John and Sam and I set off with a grandiose plan to summit two, count ’em TWO, 14ers in one week. We got one! Sort of. Mt Yale is 14,196′ and we took a crack at it after a couple days in Leadville to acclimate. We had beautiful weather all the way up to the shoulder at about 14,000′ and then a storm rolled through and dumped a bunch of hail on us.
We waited out the hail and then pushed on until we got a report from others coming off the summit. Their trekking poles were buzzing from the electricity and they had spotted lightning on the other side of the peak. We elected to turn back instead of finding out what a lightning strike felt like.
