In planning for a recent vacation, I was eyeing, for various reasons, bagging another 14er, and I settled on Mount Sherman as a possibility. Relatively easy climb, short trail, starts at high altitude for a 14ers trail and other things. I eyeballed 14ers.com's webpage for Sherman, noting that it has two trailheads, one accessible from Leadville, another from Fairplay.
Well, the Leadville trailhead, the road to it is closed 4 miles short of the trailhead. That's CURRENTLY noted on the website, but was NOT at the time I was trip planning. And, no, contra Luciana Nemes, among the people blocked there, I trust my memory that it was NOT on there for this year at the time I planned my trip; I would have seen the ORANGE TEXT color coded tag of "2023 ROAD CLOSURE" with the "i" icon next to it. And no, Bill Middlebrook, website content updater, I'm sure it wasn't, either. I wouldn't have driven up the Leadville route if it WERE.
So, after I got home, I was going to drop a comment about them updating the Leadville route info, and saw that it had been done, including that it was closed a year ago. Seeing no place to comment there, I went to its Hucksterman page and have thoroughly kicked over a hornet's nest. And, by the comments about me and attacks on me, it's well deserved, the kicking is. (I didn't go through all, but I told the guy who suggested I was the "douche award winner," one Peter Chorlton by Hucksterman handle, to have a mirror. Bill Middlebrook by real name, the guy who does most the 14ers route updates on the website, was among those with a "haha" emoji reaction. You get a mirror, too, dude, as you're the one who didn't update the website a month ago to indicate that a 2022 closure was still in place.
And, yeah, all the boldface is deserved, too.
On that page, Nishan Hainds supports me: "I literally posted this closing a few weeks ago." So, it wasn't posted more than a few weeks ago.
Anastasia Chuykina, no, I didn't "rage quit," but you are among the blocked.
There's also the many people who said, "but it was posted here more than once," ignoring that it was my first Facebook post and that I had joined the group just to bring that to light. Maybe I didn't say, "This is my first Facebook post," but, some basic inductive reasoning, namely that they hadn't seen me comment to others' posts before, might have offered some help.
And, I left one last comment on my post, summarizing some of the few paragraphs above, and I don't care if I'm booted from the group.
Well, one person asked my motivation. I didn't block them, but I didn't answer them over there. I will here.
14ers.com bills itself as, as I see it, the premier site for all about Colorado 14ers. One commenter's snark that "this was even on AllTrails" shows they believe it. So, live up to it. Live up to it with less rudeness and much less patronization in offers to "help." (One of the first snooty commenters to my original post, whom I thought I had blocked, offered a patronizing "we're here to help you enjoy the mountains" or similar in response to my final comment there. And, that would be the Peter Chorlton mentioned above. "Yes, I called you a douche award winner but I'm here to help!" Just a big of cognitive dissonance there!)
Also, the many "man up" type comments weren't pretending to offer help. And, to the degree I skimmed the main pages of a few, or their header pix, or other things before blocking them, a chunk of them appeared to be wingnuts, who per myself long before Elizabeth Warren, are the types usually hypocritical on "self-sufficiency." Others? Re what I noted about "first post"? People who themselves had joined the group in just the last couple of years, some recently saying "first 14er," and making no effort to ask about my own hiking history. I believe the word "douche" was mentioned elsewhere. NObody asked me if I climbed Sherman anyway, how many 14ers I've done or anything else.
(And, until a day later, I didn't realize that a friend from elsewhere in the social media world, and one who lives outside the US, was a member of the group. C'est la vie.)
There ARE alternatives. I'm trying to remember the one I stumbled across that, I think included all 68 in the contiguous 48, not just Colorado's, before I went on vacation. (I've not done any of the 12 in the Sierras, and certainly not Shasta or Rainier, both of which are glaciated at top.)
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As for the actual hike? Technically, I went to about 14,010 feet. There's enough of a knife ridge at the top, and the wind was blowing enough that day that, at my 6-5 height, I didn't feel entirely comfortable going too far past the last false summit. (The husband/boyfriend of a couple coming back down said that the stronger winds were in pockets; she said she hadn't wanted to go but he made her.) And, yes, I know Class 3 and 4 14ers are worse. I noted in my mind that the second time I was at Angel's Landing in Zion, I only went halfway out. In other words, for various reasons, I know my limits, physical and at times psychological, in such situations.
As for Mount Sherman in general? Maybe it is in part that the trailhead is at treeline and there's some psychology, but it has to be the ugliest, dumpiest 14er I've climbed.
Handies? Pretty nice. Ditto, Evans. Bierstadt and Elbert, not bad. (I was in a late-start hiking day hurry to get down off it.) Pikes Peak kind of a rockpile itself and definitely NOT a "purple mountain majesties," and I don't care if Katherine Lee Bates was inspired to that phrase in "America the Beautiful," I still recall it (on an overcast early fall day) as kind of a rockpile.
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Sidebar: I'd been thinking about leaving THE American Southwest Facebook group for some time. John Crossley is almost as much a Nazi snowflake admin as those at some religious subreddits. A few years ago, he said "no photo links from websites." I forgot he expanded that to "no YouTube links from videos." So, I direct-uploaded one, and that was hauled down too. So, with that, I first deleted every picture post of mine but one, so I could leave a semi-fuck-off farewell there as well as in a separate comment. Besides indicating what I thought of Crossley, albeit without name, also told people I was in multiple MeWe groups that had no problems with photo or video links. That's that. (I did mention Crossley by name on my own Facebook page.)
If Crossley thought he would really get swamped with link spam, call on a couple more assistant mods. (I did not block any of them.)
MeWe dodges that, in part, by being much lower traffic, I know. But, still, there's a principle. And, life is too short to deal with these Nazi and/or snowflake mods.
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