I can see how regular readers of my trip reports might be confused about my religious beliefs. I've mentioned being Jewish and being an atheist. To help clear up any potential confusion, I'll declare my background outright: I am a Jewish atheist.

Of course, I can also see how this in itself is confusing to those who aren't one of the Chosen People (side note: if anyone else would like that title, I think I speak for at least a nonzero number of us who say we'd be happy to pass it along to qualified applicants! Or even unqualified ones! Like seriously, why can't the good Lord have chosen literally anyone else?!). My observation of most other religions is you're either all in or all out; I personally haven't come across any Lutheran atheists, even those who attend Christmas and/or Easter services strictly to appease their parents/grandparents/partner/partner's family...though I suppose I did have a high school classmate who described himself as a Catholic Buddhist.

That one dude's unusual faith-based mix CD aside (yes, that was a hint as to just how long ago high school was for me, oy vey), I suppose the best way I can describe my own religious practices-sans-sentiments is that, while I do not believe in a higher power that is concerned with humanity's development on either a species-wide or individual scale (I'll happily allow the potential for advanced life in parts of the universe we can't communicate with yet) and am certain I never will (if tumbling 50' backwards off a steep mountain for what seemed like an inordinately long time didn't put the fear of G-d into me, it seems safe to say nothing will...and not even the most fleeting thought of an afterlife or an invisible but omnipresent force - besides gravity, that is - would cross my mind until days after The Incident), I do follow some of the guidelines from the faith of my ancestors.

This means I won't make a huge production or haughtily snub something with bacon as an ingredient, but I don't prepare or choose to eat pork when left strictly to my own devices (though that's more because the more I learn about pigs, the less I want to be responsible for their untimely demise); I also make an effort to avoid working on Saturdays (...and, let's face it, every other day of the week as well, but I really make a point of intellectual unproductivity on the Sabbath); and I do try to make at least some sort of conciliatory observation of the Big Three high holidays (Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur). Even if the observation tends to be an exclamation of, "Holy s--t, is it already that time of year again?!"

There are some years when we do tack on more of the religious and storytelling elements because my Israeli-American uncle's strictly-Israeli family* has gotten increasingly faithful over the years, but we're still able to hold our ground when necessary. A few years ago, my uncle laid down the law with his studying-to-be-a-rabbi (I think) nephew, telling him on no uncertain terms that while it was totally kosher if he and the other Hebrew-as-a-first-language speakers wanted to do allllll of the praying and chanting and singing in the haggadah they'd brought from home, they were welcome to do so *after* dinner. As far as we Americans - specifically, we Coloradans - were concerned, if G-d wanted us to participate in the whole kit and caboodle, He wouldn't have let the Avs make it into the playoff game that was scheduled that night.

But while my relatives and I might fall a whole lot closer to the kinder, gentler, more relaxed versions of the main characters from the end of Fiddler on the Roof than the ones singing earnestly about tradition, tradition! at the beginning, I do think there's something to be said for honoring some of those rituals. It's probably no surprise, given my history, that I am 100% in favor of any holiday that celebrates waving an enthusiastic good-bye (though it's not stated in any of the texts I'm familiar with, I'd guess with only one finger) to pyramids. I'm medically exempt from fasting all day on Yom Kippur, but I do appreciate the lead-up to it: Rosh Hashanah. After all, who doesn't love a chance to eat apples and honey and, perhaps more importantly, have a prompt toward a blank slate that passes right by (...over?) most of the rest of the world?

And boy howdy was I looking forward to another fresh start, no matter its source! Sure, the Gregorian calendar year 2022 was going a whole lot better than the same calendar's 2021, seeing as how I was still able to walk and hike and all, but it was something of a mixed bag in terms of my wildest dreams for its prime climbing season. Thrilled as I was to have Sunlight and Windom out of the way, I'd have been decidedly more thrilled if I'd been able to push through the nausea that, I felt, forced me to choose between the Eolii and making the train back south on my last day and thus not have to concern myself with a repeat trek into Chicago Basin. Especially aggressive monsoon forecasts delayed plans I had for my last three Elk fourteeners and quite literally washed out a scheduled trip to do the Crestone Traverse, a trip which could not be rescheduled for the same year due to the timing of the already existing reschedules.

I have no complaints about my revenge trip of Pyramid, except of course for the deep-seated overall sense of loathing toward that mountain that I don't think I will ever be able to stress enough. I also have no complaints about my return to the Bells six days later for North Maroon Peak, even though I'd initially intended to cap that mountain as the endpoint to the Bells Traverse...but, having worked myself into an anxious frenzy on the drive from Denver about how steep, loose, and generally Class 5 the Traverse would be, I was okay with having only rung one Bell, especially as it was the Class 4-er of the two.

