four little hawks: Catching Up, Part II

I always hear about how rarely Joel appears on my blog. Some have even hinted that they doubt his existence. So, I decided I would dedicate a whole post to Joel to prove that indeed, he does exist, and indeed, I consider him blogworthy. This past week, Joel got another 14er under his belt, Mt. Princeton. For those of you unfamiliar with that term, Colorado has 54 mountains that reach 14,000 ft. (or over) at the summit. Here in Colorado, they are commonly referred to as "fourteeners". Many avid hikers/climbers (what do you all call yourselves, incidentally?) have a goal to climb them all. Joel is halfway there! Here are some of his climb photos:

On the trail to the summit, he met another lone hiker and they traded cameras to document one another's climb - the photo above this caption was taken by the other hiker, a guy from Maryland! The next few photos Joel took using the timer on our camera:

Isn't that an amazing sight? Had I climbed with Joel, I would not have been able to enjoy it half as much as I enjoyed the photos. I don't know this for sure, but I have a strong suspicion that nature is more beautiful, and more apt to be enjoyed by the viewer, when said viewer's knees are still tucked safely within their sockets. My knees and their sockets would not have reached the summit together, and I find that life is all about setting appropriate priorities.

Now, the pictures below are my favorite. I don't know who began this tradition, but many climbers commemorate their 14er summit with a mid-air jump photo. This time around, Joel had to take his photo with the timer, since there was no one on the summit with him. The resulting shots were hilarious, but Joel wouldn't let me post the really good ones. In fact, I'm pretty sure he disposed of the evidence altogether. That's okay, I have them stored in my memory, and I'll take them out from time to time whenever I need a good chuckle. I do have his permission to post these, so here you have my husband, aka Superman: