The Drive

[rijaca]

I’ve adopted a simple rule: the time on the ground (hiking, biking, skiing) must exceed the time behind the windshield getting there and back. Otherwise it’s not worth the effort.

[seannunn]

I’ve adopted a simple rule: the time on the ground (hiking, biking, skiing) must exceed the time behind the windshield getting there and back. Otherwise it’s not worth the effort.

Must be nice to be able to have that rule.
I would have only been on one or two trips using that rule.


Sean Nunn
Peculiar, MO

[9patrickmurphy]

I don't like driving all the way to the San Juans if I can't spend at least three days of hiking down there. Preferably I'll do a week or more. I like to take a lot of 4-day weekends in the summer to facilitate the 13er quest. If I do it Thursday-Monday, then there's never any traffic to hit!

I say this, but I am also moving to the west slope very soon...

[HikerGuy]

Just to clarify, I always spend at least 2 to 3 nights when I drive to the San Juans and typically hike 3 days. I think I may be using the drive as an excuse for my lack of motivation and it is deeper rooted. Hmm...maybe Darin is onto something, it may be an aging issue.

[Trotter]

Just to clarify, I always spend at least 2 to 3 nights when I drive to the San Juans and typically hike 3 days. I think I may be using the drive as an excuse for my lack of motivation and it is deeper rooted. Hmm...maybe Darin is onto something, it may be an aging issue.

Also it could be a monotony issue. After doing several hundred 13ers, I imagine its tougher to find motivation to basically repeat what you've done so many times before. Drive, hike, check box, drive home. I've struggled with it and I have way less peaks.

[CaptainSuburbia]

I love the drive. I probably don't drive nearly as often as you do though. I look forward to listening to all my favorite music and eating unlimited snacks. Normally, I watch what I eat and am very disciplined, but not before and after a climb. I also look forward to seeing all the sights in Colorado. Before climbing I rarely got more than an hour or 2 from Fort Collins. I've seen so much of the state now. Then there are those same landmarks you pass every time. There's Bucees, the rough section of 76, the turnoff to get to 285 which somehow I've missed more times than I can count and uturn at Morrison, the initial winding climb up 285, the Bigfoot museum in Baily (gonna stop there one of these days), speed traps in Baily too, the hot dog stand, Kenosha pass, the ice machine in Poncha Springs, Poncha Pass, gift shop on Monarch Pass, all th elk driving down to Lake City, etc. etc...It sounds monotonous but I look forward to all this stuff. I also intensely look forward to the adventure of every climb, especially if there's some unknowns involved which usually I make sure there are.

[Scott P]

Everyone is different but I just go somewhere closer when I don't feel like doing the drive.

Personally I wouldn't take a break unless I had to recover from an injury but to each their own. I don't have enough time to skip weekend in summer plus I'm too fat to justify staying home and my desk job is killing me.

As far as the West Needles go, I hope to be there soon. Luckily it's 2 1/2 hours from me instead of 7. Maybe I'll see you there.

[HikesInGeologicTime]

Drive, hike, check box, drive home. I've struggled with it and I have way less peaks.

This was a struggle for me when I was inching (so it felt like) closer to finishing the fourteeners, and there are only 58 of those (well...depending on your views about the Crestone Peak summit[s] ). Like many/most, I started off with the easy ones, thus leaving a glut of Class 3-4s for my last ones, but unlike many/most (at least as far as representation on the forum seems to indicate), the more scrambling I did, the more I hated it. The Drive to the Sangres, Elks, San Juans - also not helped by the fact that those happen to the farthest ones from my home in Denver - thus got wrapped up in the overall unpleasantness; I couldn't really concentrate on anything else for the 4-6 hours I was driving to each peak because I was too focused on my anxiety over whether I could manage to deal with the technical difficulties adequately in spite of my incompetence as a scrambler/climber (hey, did y'all know tomorrow, 7/6, will be the fifth anniversary of when I fell off Pyramid???), not to mention the fact that, justified worries aside, I just didn't and don't LIKE scrambling...probably no small part of the reason I'm so bad at it is that it wasn't enough fun for me to just go out and find a route that included it, whether it was on a fourteener or not.

Lining up guides and/or partners for the last ten in particular (those post-Pyramid) was essential, because giving into my desires to stay home would then mean letting someone else down and/or being out a decent amount of money, and then I suppose I did have the little dopamine hit of finally checking a given box and being able to say, "And now, I never have to go anywhere near that miserable mountain again!" And while it admittedly did take me a while to realize after checking that last fourteener (goddamn Crestone Peak...figures I'd finish on the unranked one!), finally embracing life beyond summits and checklists has made it a whole lot easier to pack a bag, load up the car, and get on the road when conditions align for a hike I've been wanting to do.

