We were the tallest objects in a lightning rod testing ground. We needed to get down and forget the summit. Eleanor would retain the title yet again.
The way we came up was slow and arduous. Exposed, uneven surfaces coated with oily mud atop thousand-foot drops felt like as sure a death as the lightning. Luckily there are two main trails to ascend Sneffels and we were on the harder trail. We decided to move as fast as we could around the mountain to the easier trail but we found the scree field first.
If you’ve never hiked the Rockies, scree is just small rock. A scree field is like a sand pit of rocks held together like a house of cards. If you disturb one rock it disturbs its neighbors and so on until you have a rock slide. Under normal conditions you always avoid scree. It’s unpredictable and dangerous but at that moment it was the safest path to stop being a lightning rod.
We descended 2000' in barely a few minutes. It wasn’t running, it wasn’t sliding, it was more like speed skating down a 45-degree rock field. If I had to do that descent 100 times, death or injury would have been the majority of outcomes but that morning the adrenaline and smaller rocks aligned to create an experience I will never be able to replicate. Fleeing Zeus, being pelted constantly by grape-sized hail, running/skating down a scree field, all to the steady barrage of explosive thunder was the scariest 10 minutes of my life and I wouldn’t change a thing about it.
We finally made it back to the trailhead and had a late lunch. Go hiking with a friend who is an engineer because it comes with perks like a fully expandable kitchen that was built into the truck bed. Burritos never tasted that good.
Day 3 — Over instead of around
We had to drive a little to make our next trailhead, so we gave our legs a break and drove over Imogene Pass in southwest Colorado. It was either a fun day of off-roading or a full day on the road.
The trailhead had plenty of room to park the truck and we set up camp. Eating dinner while watching a herd of elk on the far ridge was a relaxing evening before the day to come.
Day 4 — Wetterhorn and Uncompahgre
We woke up early and started on our 19-mile hike with two 14ers and roughly 10,000' of ascent. It was going to be a beautifully exhausting day.
Wetterhorn was first. Nothing too difficult on the way there. The Columbine flowers and marmots popped up through the rocks on the way to the ascent. The trail was a steady ascent until around 13,000' and then things got a bit sporty.
To reach the ascent, the trail forces you to curl around the outside face of the mountaintop, climb a chute, and walk out across a ledge before climbing a stretch of near vertical cliff face for the last 100'. None of this required ropes or harnesses but it was as gnarly as could be just shy of that trail rating.
For the first time on our trip, I was feeling a little winded. This was a year of intense Colorado wildfires so the air was smokey. Maybe that was it. We were a few days into serious hiking and maybe I wasn’t in the kind of shape I thought. Maybe that was it. Maybe all the training in Virginia and the hiking in Montana leading up to the trip was too much and I was overtrained.
Whatever the case, I felt like I hit a wall around 13,500' and every step felt more difficult than the last. All year I didn’t need to take a break to catch my breath, it was always a water break and the breathing worked itself out. Now, I was stopping to catch my breath every 5 minutes. I put it out of my mind and focused on the task at hand: ascending Wetterhorn.
As I was sitting and planning my route up the final near-vertical climb, an old timer came up and sat next to me. She had skin like leather and lit a joint next to me.
“How ya doin’?” she asked.
I told her all was well and I was taking a moment to figure out my route. There were massive boulders jutting out everywhere and the only way up was to walk out across the ledge and start climbing.
“Want a hit?” she asked as she extended the joint my way.
I politely declined. I couldn’t fathom how someone could tolerate smoking anything in air that thin. She laughed and said she would show me the way. Like a Marlboro commercial for pot, she bounded up to the top like it was nothing while keeping the joint in her lips the entire time.
My turn. I walked out on the ledge that was overlooking a several hundred-foot drop to nothing but jagged rocks. Beyond that was another thousand-foot drop to the riparian area above the tree line. The ledge was about 5' wide where I would start climbing which was a good base of operations but not enough to catch you if you slipped and fell back on it.
Everything was going smoothly on the climb until halfway up. My friend was already at the top and we were joking about how slow I was. Then I grabbed a handhold that wasn’t secure. It wiggled a little too much for me to put weight through it. No big deal; I grabbed another. It was wiggly. I reached for a third and the rock which looked to be secure gave way and started to crash down the mountain behind me.
That’s when the fear set in.
Mentally I was completely fine and thinking logically. Physically, my hands started shaking and my legs felt tense. I clearly remember telling my friend “I think I’m…. afraid.” We’ve all been afraid before but what was weird this time was how clear my mind was. I wasn’t freaking out at all, rather it felt like I was watching someone else’s body have a fear response.
