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Outside Magazine March 2004
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Climb Every Mole Hill (cont.)

WE'D ALL AGREED to fly home from Kansas City on Tuesday. That way, we could highpoint deep into Monday night if necessary. But during the drive from Mount Sunflower to Black Mesa, Oklahoma—a 4,973-footer at the western fringe of the panhandle—absentminded Dorrell dropped a bomb. In the parking lot of a convenience store in Lamar, Colorado, he looked at his airline ticket and mumbled, "Uh, guys...my flight's at 6:20 Monday night."

Murmur ensued. Followed by hubbub. Succeeded by malice.

Six-twenty on Monday? That was 25 hours away! And we were looking at two or three hours to Black Mesa, at 8.6 miles the longest hike of all. After that there would be 700 miles across the Texas panhandle and Oklahoma before we got to Arkansas and the last summit—not to mention the final four-hour slog back to K.C.

Our spirits were crushed like the Cool Ranch Doritos fragments littering the Econoline's floor. We'd have to forget Arkansas or drive all night or both. We'd been slugging it out against the vexing factor of distance, but now that other awful variable—time—had jumped us from behind and was punching our kidneys.

We rolled up to the Black Mesa trailhead just before sunset. We were tired, grumpy, and about to hike for several hours in the dark. We grabbed three flashlights, two of which worked, and set out across a grassy field studded with scrub pines. We made good time until the trail angled up Black Mesa itself, which is notorious for rattlesnakes. We had to squint at the trail and proceed with caution to make sure nothing was slithering.

Once atop the mesa, we regrouped for the summit push. The marker—an eight-foot-tall dark-granite obelisk—looked eerily like the ape-maddening slab in 2001: A Space Odyssey. We fired up our cigars and read on the marker that Texas was 31 miles away, Colorado was 4.7, and New Mexico was but 1,300 feet to the west. Thank goodness the marker didn't mention the mileage to Arkansas, which would have been depressingly huge.

Hiking down a dark mesa with a lit cigar was a kooky joy, but it had evaporated by the time we reached the van. It was a little after midnight, and mutiny wafted through the air. Casper, the father of an infant son, was especially ready to quit—having skipped his shower in North Dakota, he was desperate for creature comforts.

"Let's call it six and a memorable weekend," he moaned. "Let's get a motel. Showers, clean sheets, sleep, glorious sleep. C'mon ..."

Steve, also a father, and Spade, who wanted to watch ESPN to see how his college football bets had turned out, recognized Casper's patriarchal wisdom and began to cave. Which, frankly, made Drew and me sick. After all this, we were supposed to give up? To tell people that we'd conquered six runts rather than seven, because we couldn't handle the driving?"

"No way," I said, though in much coarser language. "Get in the van now! We're burning daylight standing here! Well, darkness..."

Even though I refused to be stopped, I could see Casper's point. All of us could. There would be ramifications if we returned to our families and jobs looking like hollow-eyed carcasses. We were 39-year-old men attempting a trip that would exhaust guys half our age. We should be proud enough for bagging six summits—two of which required actual effort. Not to mention the logistical wizardry it took just to get us together in one place.

At the moment, though, that one place happened to be an extremely sad parking lot in the Oklahoma outback. We got in the van and hit the road.


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