Disappointment returned when I waffled over whether to use the Maroon Bells permit for three days after my N. Maroon outing, a permit I'd forgotten about snagging so early in the season, on my Elk finale of South, then ultimately decided to release the coveted slot back into the wild on the grounds of wanting to avoid overexerting an ankle that was obviously doing significantly better since its first time on Pyramid but still had not fully returned to normal. Plus, it was supposed to be smoky from distant wildfires that day, and I rather enjoy breathing. Furthermore, I had nabbed a couple other permits for September in the event of bad weather; surely I'd be able to take advantage of one of them sometime after my scheduled return trip to Chicago Basin from the 14th to the 16th.

Alas, Colorado seems to find the hopes and dreams and non-refundable DSNGRR tickets as triflingly amusing as the G-d of the Old Testament was wont to do, so it was to some degree unsurprising when 1. the guide who was supposed to pull me up the Eolii over those dates caught COVID (happily, I heard that he recovered fairly quickly), 2. an impressive storm system was headed for the southwesternmost San Juans over that time period anyway, and 3. yet another storm was set to re-moisturize the mountains during my next Maroon Bells permit dates.

In an irritatingly continuously literal sense, then, the tail end of the Jewish year 5782 was a wash. It wasn't a total loss, however. I'd driven down to Durango anyway before the 14th on the off chance that San Juan Mountain Guides might be able to find a guide who was willing and able to accompany me, and while the lack of availability and the lousy weather meant I could've stayed up north, my Durangotang dad seemed to like the company, and I was happy to explore the day hikes in the area on sunny days while I waited for my latest reschedule: resolution, or so I hoped, of my outstanding accounts in Chicago Basin, and with Kurt, the expert who had been chiefly responsible for my successes on the other half of Chicago Basin's Unholy Quartet. If the weather complied, Kurt and I would tackle the remaining dastardly duo from the 26th to the 28th, with the summit day on the 27th, a.k.a. the last day of Rosh Hashanah.

As cautiously optimistic as I was about the prospect of being able to summit some brand new (to me, anyway) fourteeners in a brand new year, I was all caution and no optimism about the break of dark on the first night of 5783. I was spending it with family, as I was of course still at my dad's home, but while he has been trying to make more room for spirituality in his own life (perhaps a result of the new girlfriend who has spent the last several decades in Southern California), I couldn't help but remark on what an...interesting choice it was that he'd decided to make bacon-enhanced scallops for our first dinner of the year.

The scallops, however, were delicious, so while I was a little nervous for both superstitious reasons as well as the practical matter of what a meal that was in no way shape or form intended for long-term survival situations might do to my GI tract during the trudge from Needleton to the Basin the following day, I was more unnerved still by our choice in TV programming to watch while we digested: the Broncos. And unlike the hockey game that had caused us to keep the faith to a minimum several years ago, this team hadn't been a playoff contender in a long time.

Apparently, however, the G-d of our family origins has the smallest of soft spots for Colorado professional sports, because no sooner had that night's game ended than one of the Albuquerque news anchors who are apparently closer to Durango than their Denver counterparts launched their segment with, "Well, that was a weird game"...but a winning one!

The optimism crept back to join the caution as my stomach maintained its fortitude on the drive to the train station, on the train, and into the start of the trek up to the Basin. It grew even further as I soon settled into a pace (Kurt was confident enough in my ability to not get us completely lost on the largely non-branching and obvious trail, despite my allegedly being the direct descendant of people who spent forty years wandering around a desert) relaxed enough that I was able to keep going for a decent ways but fast enough that we made our campsite in only four hours, a good forty minutes faster than my three-months-prior timing of that same distance.

My fledgling upbeatness started to trickle away as the clouds that had been massing all afternoon started to drop their contents on us shortly after we started dinner, then fled for less flood-prone regions entirely as the precipitation picked up force - and kept hammering away, longer and stronger than your typical mountain storm is wont to do. "You've made your point," I snapped once or twice at the literal higher power that is Colorado weather poured its fury onto Kurt's and my campsite. It wasn't so much my circumstances at the time that had my stomach newly churned for reasons that had nothing to do with kosher guidelines; I'd packed my fleece sleeping bag liner in addition to my 15-degree bag and was wearing my warmest clothes that weren't designed specifically for skiing.

Rather, every raindrop divebombing my tent had the potential, I knew all too well, to freeze overnight in late September's decreased daylight hours, and while I could've taken or left the idea of a crystallized rain fly, the thought of creeping along an icy Catwalk or slipping in an inconveniently-placed patch of black ice concealed somewhere on the ledges pocking Eolus Prime's face (which I'd heard described as being uncomfortably similar to Pyramid's) wasn't exactly helping me drift off to sleep.

