Bob Bitchin off the right road, and did an about-face. Sure enough, about a mile down the path we found some guy out on his four-wheel-drive Jeep, and he informed us (after a hearty chuckle) that we had turned wrong about two miles back. Awhile later we were hurriedly making up for lost time. About 20 miles farther up the dirt road we hit the summit of Cottonwood Pass. Now folks, you will just have to bear with me as I try to explain what it’s like, after forging through 20 miles of bad road, to come to the summit. There was a sign that said we were at 12,126 feet, and all we had to do was try to breathe and we believed it. The top of the whole mountain range was just a couple of hundred feet above us, and we decided that we should try to climb to the tip-top and take our pictures there. You will notice there is no such picture with this story. That is because just as we were ready to go for it, these three college types came straggling down the hill. They looked like two were on the starting lineup for the Arkansas Razorbacks, and the other had to be the winner of the King Kong look-alike contest. To put it straight, the worst shape on any of them made the best of our crew look like Jack LaLanne rejects. After they told of harrowing minutes trying to breathe way up there, and after we saw how close to exhaustion they were, we turned tail and hooked it back onto the bikes. ‘Tis better to run away and live to breathe (and 91
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