Q: Quandary Peak

For the letter Q, which I thought I might have trouble filling, I bring you: Queets Mountain, the Quinault River (valley), and the Quilcene range, all part of the Olympic Mountains in Washington state (see "O"). Also Queen Charlotte Sound, which is in British Columbia, along the coast and is more or less a fiord--which I would say fits the "mountains and valleys" theme.

But most of all, I bring you Quandary Peak, Colorado. Why? Because it's the first I climbed that was over 14,000'. Actually, though I spent many nights last summer over 14,000', Quandary is still the only summit I've been on that was up so high.

So here it is, even though as peaks go, it's not really anything wildly special. Except they all are.

Elevation: 14,271'
Location: Colorado, USA. Rocky Mountains, near Breckenridge
Climb: trail walk
When: I climbed it in Sept. 2012, with a large party of friends from an internet backpacking forum. Several of us had flown from sea level the day before. I don't recommend that.

Quandary is the 13th highest of the 53 Colorado summits over 14,000'

Nice reminder. It's a walk, but things happen at high elevations.

Running out of trees. What you see up above is...almost...the summit.

There was a lot of company on the trail. Some of it was better-looking than others.

The scene on the summit.

Our gang on the summit. I can't help noticing that the sign has the elevation wrong.

Literary tie-in: not this peak, but the Rockies of Colorado. Check out A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird. She was a 19th-Century adventurer, who at home was too sick to do anything, but somehow managed to travel the world, ride horses up the Rockies, and climb some of their summits. She wrote a number of books about her travels--what we today would call Adventure Travel (it all was, then!).

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015