WE WOKE BEFORE DAWN and fired up coffee on the camp stove, then set out toward Culebra. The morning was chilly but not cold enough for the snow to have frozen solid, so we sank through the crust to our knees. When we reached a crossroads, Mark said we needed to turn right. Tom thought we should go straight. Mark produced a scrap of paper with a topographical map. After some discussion, no one could even identify the peak.

"I should have brought that guidebook," Mark said with a laugh, "but I wanted to go light!" Finally they elected to go straight, and after another half-hour we traversed up a snow slope to a ridge from which we could see jagged peaks rising in every direction over the flat farms of the valley.

We sat on talus, eating salami and cheese, then pressed on. Yesterday's rain clouds had evaporated, and soon we got our first glimpse of the peak, with its shimmering couloirs and windswept cornices. We picked our way up a sharp arête and by noon stood huddled on the summit. Mark pointed to a cluster of fourteeners off to the east. "Tomás," he said, "there's the Spanish Peaks. You voted to make them wilderness!"

I remembered something Randy Udall had said. "When was the last time a U.S. president slept on the ground?" he asked. "Probably Roosevelt and Muir, 100 years ago. That's telling, in a way. They debate this stupid shit, and a lot of it's because they haven't been for a hike in the woods."

Or, as Mo once put it: "God help us from presidents who can't be a little bit gentle, and who can't gather friends around and play poker and climb a mountain."

From inside a plastic tube left on the summit, Mark pulled out a register. In the space for comments he wrote, "Last One!"

Tom took the pencil next. "Everyone just writes the number of peaks they've bagged," he said. "That's a strange way of thinking about it." But even as he spoke, he jotted a number beside his name. Then he thought better and scribbled it out. As the clouds poured in and the wind whipped overhead, he pondered for a moment and scrawled, "It's the journey."