Of Mice and Mountaineers

Of Mice and Mountaineers' final planned episode (at least as of its release) ties up as many loose ends as possible about mountains that most definitely did not need ropes but did seem to have me knotted up nevertheless, then leaves room for a future free of obsession over mountainous pursuits that are more about pure fun than filling out some checklist or another...ahh, who am I kidding? If this episode, like all its predecessors, is anything to go by, the spirit of compulsion will always be starving!Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=23282

Being done with 14,000' mountains in Colorado did not mean mountains were done with me...after all, there were a select few 13,000' mountains that still had me under their spell, such as Mt. Meeker, the nearly next-door neighbor of the Longs Peak, a.k.a. the first fourteener that tried to kill me. With such an intimidating shadow looming as I went after its little sibling, what could possibly go wrong?!

After finishing Colorado's fourteeners, what better way to pay all my accumulated experience and knowledge forward than to give others a guide as to which to prioritize in a completely objective fashion?

After eighteen years (or nineteen, depending on how one decided to count), I was finally on the verge of climbing my last of Colorado's 58 officially designated 14,000' peaks...as long as I could finally prove I had learned enough from the first 57 to avoid serious self-sabotage.Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22333

My second-to-last new fourteener wasn't much fun to climb, but thanks to the second part of Crestone Needle's name, I was able to have some fun by taking numerous jabs at it that were in absolutely no way salacious, haha, in the writing that followed. Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22324

What I originally planned to be my final fourteener wound up being something of a nothingburger when it was merely my third to last, but it was a fine excuse to discuss my readiness to part ways with peaks that were more climbs than hikes in parts...and also be paradoxically pleased that the last two I had left would be such a pain. Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22232

Just because I'd finally faced down my nemesis peak, the one I'd fallen off in 2021, and come away with a new summit did not mean I was immune to finding a peak - one right across the valley - that would give it a run for its money in loathsomeness. Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22194

2022 was apparently the Year of the Revenge Peaks for me, and the Eoluses (Eolii?), the other half of the Chicago Basin quartet that I had failed to summit on my first trip into the basin earlier that year, were a doubleheader on which I was eager to score...and would have an opportunity to do so at the dawn of the Jewish new year.Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=21986

Summiting Sunlight and Windom, or half of what are arguably Colorado's most remote fourteeners, was a "fun" sort of reintroduction to climbing after my fall off Pyramid Peak, but eventually, I had to get back in the saddle or two that dwelled on my ultimate archnemesis mountain.Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=21875

What looked like but a blip in my 14k' peak trip-reporting history was actually almost a year before I could get back to working on The List, but when I finally did stand (or rather, crouch) atop my first new summit after 51 painstaking weeks of recovery from falling off Pyramid Peak, it was quite the reintroduction. Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=21729

Four years to the day of time to think about the aftereffects of falling and having to be airlifted off Pyramid Peak gave me plenty of material for a Buzzfeed-esque listicle about some things others might not consider (and will hopefully never need to know) about the before, during, and aftermath of being in a capital-I, rescue-necessitating Incident.Written version: https://ofmiceandmountaineers.com/2025/07/06/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting-search-and-rescue/

At the height of my self-confidence in my climbing skills, I thought I was about to break into the single digits of remaining Colorado fourteeners...only to deal with a different and far less pleasant sort of break instead.Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=21207

After everything I'd put myself through in Colorado's Rockies throughout 2020, I figured I was ready for anything...and while that would turn out to be laughably false, at least I had some calm before the storm in the form of two vanilla-is-also-a-spice fourteeners. Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=23069

With a long, tricky-in-the-dark approach and sections of careful scrambling along the not-always-stable boulders it and its neighboring peaks are known for, Snowmass was already shaping up to be a 2020 nemesis peak for me...and that was without a surprise intervention from an invisible drag queen!Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=20807

It was time to climb the fourteener widely considered to be the hardest in Colorado, and I had a proven track record of being a not-great climber. What could possibly go wrong, besides a slightly overinflated ego?Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=20689

This comparatively-short-by-my-standards revival of a write-up I first published soon after the events took place could double as a PSA for why climbers should always wear helmets in terrain covered by loose rocks...and why you shouldn't crowd so closely to the climber above you that you can potentially smell their socks. Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=20576

