74 Year Old Grandpa's First Alpine Climb: Three Generations Go Climbing

I narrate a bit about how I got into climbing at the beginning of this short film. Here’s a slightly expanded version:

In the summer of 1972, my father was living in Longmont, Colorado, and in his first job out of graduate school. After weekends getting his east coast body used to life at altitude, he and a group of friends left from Sprague Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, headed up Boulder Brook Trail, and entered the Boulder Field on the north flank of the Monarch of the Front Range: Longs Peak.

Then a severe storm blew in. Lightening began exploding the boulders around them, and he and his group took shelter as best they could to avoid the shrapnel of flying rock. When the lightening abated, the rain did not, and the group made a soaked retreat back to civilization.

Growing up, that story always struck me. It was almost 5 years before my birth, and life and family commitments moved my Dad away from Colorado and further attempts at any of its higher peaks.

I was a soccer player and a golfer growing up. I took both fairly seriously, playing on a nationally ranked high school soccer team and eventually pursuing a professional golfing career. I was a classic suburbanite, not a backcountry person.

I was not quite good enough to make it stick in golf, and not long after my 30th birthday, a knee injury ended my soccer playing days. Despite surgery, the cartilage damage precluded running as training.

So, in the summer of 2009 I was looking for another physical endeavor to test and push myself. My parents, now retired, had moved back to Colorado. Take the confluence of the two, and my father and I decided it was finally time to get him up Longs Peak – some 37 years later.

That summer I also began dating my, now wife, Kristina. She was a backpacker, not a climber, but thought this sounded like fun. Of course, I was happy to have her along. So, the three of us began climbing peaks in the Front Range, collecting peaks that progressively pushed us a little higher and a little farther.

At 2am on August 23rd, 2009, we left the Longs Peak Ranger Station east of the summit and traveled the 8 miles up Mills Moraine, to the top of Granite Pass, into the Boulder Field, through the Keyhole, past the Narrows, up the Home Stretch…

…and up the 5,100 vertical feet to the summit.

I was hooked. How could I not want more of this? Two of the people I love, a seemingly cosmic injustice undone, and the views and sense of freedom that only tramping through those hard to reach places can provide.

So, now that my boys are reaching a time when their bodies are big enough and their minds strong enough to take on slightly more lengthy or demanding adventures, it was great to get my Dad out with them, brining all three generations of the Kolaczkowski boys into the wilderness. Of course, getting my original climbing/hiking trio of my wife, my Dad, and myself back together was a treat.

The climb was all at once exciting for seeing my Dad test himself, optimistic for seeing my boys grow, and nostalgic for the thick memories of the last time I was in Rocky Mountain National Park with my Dad and my soon-to-be wife.