My friend wanted me to complete the mountain since I was so close and we had already been run off Sneffels, but he listened and we talked everything through. After a few minutes of calm talking about the predicament of shaky arms and loose handholds, I had to make the decision. I felt like I couldn’t trust my arms in that moment. If it was fear, which hadn’t compromised my thinking or breathing yet, I was in too dangerous of a position to chance it. I’m not afraid of heights but I respect them.
Heading back down was the right move. I climbed back down to the ledge and waited for my friend. On the walk to the next peak, we talked at length about feeling vs. observing fear. I’ve been terrified before (when we angered Zeus a few days prior and when I accidentally did a 360 on a highway as a teenager) but I felt the terror in my heart rate and thinking patterns. Wetterhorn was unique. Never before or since that day have I observed my body having a physical fear response while feeling completely in control mentally.
Fast forward 10 miles of hiking around 11,000' and we came to the base of Uncompahgre. It’s a towering mountain, the highest peak I’ve ever climbed at 14,308'. Despite its height, it is a relatively simple hike with very few bouldering sections. We ate some lunch and started the ascent.
Similar to Wetterhorn, I hit the wall. My breathing was harder, I needed more breaks, and it never felt like I could quite catch my breath only this time the wall came at 13,000'. In hindsight, this was the first real warning sign. Just hours earlier I hit the wall at 13,500' but it started earlier this time. At the time I attributed this to the extra strenuous day and kept pushing up the mountain.
We finally reached the top in the early afternoon and I had finished climbing my first 14er. Sneffels and Wetterhorn were awesome and while I crossed the 14,000' mark on both, they didn’t feel as good as actually reaching the top. It was an awesome feeling.
We took our pictures, reveled in the accomplishment, and then started our long hike back to the truck. After a 19-mile day with two peaks and nearly 2 miles of ascent, we were exhausted. We rolled out the mobile kitchen, ate several burritos, drove to the next campsite, and slept like kings.
Day 5 — Off-roading the San Juans
This was a much-needed day of rest for our legs. We aired our tires down and rode some 4x4 trails. One of the riparian areas we drove through brought us to an abandoned mine shaft that we explored a little deeper than we should have. Overall, just a fun day that brought us to the trailhead of our next double peak day.
Although this wasn’t a strenuous day, I felt a little burnt out. Getting out of the truck and taking short walks left me a little tired. This was my high-altitude marathon, my week in the sky. Being tired was just part of it. Only a few more days and then I could rest for weeks.
There are two types of fun in life: fun in the moment that is hard to remember and hardship in the moment that is a blast to remember. This ‘suck’ was going to be a blast to relive for years to come.
Day 6 — The scariest day of my life
This day had two peaks, Redcloud and Sunshine, but the trail wasn’t as long and the ascent wasn’t as strenuous as previous days. We stacked the trip to get the technically difficult mountains finished first and now we were completing our easier routes.
Our trail started out completely unremarkable. We began in the tree line but the trail quickly opened up into the clear riparian areas above 11,000'. We ran into a few old-timers that I hope to emulate one day. We passed two people in their 80s who were completing the Colorado 14ers for the third time in their lives. Their leathery skin was complimented by their long, braided hair. For a moment we thought we ran into two clones of Willie Nelson but they were more like apostles instead of clones. We declined their offer to join in a smoke and pushed past them.
Probably 2 to 3 miles after we left Willie’s gang, I hit the wall again only harder and earlier this time. The shortness of breath, more breaks, and sluggish legs came on at only 12,000' this time. I couldn’t believe it — I overtrained. All that preparation work was coming back to bite me.
My friend, who was pursuing his ascent of every Colorado 14er, was as dismayed as I was. He is a billy goat that climbs mountains every weekend but he does a great job matching the intensity of his hiking partners. He did a great job waiting on me during my breathing breaks and cheering me up with some trash talk about how out of shape those hillbillies out East are compared to Western hikers.
We both find comfort in discomfort. This shared perspective makes us great hiking partners. We both respect the line between misery in the moment and injury. I could tell he was looking at me differently like something didn’t make sense. He hid it well, but we both could tell something was off.
Another mile or two of the slowest hiking all week and we reached the false summit of Redcloud peak. It was here that our Willie Nelson pair caught up to us. After the expected jokes about old timers catching up with us, they coyly asked if everything was alright. They could sense something was amiss.
We brushed off their concern as just overtraining. They let us be but before they passed us up, the older man stood right in my face and studied me for a long moment. He looked me in the eye and said “Son, take care of yourself. Ain’t no reason two old farts should catch up and pass two men in their prime.”
