Long backstory, but it's pretty fucking epic.

Part I:

At the end of last April my ski bindings broke which meant my ski season was officially over. This, on top of the fact that my lease ended a few days later meant that I had to find something to do regardless. The weather in Breckenridge sucked at the time: cold, rainy, bleak, as it always is late spring in Colorado. Hiking season was coming up and I was itching to spend some time in the wilderness.

Although it was my second year living in Colorado I had never spent time in Denver. Conveniently enough the Colorado Trail ran from just north of town 100 miles all the way to south Littleton. I didn't have a car or a bike, most of my friends had dipped out to the desert or elsewhere for mud season. My decision was made.

I loaded up all of my winter equipment, clothing, and my roller blades (I didn't have much at the time) into my friend's car and drove with her to shed where she had offered to let me store my belongings for the summer. After I changed into my hiking clothing and grabbed the bag I had packed with camping gear and food and bid my friend goodbye I set off down the road.

I could go on and on about all the things that happened during the following two weeks as abridged as possible while still doing it justice it goes like this:

First day: lightning storm, lost my long legged hiking pants, otherwise solid day although the first few nights camping alone on solo trips always kind of freak me out.

Second day: Decided to commit to continuing on along the trail past a point from which I had the option to hitchhike to Denver instead. Decided that I totally underestimated the amount of snow on north facing slopes after walking through at least a mile of punchy, thigh deep snow. Camped in a cold but incredibly beautiful alpine meadow, phenomenal stars.

Third day: Hands down the worst day of my life ever (which is good, because in retrospect it wasn't that bad, just a mind fuck). Woke up in sub-freezing temperatures... always a rough start when you try to put on hiking boots that were wet the previous evening. Headed to another section on a north facing slope. Three miles through sharp, punchy thigh deep snow. Occasionally I would punch through to my waist, screaming many, many fucks into the lonely mountain air. After 4 hours of losing the trail and immense battles with my mind, which wanted an animal or somebody to appear and kill me the entire time, I emerged on solid ground. Met a homie headed back the way I came, but intending to go to Denver. Convinced him not to make the worst mistake of his life.

Day 4: Decided I was bit frustrated with hiking alone in shitty conditions and busted my ass to Denver. Good day though, got attacked by a bunch of geese in Waterton Canyon.

I completed my hike with a dead cell phone in a parking lot after crossing a road. I asked some folks leaving their car which direction I should hitchhike to get to Denver. After only about 20 minutes of having my thumb out a man picked my up and began to drive me to a McDonalds by a bus stop. He was very sympathetic to my situation, he mentioned that he had hitchhiked the West Coast about 30 years ago.

As I charged my phone and pounded two large milkshakes that I damn well deserved I googled a YMCA located about half a mile from a thrift shop. I caught a bus to the store, bought some decent clothing (although it didn't take me long to notice that there are a lot of homeless people in Denver and nobody would give a fuck that I was wearing hiking clothing), took a shower at the YMCA and headed towards downtown to where there were some hostels.

I was devastated to discover that all of them were full. I proceeded to a bar to grab some food where I made friends with a really nice girl who offered to let me crash at her place. The following day she smoked me down and sent me on my way (holy shit that girl ripped dabs by the way). As I was contemplating what the fuck I should do I remembered a few months earlier when I happened upon a group of old friends I hadn't seen since middle school on a chairlift. We exchanged numbers at the time, and although I couldn't remember where I recalled that they lived somewhere along the front range so I hit him up.

My friend was stoked to hear from me and invited me to join him and his roommates where they were having beers. I bussed over, and immediately they asked what the deal was with the hiking backpack. I explained my situation to them and they immediately bought me a shot and offered to let me crash at their place as long as I needed to.

My buddy had the next day off and wanted to show me around. He started off by bringing me to Red Rocks with the intentions of hiking Mt. Morrison. We weren't far along before we saw lightning hit an adjacent peak.

"Fuck that."

We went back down and proceeded to hike to the amphitheater. I was awestruck. "I need to see a show here before I leave."

I got on my phone and to my delight I discovered that Gramatik, one of my favorite artists, was performing the following weekend. Although my buddy couldn't go I decided to buy tickets.

Went to a lot of shows the following week: Two Fresh, The New Mastersounds and Rebel Alliance Jam, at one point I met a girl at a Big Grow Supply event who had a ticket to Gramatik and no one to go with.

"I have two really awesome doses of LSD, we can make a day of it!"

Although I had tripped on mushrooms many times while hiking in the woods or skiing I had never tried acid, let alone at a show. It was decided that we would make a day of it. We'd take a dose and Uber out to the park and take another shot at Mt. Morrison. After that we'd meet some folks I had met at the shows from earlier that week and have a banging time. Sounded good to me.