I did, however, have one major asset on my side: Kurt. He wasn't exactly sure how many times he'd climbed the Eolii as well as their neighbors across Twin Lakes, he'd done it so many. And he was receptive - perhaps eager would be more like it - when I said that, while I'd booked the third day because I wanted to make absolutely certain I'd have enough time to climb my last Chicago Basin peaks, I sure wouldn't mind setting our schedule as if we had no choice but to make the train and the summits on the same day.

It had long since stopped raining by the time we set out at 1:30 a.m. I found the positive thinking starting to glimmer again in the light of the stars unobstructed by even the faintest trace of cloud or fog. I couldn't help but comment on how high the streams we'd come across were...if not for the fact that I was dressed more warmly and had shoved an initially ungrateful left ankle into a supportive winter boot (the right foot, having experienced none of the swelling that still continues to plague its once mirror-image as of this writing, was far more compliant), I could have easily been convinced that we'd picked up right where we'd left off back in June's runoff season.

Considering both my summit bid-ending guttural upheaval on my last trip and that there was a certain practical benefit to my ancestors' refusal to eat seafood that far inland in the days before freezers existed, I was especially pleased when my stomach continued its stoicism all the way up to Twin Lakes this time. I did have to stop a time or two to check my blood sugar, but Kurt didn't seem to mind testing out the photographic prowess of a phone he'd purchased specifically for that reason.

I didn't mind having a surprisingly good trail to follow from the lakes across to the base of the slope that would take us to the saddle. Despite a chill so insistent that I could see my breath when I exhaled with enough force, we made good time up to the start of the scrambling. It was still dark, and the most obvious of the all-hands-on-deck next steps were wet, but Kurt stayed just below to spot me, and I did have the slightest bit of restored confidence in my scrambling abilities after surviving not only my rematch with Pyramid but also my first (and most likely only) encounter with North Maroon's chimney, significantly more roped than those endeavors had been compared to my immediate circumstances.

Much to my surprise, however, we were just another few moves before the saddle, and that was where Kurt suggested we take a break to regroup, attend to any diabetic or other bodily needs, and harness up, though naturally he had my ear at the word "break."

The thing with taking a break in late September when it's still pitch dark, however, is that even I only spend so long wanting to feel whatever warmth I'd generated on the hike receding. Being roped helped calm my nerves about venturing out onto the Catwalk somewhat, but the aforementioned lack of even the faintest hint of coming daylight was more of a mixed bag. Obviously being able to see only within headlamp range made me extra careful where I put my feet, but as I told Kurt, the fact that I couldn't see too far down either side of our narrow pathway was probably a good thing.

I found myself wishing that the barely-visible foreshadowing (forelightening?) of dawn would widen as we reached the base of the final pitch and Kurt examined it to determine the best way up. I then tried to find some measure of reassurance when he cheerfully told me he was fairly certain that, in all his times climbing this mountain in particular, he'd never done so the same way twice.

Still, the route he conjured up this time was mostly straightforward Class 3 of the kind I'd at least grown somewhat accustomed to again over the summer, and midway up the face, when I'd succumbed to my usual need to stop after 3 moves at most so I could hyperventilate dramatically, Kurt turned around to look at and then photograph Sunlight and Windom, which we could now see in silhouette as first light had arrived at last.

It must have been the tantalizing sight of the summit of the mountain we were climbing right then that prompted me to chuck caution for optimism entirely and gamely follow Kurt up onto the ridge, where several of the moves required a bit more mental and physical effort - including the one that took us onto the north side, where the previous night's precipitation had indeed left a covering of whiteness that seemed to glimmer in a sinister manner. I can't say that the moves I made to avoid it were elegant, but at least they got the job done.

I took Kurt up on his challenge to clamber up a seemingly vertical crevice that nonetheless offered some solid hand- and footholds for its ~10' duration and was rewarded for my efforts with 360-degree views, for the summit was mine at last. And that reward turned out to be like thinking you'd entered the regular lottery but had actually bought a winning Powerball ticket, because we settled ourselves on the comfiest rocks said summit had to offer minutes before the tease of opening-act colors was due to give the rising sun the stage.

I'd had several attempts to make a sunrise summit before, but while I'd succeeded in seeing both sunrise and summit, I'd yet to time it so I could have both at the same time. Finally, 53 fourteeners over seventeen years into my toils at them, everything I had ever anticipated from such a moment came to pass. The break of day on the second and last day of the Jewish new year could not have been more awesome in the original sense of the word. And to think that the sunrise hadn't been my goal at all but merely a happily accidental byproduct of my eagerness to hit both summits and get back to Needleton on the same day!

