The Struggle Bus

A year ago, I took a break from climbing with my friend Kyle to hike Colorado's easiest 14er, Mt. Sherman. I'm a speedy hiker for a guy with short legs, and I ended up waiting for him at the summit for an hour and forty-five minutes. We were both pretty pissed at each other. I was mad that he took so long and had all the food. Kyle was peeved that I sprinted up the mountain without ever looking back to check on him. 

As a first year guide taking groups from the flatlands of these United States up Colorado's loftiest peaks, you learn quickly that you cannot tuck your hands under your pack, keep your head down, and blast your way up the mountain. In fact, as a first year guide, you often find yourself at the back of line, hiking last, making sure that that one fifteen-year-old who doesn't want to be there doesn’t mosey off the trail and try to find his way back to Texas. Or that the seventy-year-old grandfather who blindly agreed to come on trail with his grandkids doesn't keel over and die. But for the most part, the back of the line is just average people who justifiably struggle carrying a 40 lb. backpack up the side of a mountain.

We have a name for the back of the line: The Struggle Bus. 

The Struggle Bus is comprised mostly of chaperone adults who had no idea what they were getting into and teenagers who fall on either extreme of the weight spectrum. They hike slower, take longer, and necessitate more water and/or inhaler breaks. Thus, the healthier, stronger, or for whatever reason faster kids at the front get to break and rest while they wait for the back of the line to catch up. And then, they take off as soon as we do. The reality of the Struggle Bus is that you can't really catch a break. 

Personally, hiking slow hurts. As a group, it sucks to baby step your way up a huge hill and to finally see your group, only to have them saddle their water bottles, stand up, and take off. It's disheartening. 

Which is why I try my best to turn the Struggle Bus into the Party Bus. 

Some struggling hikers need conversation to help them find a rhythm. Some need to hear a story. Others need Disney or 90s gangster rap sing-a-longs. Still others just need you to shut the hell up and hike in silence with them. Perhaps the hardest thing for me about being a guide is determining which form of encouragement a person needs. 

Because the only thing worse than no encouragement is patronizing encouragement. 

I've come to really love the Party Bus. Some of my most difficult, painful moments have come from hiking in the back with people who really don't want my encouragement. They don't want me to be there, and neither do I. But all of my favorite moments have happened at the back of the line. If the "last shall be first" is any truism at all, it is experienced here. 

I think of Amanda from Texas who spent one year training for this very trip. Losing weight, getting in better shape, becoming a healthier mom for her kids, wife to her husband, and teacher to her students.

Amanda wrestled the whole way up Mt. Antero, placing one foot in front of the other from low camp to high camp to summit, and I was fortunate enough to be there almost every step of the way.

She never stopped. Never complained. Never said she couldn’t do it. I’ve never hiked slower. But there was so much joy in those steps. We talked about her one-year-old twins and her job teaching high school students. We sang silly Sunday school songs, and then we hummed them when we were out of breath. And we shared silence when we needed silence.

The kids chose Amanda to summit first, and watching her hike through a tunnel of arms, trekking poles, and ice axes to that peak with tears in her eyes has been my favorite moment of the summer. Rarely ever have I been so proud.

I’ve learned a lot taking it slow, hiking in the back, hanging out with the Party Bus. A few weeks after our Antero summit, a wise youth minister on Mt. Arkansas gave words to my experience:

“It’s easy to shout encouragement from afar. It’s another thing to walk alongside someone and speak words of hope amidst the struggle.”

And again, what’s true on the mountain I think is true in life as well.