But with OP's peak count, my specific bugbear from days of yore probably isn't the issue. But is there something else about those remaining thirteeners that sounds unappealing, besides the long drive to get to them (and maybe that's reason enough on its own - while I share CaptainSuburbia's overall mindset about enjoying the drive itself these days, I do not share his enthusiasm for 285)? That might be something to investigate. Or maybe this is simply a good time to take a pause from peakbagging and do some activities closer to home, maybe some that could eventually remind you what, if anything, you do like about peakbagging.

[mtree]

I've reached this point and there's no turning back. I would hike every weekend. One day, I got out of my car and looked up at the mountains. The wind was howling. I was tired. I thought to myself, "Am I having fun?" I got in my car and drove home.

I still hike quite a bit, but its no longer a chore. I was never driven to check off a peak for the sake of a list. It was about enjoying the mountains, the hike, the experience. Once I realized I was doing it just to do it I had an epiphany. There were other things in life I was ignoring or not participating in. And I wasn't enjoying it like I used to. Part of the reason was the monotony of a long drive. The other was all my friends had stopped hiking so all of my adventures were solo. That gets tiring. The days of driving 3+ hours to hike a mountain are pretty much over unless I'm staying a night or two. And that's becoming rare. I've come to peace with it.

Now I hike because I feel like it. I may do repeats or take an alternate route and 13ers are a wonderful thing. Staying in altitude shape is more difficult, but that's what nearby peaks are for. Just recently I'm also more apt to hike in spring and fall. Less crowds and I love the spring weather (I know, its weird) and the crisp fall air with winter's impending march. Plus the traffic is much better. Less traffic equals less driving.

[CUaaron25]

I once drove from Denver on a Friday after work to the San Luis valley (Lake Como Road) to hike Little Bear the next day. I got there, parked, put on my backpack and walked 1/2 mile before I thought ‘I don’t feel like doing this.’

I walked back to my car, drove back to Denver and met my friends at scruffy Murphys at 11pm. Stayed out with them till 2am and had a great time. That was in my 20s, that would kill me now in my 40s. That’s probably the only time that’s happened to me and was certainly an extreme case of changing my mind after doing all the work to get there. I had a ton of fun chasing down the white line for the 14ers list but every now and then I felt like I just needed to do something other than hike for hours alone at night by myself. Those weekends off usually recharged me for a few more weeks because they helped me remember that no good decisions are made after midnight at Scruffy Murphys!

[tmud]

I think age and experience go into it. As I get older, it's becoming a lot easier to just settle for an easy Saturday morning after a long week at work. I still love getting into the mountains but I'm losing the stoke I had in my 20's. I'm still motivated to climb mountains if I can ski them, but I don't like rock climbing like I used to, I'd rather sleep in my bed, sleep in, etc. And now that I've been hiking these mountains for 10 years, I know how retched off trail hiking is in the SJ's, so it's easy to justify just waiting for snow to do things. And to your point, driving is becoming a major chore now for my remaining peak, which are mostly by Lake City and the Cimarrons. But its a life long endeavor for me, so if it takes 15 years or 30, it doesn't matter, the only reason I was climbing them all in the first place is because the view is different from each one.

[SnowAlien]

So, I'm sitting here on my couch. I had my outing planned, West Needles area, and I could not get off the sofa and pack my backpack. I kept thinking about the drive, 7 hours at best possibly longer with fire issues in Ouray, and I lost my motivation. This is not the first time I've lost my mojo facing the drive. The smoke forecast does not look good for the Gores and Elks and most of my remaining peaks are in the San Juans. It seems like the drive time is always greater than the actual hike time. How have others handled this? How have you worked through a loss of motivation? Do I just need to take a break this summer? Break this spell that the 13ers have over me and focus on lower elevation peaks closer to home? Repeat favorites, list checking be damned? Retire and move to southwest Colorado?

You're so close! But yeah, this sounds very familiar. Thankfully, finishing the ranked 13ers practically coincided for me with the loss of motivation (and energy). So the timing was good. The decline did start in my mid-late 40ties, especially when I was hiking over 50 peaks during the summer (back to back weekends). A few times I drove to the TH the night before only to wake up in the morning to the realization that I didn't want to hike and going to get a breakfast. I learned it was the sign for me to swith to rock climbing for a weekend or two, or just do the normal people stuff.
Additionally, moving to RFV in 2022 provided me with a much needed shot in the arm and allowed me to finish the San Juans. Even now, drive to Silverton and further is still around 5 hours and panic inducing.
Allow yourself some grace, take breaks from hiking and hike whatever you have still unfinished in the vicinity, so you have no excuse but to drive to the San Juans
Having a hiking partner is also a great motivator. If you want one, maybe we can coordinate an outing?