Why Colorado Fourteeners Are the Perfect Classroom

Capitol Peak 14,131 Feet

If your goal is to become a mountaineer, I can't think of a better place to begin than the Colorado fourteeners.

What makes them so valuable is that they teach the fundamentals of mountaineering before you ever need advanced technical climbing skills. You learn to start long before sunrise. You learn to watch the weather instead of the clock. You learn to pace yourself. You learn to eat and drink before you feel like you need to. Most of all, you learn to make good decisions when the mountain doesn't care what your plans were.

Those aren't just fourteener skills.

Those are mountaineering skills.

The real strength of the Colorado fourteeners isn't any single mountain.

It's the progression.

You begin with straightforward walk-ups. Then come longer days, more difficult route finding, scrambling, loose rock, exposure, and bigger decisions. Each mountain builds on the lessons of the one before it. By the time you're standing on one of Colorado's most demanding peaks, you're no longer the same climber who stood on your first summit.

By the time you've finished the list, you've spent hundreds of hours in the mountains. You've hiked by headlamp, crossed miles of talus and scree, scrambled over exposed ridges, navigated route-finding problems, and watched bluebird mornings give way to afternoon thunderstorms.

Somewhere along the way, almost without realizing it, you stop thinking like a hiker and start thinking like a mountaineer.

Looking back, I don't think climbing all of Colorado's fourteeners was really about checking mountains off a list.

It was about becoming the kind of climber who was ready for whatever mountain came next.

And that's why, if someone asked me where to begin, I'd send them to Colorado.

Why I Invest in Professional Mountain Guides

The Evolution Traverse

After more than fifty years of climbing, one of the best investments I still make each season is hiring professional mountain guides.

People are often surprised by that. The assumption is usually that guides are for beginners, or for people who aren't capable of climbing on their own.

My experience has been exactly the opposite.

Reliability

One of the biggest reasons I hire professional guides has nothing to do with technical ability.

It's reliability.

Every January, I sit down and map out my climbing season. I choose the routes I want to climb, reserve the dates, and build the rest of my training around those objectives. Months of training ultimately come down to just a handful of days on the calendar.

When I hire a guide, I know that on that date, they'll show up prepared and committed to giving the climb every reasonable chance of succeeding.

I've spent decades climbing with partners, and while many of them have been outstanding, life has a way of interfering with even the best intentions. A child gets sick. Work gets in the way. Family obligations come first. Before you know it, the one day you've trained toward for months disappears.

I've had that happen enough times that I finally realized I wasn't just paying for technical expertise.

I was paying for commitment.

When that day arrives, I know I'll have the best possible chance to climb the route I've spent months preparing for.

An Outstanding Climbing Partner

The second reason is simple: the quality of the guides themselves.

Every certified mountain guide I've climbed with has been an exceptional professional. From Mount Rainier to classic Sierra routes, and now to my projects in Rocky Mountain National Park, I've been consistently impressed by their fitness, technical ability, judgment, and enthusiasm.

They move efficiently, solve problems calmly, and make good decisions almost without appearing to think about them. Just as importantly, they genuinely enjoy being in the mountains, and that attitude makes the entire day better.

The best way I can describe it is this: hiring a great guide is like climbing with the best climbing partner you've ever had—except they're doing it day after day, year after year, as their profession.

Never Stop Learning

The greatest benefit, though, may be the opportunity to learn.

After more than fifty years of climbing, it's a real privilege to share a rope with someone whose technical skills are on another level. I learn something every time I do.

Professional mountain guides have devoted their careers to mastering this craft. They've spent thousands of days on rock, snow, and ice, refining the countless details that make climbing look effortless.

I pay close attention to those details.

I watch how they move through technical terrain, how they place protection, how they build anchors, how they manage rope systems, how they read weather, and how they make decisions. I'm interested not only in what they do, but why they do it.

Sometimes I learn a new technique. Sometimes it's a small adjustment that makes a familiar task more efficient. Sometimes it's simply watching an experienced professional solve a problem with calm confidence.

Every guide I've climbed with has taught me something.

To me, hiring a guide isn't an expense. It's an investment—an investment in becoming a better climber.

After more than fifty years in the mountains, I still consider myself a student.

Why I Wrote The Invisible Algorithm

People have asked me why I wrote The Invisible Algorithm. I didn't write it to convince anyone of anything. I wrote it because I needed to make sense of forty years of observations.

For 40 years, I collected thousands of small observations about attention, awareness, fear, decision-making, climbing, endurance, and what it feels like to be alive. I never knew how to arrange them into a coherent architecture. They were scattered pieces of a puzzle I couldn't quite assemble.

Writing the book wasn't an exercise in teaching. It was an attempt to organize decades of scattered observations into the most coherent framework I could build. Somewhere in that process, I realized I wasn't simply writing down what I believed—I was discovering what I believed. By the time I reached the final page, I understood those ideas more clearly than when I had begun.

The book became less a collection of thoughts than an architecture that finally made sense of forty years of questions.

I also knew, from the very beginning, that this book would not be for everyone.

The Invisible Algorithm asks questions about how we experience reality and how awareness learns. I expect some readers to connect with it deeply, others to disagree completely, and many to decide it's simply not the kind of book they're looking for.

And that's okay.

Keeping those ideas to myself would have been safer. Publishing them was an acknowledgment that understanding grows through conversation, not isolation.

One of the values I've tried to live by is to live bravely.

To me, that doesn't just mean climbing mountains or taking physical risks. It also means being willing to say, “This is the best understanding I've reached so far,” knowing that people may disagree, criticize it, or point out flaws I hadn't considered.

If an idea can't withstand honest criticism, then I want to know why.

So I don't fear thoughtful criticism—I welcome it. Not because I expect everyone to agree with me, but because the search for understanding is more important than protecting my ego.

Whether The Invisible Algorithm ultimately resonates with ten readers or ten thousand, I hope it starts a conversation. If it causes someone to look a little more carefully at their own experience, or if it challenges my own thinking through thoughtful disagreement, then the book has already done something worthwhile.

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do isn't to defend what we believe.

Sometimes it's simply to say, “This is what I see,” and be willing to listen to what others see in return.

Six Ascents

Summit of Humphreys Peak

When I came to Flagstaff this summer, I had one goal in mind: use Mount Humphreys as the foundation of my training.

I didn't rush back to the summit. After my hip replacement, I spent the first few hikes turning around before reaching the top, simply to see how my body responded. Each climb was less about reaching the summit and more about rebuilding trust.

Eventually I began climbing all the way to the top.

My first full ascent took about six hours and twenty minutes. With each successive climb, the time came down a little. I wasn't trying to set records. I was trying to find a sustainable rhythm that I could repeat.

For every ascent, I used nasal breathing as my governor. Rather than chasing a pace, I let my breathing determine how hard I worked. If my breathing became strained, I backed off. If it stayed smooth, I kept moving.

The result surprised me.

My fifth and sixth ascents were separated by five days. Over a hike lasting more than five and a half hours, the difference in total time was only twenty-seven seconds. Even more interesting, my average heart rate differed by just one beat per minute.

Those numbers aren't remarkable because they're fast. They're remarkable because they're repeatable.

To me, they suggest that nasal breathing wasn't simply limiting my effort—it was regulating it. By allowing my breathing to set the pace instead of my ambition, I arrived at almost exactly the same performance twice.

The mountain wasn't asking me to go faster.

It was asking me to become more consistent.

For me, this was strong evidence that nasal breathing served as an effective governor for pacing. It didn't guarantee a perfect performance, but it consistently guided me toward a sustainable one.

That may be the most valuable lesson Mount Humphreys gave me this summer.