1. Deep snow covering the peak season trail.
Just what the weak need, another reason to fail.
Of course, if we don’t make it it’s a valid excuse.
But if we do, it’s that much more impressive, we can’t lose.
Following the path somebody made yesterday.
Hoping its correct ‘cause we’ll never find a better way.
Sweating under layer upon layer upon layer.
Powder in my boots ‘cause I never got gaiters.
In the first few hours after we begin,
We’re below tree line, in the forest, out of the wind.
The path packed hard enough I won’t yet debut
My never used, brand new, cheap snowshoes.
Red blood splotch in the white snow, fur tufts.
Check the prints, the victim was a rabbit, sure enough.
Snow clumps piled up weighing down pine boughs.
Laboring to make good time while the light allows.

Chorus: I sort of cried at the top of Quandary.
We never found a route to the top of La Plata.
The false summit felt especially cruel on Mt. Yale.
Every peak a monument to Winter.

2. Break above tree line, great views surround us.
The wind howls happy to have finally found us.
It’s guaranteed that it will find any exposed skin.
It’ll find the cracks in your armor and flow in.
We’ve seen photographs of fingers frostbitten,
So we all left our gloves at home and bought mittens.
The temperature is plummeting, it wouldn’t surprise me
If the summit pop buried in my pack’s getting icy.
A smooth, white sheet, boulder field beneath,
Twists the crampons on my feet, bends the teeth.
Distant dynamite explosions, controlled avalanches
Echo through the Rocky Mountains’ vast expanses.
The home stretch to the peak is easily the coldest,
And the most treacherous and tiring, you’ve gotta focus.
Get to the top, summit pop, take a couple pictures, leave.
If and when you’re warm again consider what you just achieved.

Chorus: I sort of cried at the top of Quandary.
We never found a route to the top of La Plata.
The false summit felt especially cruel on Mt. Yale.
Every peak a monument to Winter.

3. On the way down, stricken with some altitude sickness,
Not to mention all the back and foot pain and joint stiffness.
It’s getting dark, a bad time to stray apart.
Now is when you really pay for the late start.
Stepping into deep drifts, sinking to mid-thigh.
Post-holing forward ‘til the powder rises hip-high.
Probably the least effective method of movement.
I keep eschewing snowshoes assuming imminent improvement.
I’ve got my brother’s other ice axe clutched tight,
Reason being it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
I keep pointing out the stars’ quantity and clarity.
I’m almost feeling incapable of insincerity.
Immersed in what feels like unnatural stillness,
But this is the natural state of winter wilderness.
Snow-muffled sounds, all frozen in silence.
We come and go and in the end the silence triumphs.

Chorus (x2): I sort of cried at the top of Quandary.
We never found a route to the top of La Plata.
The false summit felt especially cruel on Mt. Yale.
Every peak a monument to Winter.