Jesus take the wheel

After they closed the Eisenhower tunnel on I-70 back to Denver, here are some things that, had I known them, would have spurred me to lean in the direction of getting a hotel room in Frisco for the night, rather than power through in a major snowstorm - at night - because I just wanted to get home:

• The alternate Breckenridge-to-Denver-via-Fairplay route is a high-elevation route along the Continental Divide that takes you over two mountain passes via a narrow two-lane road, with many switchbacks and steep grades.

• One of the mountain passes is Hoosier Pass, which rises to 11,542 feet and is one of the highest mountain passes in Colorado. Wikipedia informs me that it is "the highest point on the TransAmerica Trail, a transcontinental bicycle route that stretches from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon." Awesome.

• The other mountain pass is Kenosha Pass, which tops out at 10,000 feet (still very high). Fun fact: it goes near the town of South Park and has been featured in the show a few times!

• The entire route feels like a looooong, extended version of driving over Loveland Pass (albeit at slightly lower elevation), which I would never ever attempt in a snowstorm, at night, because I would be terrified of dying, and rightly so.

But alas, I didn't know any of these things. After living here for almost 9 years, it's kind of pathetic how little I know about Colorado, outside the confines of Denver and it's surrounding areas, plus the part of the mountains where I go to ski in the winter. I really need to broaden my horizons.

So that's how I ended up making my way back to Denver with my brother Sam and his wife Camille and their little dog, Walter, white-knuckling it for hours in the dark over snowy, icy, slippery roads, whose edges were barely visible to me so I couldn't see where I was coming from or where I was going. There were numerous points when I was scared of sliding off the side of the mountain because of the road conditions and steep grade. There were numerous points when the snow and wind were swirling so powerfully that I could not see anything beyond the car, so I simply had to stop in the road and wait for the visibility to improve because it felt like going backwards or forwards would surely end in our deaths.

Mercifully, Sam took over for the last two hours of the drive. He preserved my sanity.

By the time I got home, we had driven that day for over 9 hours in a snowstorm, over a total of five high mountain passes (before the really bad part of the drive, I had already driven over Vail Pass three times - long story, don't ask).  

After dropping Sam and his crew at their hotel, I was so fried and emotionally exhausted and worn out that I climbed into my bed, cried for 30 minutes, went to sleep, and basically didn't get out of bed until I picked them up at their hotel the next night so we could go out for dinner (which was lovely and delicious).  

When I closed my eyes, I had visions of sheets of snow blasted by the wind, illuminated only by the car's headlights. My body and my brain felt weighted down with a tiredness that overwhelmed me. 

I did not take this picture. I found it online. But this is what it looked like.

I was telling Kristin and Lisa about it the next day and Kristin asked how I got through it. The truth is, I don't really know. I just did. 

One thing that I am good at is pushing through pain, be it physical or emotional. I block out as much as I can so I can just focus on getting from one minute to the next. It's how I got through running a marathon with a herniated disc, Zeke's birth, climbing fourteeners, long plane rides with a crying baby when we were both sick. You just keep moving forward because there isn't another option. You can fall apart when you're done, but not before.

Sam and I distracted each other by playing music and harmonizing to songs we love - the Indigo Girls provide a nice challenge, with their vocal lines that swoop and swirl, trading off the melody and harmony. We did Bob Marley with Sam taking the bass line and me harmonizing on top of it. We told stories and tried to make each other laugh. 

Whoever wasn't driving would hold two phones, one with an altimeter and one with a map of our route, so we could call out the parts of the drive we couldn't quite see -- "the road is going to curve gently to the left coming up" "there is a series of switchbacks up ahead" "you've got a straight shot for a little while." 

I don't know what purpose the altimeter served, except to make me realize how crazy it was for us to be out in that weather with the bulk of the drive over 9500 feet. When we finally started to descend near Denver, there was something gratifying about seeing the altitude numbers drop.  Below 6000 feet, I joked, "we're practically at sea level!"

It's taken me a few days to recover from the experience, and I don't know that I'm fully over it. My chest still tightens when I think about it. 

I'm heading back up the mountains to take a ski lesson on Saturday, and the thought of the drive makes me nervous, which is not me at all. Plus the forecast is clear and the roads should be absolutely fine.

In any event, if something bad happens, I will deal with it. But here's hoping it doesn't come to that.