“You will never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory”-Stephen Hillenburg; creator of Spongebob Squarepants

“Super Tuesday” as I suppose it could be called began at around 6:15 as the sun rose over the Maroon Bells. Finally acclimated to the 12,000 ft elevation, because we needed to make up the time we lost the second day, we had no other choice but to hike as far as we possibly could. To make matters even more difficult, the day would involve two 12,000 passes. After breaking camp, we were treated with a bit of variety in that mornings breakfast, Pop-tarts, but there was a catch, of-course, they were brown-sugar Pop-tarts, the oatmeal raisin cookies of the pop-tart family.

We headed on the trail towards the West Maroon Pass reaching the base of the pass around 9:30. Unlike Buckskin Pass which we climbed the previous day, West Maroon Pass was rockier and steeper, though it was at a lower elevation. Furthermore, because the pass was steeper, less people were supposed to be climbing to the top at a single time, so we spent quite a while waiting on the side of the mountain near a stream. It’s a well-known fact that after spending a few days in the wilderness, people start to go a little crazy and it was at this point that we officially broke. Perhaps it was the altitude, but after waiting on the side of the mountain for about half an hour, we decided it was an appropriate time to start singing Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” as loudly as we could and when that wasn’t enough, we decided to “sing” Aerosmith’s “Dream On” which eventually led to singing as many SpongeBob songs as we knew the lyrics to. Once it was finally our turn to proceed up the pass, I had a bit of a fall. A few months before the hike, I ruptured two ligaments in my foot during a track meet, I had not had any issues with my foot for a while, so I decided, stupidly, not to bring an ankle brace to the hike. This proved to be an issue as I then struggled to get up the mountain. Upon reaching the top, I removed my boot and let my foot rest. Fortunately, one of our adult leaders was an orthopedic surgeon and taped my foot up to give it some stabilization to prevent any additional injury.

We descended down West Maroon Pass around 11:25 and had lunch a little over an hour later ate lunch along the trail, beef jerky was on the menu . We now found ourselves at the bottom of the pass in a treeless valley with the unnervingly named “Frigid Air Pass” far off in the distance.Sandwiched between two 14ners (14,000 ft peaks), the pass was subject to high winds, hence the name. In addition, a storm appeared to be coming from the distance, so we tried to get over the pass quickly. As we reached the top, the storm could clearly be seen hammering the grey cliffs to the left of us. Immediately as the last crew member reached the top, we put on our rain-gear and proceeded down the mountain as fast as we could. Eventually the storm caught up with us after perhaps the quickest descent this side of Cressed Butte. I put my pack over my body to protect myself from hail and waited on the side of the mountain. Fortunately, the hail did not get too large and no one was hurt. The storm passed, and a rocky mountain rainbow emerged guiding us to the campsites near the falls.

A few more miles of hiking we arrived at the falls, but no available campsite was large enough to accommodate our crew, so we kept hiking about another two miles until eventually we decided to make camp next to a stream along the trail. A total of thirteen miles almost killed us but brought some spectacular memories. Not many people have hiked two passes for thirteen miles at 12,000 ft.

I wouldn’t usually do something like this in my passion blog but earlier this week SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg passed away. I have been a lifelong SpongeBob lover same as many of my fellow Troop 380 scouts. Many of the guys on this trek I had known since those early SpongeBob watching Cub Scout days and the brilliant humor still provided us entertainment years later. SpongeBob reminded us never to lose that childlike joy and wonder amidst the pressures and stresses of life, values that I was able to embrace throughout my scouting experience. Therefore, on behalf of Troop 380 and an entire generation of kids, thank you Stephen Hillenburg and rest in peace.