Liberty Link Up - 14 hours, 5 summits, 2,000+ ft of technical climbing

It starts with a dream. A thought, a desire, a hope. A wish to succeed. From there it grows into something more. You stare at route topos. You imagine pulling through the crux pitch with bleeding hands, sweat in your eyes, heart racing. Think about standing on that first tower, looking across to four other summits. Move forward. Now look back, at four summits that you have stood upon. Five summits, including the one you are on now, all experienced in a day.

Or less than a day shall we say? All it took was 14 hours. Fourteen hours of your life that you dedicated to a passion. A passion for experiencing the mountains in ways that many people do not experience. For 14 hours you connected with a landscape. The landscape influenced you. It took over your life and made something different. When you woke up today, you were a different person from the previous day. Different from every other day of your life. You had now experienced the land in a way unique to itself.

In 14 hours, your feet crossed stone and snow, from early morning dawn to late afternoon sunshine. Your hands felt the weathered alpine granite. On a micro scale, the rough crystals pressed deeply into fingertips. On a macro scale, the soft curves of headwalls and faces, aretes and ridges, all faintly reminisced of a glacial touch. The first pitch experienced a night's worth of heat loss radiating into chalked hands. The crux pitch imparted a sense of vulnerability, as well as an awing sensation at the power of the earth and the humans.

And so it ends with a dream. The return to civilization, reconnection with friends, tales of what you saw in a day. As your head hits the pillow, your sore fingertips and tired limbs remind you of what they experienced. Drifting thoughts cover moments your brain chose to remember, but why do we ever really remember? Sleep envelops, wrapping your body and soul in the comfort of rest, the peacefulness of the night, the sense of accomplishment, the solace of your mind.