The peak of Redcloud is deceivingly dangerous; the trail is a winding switchback that cuts up the ridge of crumbling rock. Even the trail is slippery with loose rock and hard to keep your footing. One step off the trail and there would be no hope of beating gravity as it pulls you down a slide of crumbling rock. I already used this photo, but take a closer at the terrain in the foreground. In some ways, this was one of the harder hikes we had to make.
We finally reached the top where we took our triumphant photos. Sunshine Peak was very close by on the same ridge line. Any other day and this would be an easy way to bag two mountains in one loop. Our plan was to take a more difficult but shorter route back to the truck instead of doubling back.
Some other hikers were up there with us taking their glory photos of shotgunning beers or taking bong rips at 14,000'. I grew up in Colorado and it will always hold a special place in my heart but I’ll never understand how so many Colorado natives can smoke at high altitudes!
My friend is a bit of a talker and he was chatting up the other hikers, taking their pictures for them, and talking about our week. I tried to keep up but talking was making me winded so I sat down cross-legged on the ground. I’d let him handle the social stuff while I gathered strength for the next hike.
Then I fell over.
It’s hard to explain the feeling, but I simply couldn’t stay upright in a seated position. I wasn’t dizzy.. up just didn’t feel like up. I pushed myself back upright and focused on my breathing.
I fell over again. Something was seriously wrong.
I rose to my feet but could barely stand. My hands were on my knees and it felt like I was going to vomit. I was breathing long and slow just to keep feeling somewhat normal.
The other hikers left and my friend asked if I was ready to hit the next mountain. I told him what happened and we both knew the situation had changed. I looked rough. Sunken eyes. Speaking was difficult. A headache was creeping in. I needed to get down the mountain, fast.
He asked what I wanted to do. I told him I couldn’t make it down the other side. Maybe I could make it to the other peak but that would just keep me at altitude longer and we would be going down a technically challenging, unknown path. That felt like a recipe for disaster.
Looking down the trail we just came up, it was filled with people going in both directions. My friend was 15 minutes away from crossing another 14er off his list and I didn’t want to take that from him. I told him to continue on to Sunshine and I would double back. We would meet at the truck. He protested leaving me in that shape, but I pointed to the trail full of people. They would be able to help me just as much as he would be able to. If I fell over, someone with a satellite phone would call for an evacuation. There were no real options and he couldn’t help me more than anyone else could in that moment.
After much protest, he finally agreed. We figured splitting up was good for two reasons. First, he couldn’t really help me better than all the people on the trail. Second, he would be able to navigate the unknown section of the trail faster alone, pack up camp, and have the truck ready to head to a lower altitude as soon as I arrived. I’ve told this story many times and people always want to say my friend was inconsiderate but splitting up was my idea and it was objectively the quickest option to get me to a lower altitude.
We said our goodbyes which felt a little more real than I cared for and I started shuffling down the treacherous part of the mountain. If I could only get past the crumbling rock without passing out, someone would walk into me if I lost consciousness. I say lost consciousness because the altitude sickness was accelerating. I had all the telltale signs of altitude sickness and it was progressing into some of the more severe symptoms.
In the 5 minutes after we split, I started to get tunnel vision. If I slowed down or sat to catch my breath, my vision would return but it was short-lived. The tunnel vision was accompanied by an almost deafening pulse in my head. My heart was pounding. My mouth was dry.
The scariest symptom was the dull itch in my head. You know that feeling when your palm gets itchy but you can’t seem to reach it? After about a mile of descent, the throbbing tunnel vision was accompanied by a growing ‘itch’ all over my head. I took my hat off, scratched everywhere, and poured some water over my head… nothing worked. I couldn’t reach the itch. It was inside and the only way the feeling dissipated was to go slower or sit.
Sitting felt too comfortable. It was the only safe harbor in my personal hell. That scared me more than anything. If you read about people enduring severe situations (polar expeditions, fighting wildfires, etc.), one of the common threads is giving in to temporary comfort. History of littered with accounts of people who simply take a break in a dangerous situation. The danger doesn’t stop. All these breaks do is let that terminal danger get closer and then it’s too late. You will be too cold or the fire is too close or you don’t have enough strength to get back up and then you die. I read too many of these explorers’ journals to not recognize death dressed as comfort. All I wanted to do was run down the mountain to a lower altitude.
This trip came just after I finished graduate school where my research focused on the cardiovascular system. One of the classes I took was called Physiology at the Extremes. One of the topics we covered was high-altitude edema on a cellular level. I knew exactly how the cerebral edema was progressing and what each new symptom meant in terms of pathology and severity.
