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I had done Wheeler before, but I think it’s fair to include in my 30-before-30 list. We went up pretty late in the day with McCall, Jos cousin.

Wheeler is a breeze compared to any other peaks in the Sangre De Cristo mountains. Everything else is like 12+ miles. Anyway, getting to the lake was easy and I wanted to head to up to the peak. I had originally played with the idea of trying to get to Lake Fork Peak from that basin, but upon getting up there it looked to be still too covered in snow (we were on the north side). So I convinced the two girls to join me, at least until lunch 1000 feet or so below the summit. After lunch, I left them and continued to the summit.

It was getting pretty dark and stormy as I was cresting the ridge, but the clouds seemed to be moving away from us, so I continued to the top of Wheeler. From there I made another judgement call and continued on to Simpson peak. After the short descent and on my way up to Simpson my legs started to cramp really badly. I’ve had that happen to me while skiing, but never while hiking. I crawled my way to the peak, drank a rootbeer and decided then to bail on continuing to Old Mike Peak. I think I could have made it, but with the weather, the cramps, and being solo, I decided to head back down.

On the way back I decided to snag Mount Walter before descending off the ridge. I won’t count that one on my list as it probably has less than 100 feet of prominence. I ran down to the bottom where I met back up with the girls and went to go find a burger in Taos.

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