Because Baby's First Class 4 on Little Bear had gone soooo well, it only seemed like a natural extension to take a Real Climber(TM) friend up on his offer to take me up some Class 5 Real Climbing(TM)! What else could possibly go wrong?!?Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22998

A cluster of three fourteeners around Lake Como Road provided even more of a challenge than I could have anticipated, and that was with my first Class 4 - climbing maneuvers and, in this case, ropes required - peak included among them. Sleeplessness, hallucinations, and Search and Rescue calls, oh my!Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22997

By the end of July 2019, I'd run out of "easy," a.k.a. purely hikable, 14,000-foot Colorado mountains and thus had to level up to ones that required a few more climbing maneuvers. Given my previous record with harder peaks, what could possibly go wrong?!Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22996

In the third episode of the Winterlude, I introduce another friend who will be crucial to my eventual success in finishing the fourteeners...which is kind of amazing, considering that our first fourteeners (and thirteeners!) together were a bit of a frigid sufferfest of epic proportions.

The Winterlude continues with the comparatively short story of my first calendar winter ascent of a 14,000' mountain...which, despite its brevity compared to most of my mountain stories, was nevertheless more interesting than it had any right to be. Written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=19994

This Winter Solstice special episode introduces a real character who would become a key player in some of my final 14,000' mountains while hinting at the "joys" of winter climbing...if one can even get to the trailhead without needing a pricy holiday tow to get back out, that is.

In this real head-banger of a finale to Of Mice and Mountaineers' first season, I prove that I learned absolutely nothing about staying out of trouble throughout my first fourteen years of climbing fourteeners. Written version here: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22817

In the second-to-last episode for this podcast's first season, I revisit several fourteeners that required more than one attempt each before I finally saw their summits, which would’ve been way less embarrassing if more than one had even been literally in the same range as peaks that real climbers use to practice for the Alps or Himalayas. Written version here: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22803

This is a monumental moment in Of Mice and Mountaineers history. No, not the start of smooth sailing free from further Search and Rescue incidents, alas. But it does mark an unironic tribute to some fourteeners I genuinely enjoyed (plus a few I…didn’t) as well as the beginning of writing about them as soon as they happened, not to mention determining that at least one English major is just as terrible at math as stereotypes would indicate, to go by a peak-counting error that went uncaught until well after this episode was written, recorded, and ready to publish! Written version here: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22760

Training for the Big Event of my peakbagging career - Mt. Whitney, high point of California as well as the Lower 48 + Hawaii - proved that I really had learned something from Colorado fourteeners, namely that I really suck at outrunning thunderstorms. Written version of this episode can be found at https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22697

Baby’s First Search and Rescue and fourteener-related hospital visit finally take place, though not until after I’d received visits from Jim Morrison and a mystery lover. Written version here: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22673&cpgm=tripmine

Published on a different day from my normal schedule so it would be released in time for the tenth anniversary of Baby’s First Search and Rescue encounter - arguably the "best" part of a Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day - I finally talk in full detail about the questionable decision-making that led me to name Longs Peak my first nemesis fourteener. Link to written version here: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22649

The build-up between my first attempt of the Front Range’s most obnoxious fourteener and my summit was more dramatic than the five fourteeners I summited in the interim…not that those summits weren’t a Massive undertaking in their own way. Link to written version here: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22637&cpgm=tripmine

My fifth or sixth summit of a fourteener, depending on how one counts, proved to me years too late that one should always listen to advice from one’s father about getting into a car with a stranger. (Script for this episode here: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22622)

Reflecting on climbing the highest mountain in Colorado also made me reflect on the nature of the relationships, romantic and otherwise, that were bringing me down at the same time. (Link to written version here: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22595)

A third outing in Colorado’s fourteeners may not have been as epic as Lord of the Rings, but there was a volcano involved. (Link to written version: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22580)

Getting revenge for a failed attempt on America's Mountain helped prove to me that mountains may be Romantic in the capital-R sense that inspired poets like Katharine Bates, but they are not conducive to romance in the lowercase sense. (Link to written version here: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22565)

A first time on one of Colorado’s easiest 14,000-foot mountains proved that love or at least lust aren’t so easy but may be electrifying, especially when one’s father and the high country’s thunderous weather are involved. (Link to written version here: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=22550)