The Fourteeners

Colorado has fifty-three peaks above fourteen thousand feet, the most of any state in the country. They are called fourteeners, a name that sounds casual and is not. Climbing most of them requires several hours of sustained effort at altitude. The weather on them changes without warning. Lightning, altitude sickness, and sudden storms claim lives on these summits every year, often among people who did not anticipate how quickly conditions can shift above the treeline.

The first recorded ascent of Pikes Peak, the most recognizable fourteener when viewed from the plains, was made in eighteen twenty by Dr. Edwin James, a member of Major Stephen Long's expedition. Zebulon Pike himself had attempted the peak in eighteen oh-six and turned back, concluding it was impossible to reach in winter. He was right about winter conditions and wrong about the general claim.

In eighteen ninety-three, a Massachusetts college instructor named Katharine Lee Bates traveled up Pikes Peak by prairie wagon and, near the top, by mule. The view from the top, fourteen thousand one hundred fifteen feet above sea level, moved her to write the words that became America the Beautiful. She was looking west at the mountains and east at what she called the fruited plain. Both were Colorado.

Today the most accessible fourteeners draw tens of thousands of hikers on summer weekends. The least accessible require technical mountaineering skills. The mountains do not distinguish between the prepared and the unprepared. They simply sit there, and they are high enough to make the difference matter.