Last night I had a bit of an “OMG I’M ACTUALLY GOING TO BE DOING THIS THING AND I’M NOT READY AT ALL!” moment. ’Wait,’ I hear you saying, ‘shouldn’t you have gone already?’ Why yes, I was originally supposed to on my trip the last week of June so that I was climbing the Mount of the Holy Cross on or as close to my birthday as possible, however, this spring had exceptionally heavy snow falls, 130+% above normal and the melt off was slower than usual as well.

Weather on the Peak for the week of July 8th. - mountain-forecast.com

This means that even today, July 8th, there is still a good deal of snow on the mountain. Neither my climbing partner, Seth, nor I have snow climbing experience and we aren’t ready to learn just yet so we pushed our trip date back to July 19th - 26th to give the sun a few more weeks to do its work. I expect patches of the trail to still have snow, but they should be reasonably navigable or avoidable. Temperatures are in the low 40s on the peak and even today there is 1 inch of snow predicted.

The gear on the blue tarp is what I’m planning to go in my pack

The extra month of prep time has turned out to be a good thing, but with only 9 days left until we leave, I feel like I could use another month! I’ve been getting my gear together and have nearly all of it, but I am still missing a few things such as a lighter, maps, and contact solution. Despite having nearly everything in order, I am still very stressed over it all. Do I have too much? Do I have too little? Am I missing something?

I haven’t begun to buy, prepare, organize or weigh my food yet and that’s a big looming weight over my head. On top of that, it all has to some how fit in my pack.

Anyway, I felt the need to vlog about it last night so you get the chance to see my worry manifest for yourself as I have a mini breakdown at 1 a.m.. Get ready for a wave of posts and updates over these next 9 days as I finally reach the last stretch of this months long journey to climb a mountain.