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.