Hopkins 4K for Cancer

July 2, 2006

Grand Lake, CO
Estes Park, CO, to Grand Lake, CO, over Trail Ridge Road (~50 miles)

Departing from the YMCA of the Rockies, knowing that you and 25 other people are heading directly towards something on the order of a 20-mile climb that crests the Rockies and the Continental Divide breeds a certain degree of worry, especially when each person is wearing the entirety of their warm weather gear in preparation for the ascent above 12000 feet. Actually doing the climb makes for the most remarkable day yet of the trip.

The moment that you pass through the gates into Rocky Mountain National Park, you understand precisely why the area is indeed a National Park. You are instantly confronted by rock bluffs on the side of the road, at times dense forest or sprawling meadows, and in the distance mountainsides and peaks, some snowcapped. These views do not get boring, and instead turn into places where elk feed on grass, or where rocks jumping out from the mountainside provide particularly good places to sit and rehydrate or still further, as you gain altitude, where trees and meadows disappear into tundra and now slushy snow.

Parents and friends, we apologize in advance: when we get back from the trip and sit you through endless pictures of our trip, half of them easily will be from Trail Ridge Road. My group could have probably completed the climb in round about 2 hours had we not stopped for photos; as it was, the climb took us nearly 4. The descent for us took considerably less time, but the moment we had already gotten on our bikes, we were blasted in the ears by a clap of thunder, followed by cold piercing rain, that followed us down the switchbacks in the forest that surged in around us as we descended back under the tree line.

It is stories like these that we will take with us, to give to patients at the Hope Lodge in Baltimore, or to patients anywhere at all, to help remind them why the pain of chemotherapy and radiation treatment is worth it, and to hope for the day when they can call themselves cancer survivors: there is far too much to see and too many people to see it all with. If we can provide any help at all in their battle against their cancers, then we’ve greatly earned the kind of deep sleep we all got that night in Grand Lake, CO, at Grand Lake Elementary, at the foot of their school stage.

Special thanks to Grand Lake and Grand Lake Elementary for their hospitality, and for Ms. Forrester who humored us while we awaited the personal gear van so we could take showers by giving us a variety of balls that we used to play dodge ball and thereby exacerbate our various cycling injuries. Thanks again.


James Covey