October 12

Karl’s expedition began with a short drive to the Black Cloud Basin Trailhead. There, we met up with Drew and Hillary from the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative. For the next three days we built check steps and check dams on a trail up Mt. Elbert to help mitigate the effects of erosion. After the service work, we woke up at 3:00 am to summit Mt. Elbert. The view from the summit was spectacular. Later, Matt Turnbull taught us a navigation class during which he explained why Santa is difficult to locate. We then began the hiking portion of the expedition. After several successful days of hiking and navigation, we camped immediately under the Africa Bowl of Mount Massive. There, we played Mingle, a favorite game, and got a spectacular view of Leadville and even the distant lights of HMI campus. The following day we earned IST (Independent Student Travel) and were allowed to hike a day without instructors. Both hiking groups arrived successfully at the destination, and we proceeded to cook a truly massive dinner in honor of Mt. Massive towering above us. We concluded our final evening with a reflection on leadership. We woke up early the next morning to hike, literally, back to HMI campus, quite a unique experience after being gone from home so long.

Christina’s expedition group started their trip by helping save the world, or at least Mt. Elbert. After establishing a base camp at Box Creek, we worked with CFI to build walls to stop erosion and to delineate the trail with dead branches and rocks which had become so wide from the hundreds of hikers who carelessly hike off the path. The day after trail work, we woke up at 3:00 am, and had a thrilling hike by headlamp under the brilliant stars. By 7:00 our hearts were racing as we trudged up the north ridge of Elbert to catch one of the most spectacular sunrises we had ever seen. After six hours of hiking through woods, snow, dark, and light and passing about four peaks (all of which we thought were the top), we finally reached the highest point in the state. After seeing what must have been all of Colorado, we began our trek down, at which point a snowball fight broke out as we headed for tree line, which I believe the instructors started. As the expedition progressed, we also got the chance to hike without the teachers, navigating through the mountains on our own. The expedition wasn’t all games, however, because HMI is still a school. But what kind of school has history class debate about the Revolutionary War while as you sit on the edge of a cliff overlooking the mountains and lakes with Leadville far in the distance?

The first expedition had been two of the most incredible weeks of my life, and I was had no idea what the next one would look like. I was excited when I saw my group there were some great friends and some people I hadn’t gotten to know as well. We packed up, shoved a ton of rations into our backpacks, and kicked off. We were set up to do trail maintenance for the first half of the trip, on the Mt. Elbert trail. We set up base camp, had a student-taught basic camping skills review class, and cooked pizza for dinner. The next day we started trail work. There are few things as rewarding as doing manual labor, and knowing that our work will be there for years and years to come. On our fourth day, we rolled out of our sleeping bags at 2:30 am and grabbed some trail mix and peanut butter for a sunrise hike up Mt. Elbert. We had a circle on top, dedicating our ascent to someone important to us. That afternoon we had our first academic class of the trip, English. We were working on learning various styles of poetry, and this class involved the Haiku. We discussed the form of the Haiku and took 15 minutes to write 10 haikus about nature. This expedition focused a lot on leadership with much discussion on how we can influence a group and reflection on how we prefer to lead. We learned different types of leadership and different kinds of leaders. The models we learned showed us so much about the possibilities for how to lead as well as helped gain more awareness of how we are as leaders. From then on the expedition flew by. Some highlights were shooting the Notch, a really steep and tricky mountain pass, more discussion and practice in leadership theory, and ultimately hiking back to HMI on our final day.

Expedition group D, also known as “Dumbledores Dinosaurs,” was the all-girls expedition. We left on Tuesday and hiked 3 miles to our base camp on Mt. Massive. During our stay, our group worked on restoring part of the trail leading up to the summit of Mt. Massive by building check dams, filling in dirt, and planting plugs (tufts of grass that we dug up and re-planted on the trail). After bringing down our tools and re-rationing our food, we prepared to summit Mt. Massive the next morning. The journey up was long and very windy; however, our group managed to summit before noon. The next morning, we woke to a thin but beautiful blanket of snow on the ground, which also left most of our things frozen. It was a challenge but we all managed to thaw out and fit all of our stuff in our packs and take off hiking. We traveled a lot in the next five days (about 35 miles), and our group saw many amazing views of the mountains, especial when hiking along across Continental Divide. The nights were filled with games such as “Disco” and “Animal Kingdom;” at least one of us was always left breathless from laughing so hard. The last two days of the expedition, the 7 of us girls were given the opportunity to travel independently. We wrote a detailed outline of our route and destination (also known as RAD plans) before we left, and our instructor team hiked about 2 hours behind us. The seven of us succeeded in making it to our destination and learned some very valuable lessons in communication and map-reading skills. On top of climbing mountains, trail work, and hiking, we still had time for study hall, poetry class, a history debate, and P&P discussions about our theories of leadership. A few other highlights include a group Thanksgiving dinner, a short appearance from DJ Sneakypants (one of our instructor’s alter egos) and lots of stargazing.

By: Emily Goldstone, Colin Doyle, Dave McGaughey, and Lydia English