OVER THE MEMORIAL DAY recess, Mark and Tom Udall took a break. Congress wasn't budging, and the fiddling feds were being put to shame by state and local governments.

"I would love it if Congress would do something, but they won't and they haven't," says Montana governor Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat whose state is one of 25 that have enacted renewable-energy standards. California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, signed the nation's most aggressive bill to reduce greenhouse gases, and, last April, California and 11 other states prevailed in their lawsuit against the EPA, arguing that the Bush administration had violated the Clean Air Act by refusing to regulate CO2 emissions. That month, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed to transform Gotham into the "first environmentally sustainable 21st-century city," and in May the U.S. Conference of Mayors got its 500th city to agree to meet the Kyoto global-warming protocol.

For the Udalls, the antidote to D.C. inertia was a climb up Colorado's Culebra Peak. At 14,045 feet, Culebra is not the tallest or most difficult of the state's 54 fourteeners, but Mark had wanted to climb it for 35 years. On an Outward Bound course in college, he summited his first fourteener; Culebra was the last one on his list.

I met the cousins at a steel ranch gate off a dirt road in the San Luis Valley, where the farmland is divided into neat green squares and ranchera music tumbles across the airwaves. Mark's wife, former Sierra Club deputy director Maggie Fox, had come along, as had Tom's nephew Seth Cohen and two other friends.

Mark and Tom Udall have gone on wilderness trips together for years. Each the oldest of six siblings, they grew up in Tucson's cactus foothills, riding horses, floating rivers, and climbing in the Santa Catalina Mountains. Mark became an instructor and later executive director of the Colorado Outward Bound School (he retired the year before I began working there), while Tom graduated in the inaugural class of Arizona's Prescott College, whose curriculum includes wilderness leadership and whose credo is "Education is a journey, not a destination."

As we waited by the gate, a few drops of rain splatted heavily in the dust. Then a mud-covered pickup hauling two dogs bumped up. Out hopped the caretaker of Cielo Vista Ranch, Carlos DeLeon, wearing jeans and boots and displaying Marine Corps tattoos on his arms. We were the first climbing party of the year, and he was unsure if the road was clear.

"We could go scout it," he said. Mark and Tom climbed in the truck, Carlos's dogs barking. The area behind the seat was small, so Tom had to sit sideways. He wore Wranglers, an oxford-cloth shirt, and cowboy boots. Mark sat in the front in shorts and flip-flops.

"What happened to Brad?" said Tom. Mark's brother had planned to join them.

"He's a bum!" Mark called over the whine of the engine. "He said he has to prepare to testify before Congress on the sixth. But I looked at my calendar. That's not till next Thursday!"

Tom laughed at the thought of someone needing a full week to prepare for Congress. "Well, Marcus," he said wryly, "he's the diligent one."

The road steepened, and Carlos shifted into four-wheel drive. Timbers were down across the trail, and he drove over them. The smell of gasoline wafted into the cab from a red plastic container in the bed. At the edge of a flat clearing we hit snow. By now we could see the peak.

We set up our tents in a stand of aspens and built a fire. Tom had stopped at a market in Taos for groceries, but it was closed. Dinner was Rice-A-Roni, baked beans, and chopped-up hot dogs.

"Is this 7-Eleven food?" someone asked.

"Gas station," said Tom.

With the low-rent familiarity around the fire, I could easily have forgotten that I was sharing a pot of dumbass with two sitting members of Congress. Tom told a story about skiing up California's Tioga Pass during Easter recess, in a blizzard, to meet Randy, who was traversing the Sierra. "Well, I skied up to the lodge where we were supposed to meet, and it was closed down," he said. "Then I got snowed in. They called us back early, and I missed the Terri Schiavo vote. I never did find Randy!"

The high altitude seemed to loosen up both congressmen, and as we hiked the next day I asked Tom about the Wilderness Act. More than 40 years after it was enacted, why hadn't it been implemented in Utah, arguably the state with the most wilderness needing protection? He answered in what I'd come to know as his careful, rational style, citing obstructionist tactics, voting patterns, and required periods of study.

"But doesn't it piss you off?" I asked. "Your dad passed these great things into law, and they've basically been ignored."

Even this didn't rile the unflappable Tom, but as he launched a treatise on the energy-extraction industry in the West, his voice rose as he complained about its undue influence over Congress and the difficulty in bringing change. Whipping his head around and stomping his boots, he had what might qualify as an outburst. "It's because you've got these western Republican senators," he sputtered, "who are just a bunch of … of … Neanderthals!"