Bob Cook Memorial Mount Evans Hill Climb 07/24/2021

So the day before the Mount Evans HC, Deb and I drove to Idaho Springs to pick up my packet stuff and the flash flooding was definitely a damper on the mood, so much so that I was 85% sure I wasn’t going to even come to the start. As the evening progressed, I did notice a 5 hour weather window in the forecast from 5am-10am before scattered thunderstorms were even likely and my gut feeling was that 14er weather is so unpredictable, that even with the nastiness of the forecast, a sunny 60F day could spring up out of the clouds...or disaster would occur and I’d merely turn around from wherever I was and come back down to the moderate safety of the trees as quickly as the roads were hopefully dry. Emboldened by this weather window and feeling trained for this next ‘training’ ride, I went to bed at a reasonable 10pm, only to feel anxious and reluctantly watching the men’s road race taking place in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics halfway around the world just when the racing was getting racey. Thankfully I had to wake up at 4am, resulting in probably somewhere around 2.5hrs of sleep before climbing a 14er.

Love and Tragedy in the Mountains

On July 10th, 2019, Jim Hasse, my dad and climbing partner, died in a mountaineering accident on Maroon Peak in the Colorado Rockies only four days after he walked my sister down the aisle. She had just married my friend and brother-in-law Matt, who along with friends Paul and Rob, were on the mountain with him when he died. What follows is their account. He had a tremendous impact in the lives of countless people, as a mentor, a leader, a coach, and a friend. He will be sorely missed.