Desert Peaks: Opening a New World

For most of our lives, we only climbed alpine peaks. Our typical season started in mid to late June and ended in early October. We focused on peaks above timberline. In winter, we would ski, snowshoe, or ice climb. In the spring and fall, we would hike desert canyons in the San Rafael Swell or Moab area, mountain bike, or hike Wilderness Study Areas in Western Colorado. And then we discovered Lists of John (LOJ), the most incredible website for climbers. It opened a whole new world of peaks. John Kirk created a website that cateloged all peaks in the United States. We discovered LOJ in 2007 and began climbing peaks year round in 2011, the year Mark completed climbing all the 13ers. We decided not to focus on a list; our focus now was to explore new country while climbing a peak. The peak might be 12,000 feet or 5,000 feet.

We also met Erik Packard in 2011. Erik and his father, Bob, are two of the most prolific climbers in the world. Erik started showing us "new" peaks in our backyard of Mesa County. It started as trickle and now we have climbed hundreds of peaks with Erik.

Contrary to popular belief, many times the lower peaks are much harder than the higher peaks. For instance, in Colorado, the 5ers are much harder than the 14ers. Utah has incredibly challenging peaks 5,000-7,000 feet in elevation.