What was happening to me was just basic biology and physics. Your lungs trade carbon dioxide for oxygen, blood transports that oxygen around the body and trades oxygen for carbon dioxide, and the process repeats. Trading those gases is passive — your body doesn’t “do” anything. Instead, your body brings your blood to locations (capillaries) where these gases can move freely. Your carbon dioxide rich blood enters the lungs where it is exposed to the atmosphere which has little carbon dioxide but relatively high oxygen. The reverse is true in tissues like your brain. Thinking uses oxygen and builds up carbon dioxide, and your blood arrives as a savior to supply more oxygen and remove the toxic carbon dioxide.
The cells in my brain were likely swelling, challenging this simple gas exchange and retaining more carbon dioxide than they should while also causing physical damage as they grew larger. Without decreasing altitude and relaxing, coma and death were imminent.
I couldn’t believe we missed the warning signs. Every time we hit high altitude I was hitting the wall earlier and earlier. My body might be able to withstand a jaunt at high altitude but this week was the longest I stayed at high altitude. My genetic makeup simply might not be suited to spending long periods of time at high altitudes.
All these thoughts swirled in my head and I felt my body starting to get worked up. I was beginning to freak out. I could feel it in my head. The more I thought, analyzed, and worried, the faster the tunnel vision, the throbbing headache, and the itch returned. There came a point of clarity where I knew that my thinking might actually kill me. That… that was a strange moment.
I tried to distract myself. Memories weren’t coming. I couldn’t recall the faces of my loved ones. I was fighting back tears. I was terrified. For some reason, I thought my death would be fast, not slow and analytical.
The poor people I passed on the mountain must have been distraught seeing me in that state. There was probably a mile there where I had tears streaming down my face and I couldn’t respond to their inquiries. One guy even ran back to get in my face to ask if I needed help and the only words I could muster were MOVE and DOWN. A helicopter evacuation would be too slow and that was what anyone would likely try and talk me into.
The only thing that calmed me down in that state was music.
I don’t know when I started, if it was intentional, or if my grunts just came out in a cadence, but there was a soothing melody in my head that calmed me down. The music felt like life. It felt like a life preserver. The tears running down my face were no longer from fear but from salvation. I found something, a safe harbor, sure footing, something that could keep my mind and body in check.
I hummed for a while without knowing what it was. I started laughing every time it started over. It felt comfortable. At the time I remember wondering if this was just the next stage of delirium, as if death had moved on from coaxing me to sit down and had entered my mind.
Then the words came to me:
Take me home, country roads
To the place, I belong
West Virginia, mountain mama
Take me home, country roads
The song was Country Roads by John Denver, Taffy Nivert, and Bill Danoff. I can’t think of a single time that I listened to that song in my life prior to that moment. Every word I knew must have been learned by just overhearing it throughout my life. The more I sang, the more the lyrics just came to me and the stronger I felt.
I was no longer shuffling, I was actually walking. At one point I felt so good I started to jog but all the symptoms of altitude came back sharply and I settled for a slow walk. I sang that song for the last 5 miles, with tears of love and appreciation streaming down my face every step of the way.
The people on the trail still gave me weird looks and asked if I was alright but now they looked more unsure than concerned. I probably looked like I took much of something on a spiritual journey and they gave me plenty of room to pass. I didn’t talk to anyone. It felt like I found the formula to avoid death as long as I could make it to the truck.
I finally made it down the mountain to find my friend packing up the last of our camp. I looked much worse than when we parted and he was disturbed by my appearance. All I could tell him was that I was good and let’s go. We rode down to a mountain town below 10,000' and ate a monster of a meal. Well, he devoured a meal while I took a bite and went to sleep. I shared the details over the next day or so.
Day 7 — Recovery
My friend still had one more 14er to tackle on our trip and I stayed at camp. I slept for almost 36 hours straight after getting off that mountain, only waking to eat and pee. He made it up and down Handies Peak in only a few hours. He greeted me with a smile and told me how happy he was that I hadn’t died in his truck while he was hiking. Too much paperwork.
We drove down to Denver where I started feeling like myself again. I still wasn’t 100% but a few days of taking it easy brought me all the way back.
I’ve been in a few close calls in my life but that was the first and only time I felt like thinking could legitimately kill me. In the years since this trip, my friend took a survival course to more adequately prepare for his high-altitude hiking. After the altitude sickness part of the course he called me and went on and on about just how seriously sick I was on that mountain. It usually sets in rather quickly, but my story ended up being their cautionary tale about how altitude can sneak up on you slowly.
At the time I could only recall John Denver writing that song but I have since discovered Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff co-wrote Country Roads. John has passed but Taffy and Bill, if you ever read this, I genuinely thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing a song that saved my life.