There was still work to be done before we could declare victory, of course. Returning to Chicago Basin a third time for North Eolus, of all peaks, would've been a defeat so bitter my stomach surely would've lost its resilience at last, but I can't say I was super stoked about the idea of spending yet another night in our campsite over my desperate desire to get a subpeak that managed to BS its way onto The List. Fortunately, we were aided in our motivation to pack up and get moving as soon as the sun rose high enough to knock the scenery across the way down from heart-stopping to merely breathtaking by the fact that that star's rays weren't quite warm enough just yet to dispel that persistent early-autumn chill.

I suspect Kurt was as inspired by his client's overall wussiness as he was by his own understandable desire to spend that night eating real food and sleeping in a real bed when he immediately abandoned all thoughts of the same creativity he liked to use on his ascents of the final pitch and instead directed me down what he knew to be the path of least resistance. We made what I thought was fairly efficient time on the downclimb and recrossing the Catwalk, where he remarked on how the newfound views of the drop-offs on either side didn't appear to be affecting my ability to get past it, then informed me when we returned to the saddle that it was 8:01 and that his usual turn-around deadline for making the train the same day was 8:00...but he felt pretty confident that the fifteen-minute detour up North Eolus would still leave us with enough time to see civilization again that afternoon.

"What if it turns out to be a half-hour detour?" I couldn't help asking him as we started up the lesser of the two Eolii. Not that I was complaining about this so-called peak's inferiority compared to all its neighbors in terms of technical difficulty as well as stature; my journey up its big sibling had definitely taxed me already, but the moves weren't hard, and there weren't that many of them before I was wheezing for air as excitedly as one can on my second summit of the day. Kurt checked his watch. "8:16," he proclaimed.

We took another break, one that I believe may have been about the same length as the one on Eolus since we could now bask in the surprising windlessness as well as the sun now being high enough to work its magic. I will forever think fondly of the more diminutive peak for its easy descent, and though our way down from the saddle had more scree than our way up did, it was blissfully dry as well as wonderfully short-lived.

Time and mileage seemed to pass quickly back to Twin Lakes as Kurt and I started to talk skiing, and then, on hitting the lakes and the largely straightforward trail down from them, he had me take the lead. "What can I say, I'm motivated to catch that train!" was my response when he commented, somewhat admiringly I'd like to believe, on my power-walk stride down into the trees.

I'm pretty sure I merely repeated that response when he expressed what I again would like to believe was admiration for how quickly I packed up my tent and all the other accoutrements I'd naturally left at camp, aided in my efficiency by his admonition to "just shove it all in." He was right; I could indeed sort it out later once I returned to Durango, and wouldn't it be nice to do so a day early.

Even I impressed myself as I kept up what was, by my standards, a haulin' pace. That trail is, however, well-established, well-maintained, and solid for almost its entirety, and did I mention I was motivated?! Still, even though Kurt assured me when we took a break just past the New York Creek bridge that it would (and here I paraphrase as well as hyperbolize for dramatic effect) take an act worthy of the Old Testament G-d to prevent us from getting on the train that day, I still elected to forego a final break at the junction with the Purgatory Flats trail. "I think I can suck it up for one more mile," I assured him.

Sucking it up, however, does not preclude whining extensively, at least not in my book. Kurt, however, was sympathetic to my venting about how this had to be the longest mile in all of recorded cartography, and why was the train stop so far away from the Purg Flats junction, anyway?!? They had to build a bridge regardless - couldn't they have put it in a mile south??

Even the world's longest mile can only stretch so far, thankfully, and realistically speaking, it wasn't that long before Kurt spotted a cabin off to our right. "That's a good sign," he said. As we passed it, I spotted another clearly manmade construction and replied, "I think that sign is an even better sign." My companion then glanced to the left and topped that with, "I think that's the sign we're really looking for," then turned in that direction to meet the bridge.

We set our packs down and then sank into the comfiest ground to ever grace human backsides with an hour to spare. My ankle was expectedly whiny when I forced it back into on the train's arrival, but despite all I'd asked of it since rolling out of my tent at 1:30 a.m. - "12.5 miles, 3000' of elevation gain and 6000' of loss," Kurt declared as our stats for the day - it seemed somewhat more functional than it had at the end of the hiking portion of the journey three months before.

I wasted no time in indulging a decently-sized portion of the oft-mentioned motivation for making the train that day when I bought my second and most likely final sketchy overpriced DSNGRR hot dog. The menu claimed the treat was Hebrew National, which surely meant all beef.

I forgot about the cheese I'd eaten as a pre-train snack that could easily be regarded as an appetizer of sorts until the engine stopped in the middle of a canyon. I can no longer remember whether it was the location of the stop or the length of it that Kurt said had never happened to him in all the countless times he'd been taking the train to various remote Weminuche destinations, but either way, I could console myself that at least I was no longer schlepping 35 pounds of pack as the train sounded like it was running over a wayward Balrog as it restarted at last.

Despite the continued funny noises whenever there was a sketchy turn or a steep uphill grade, we did indeed make it back to Durango that day, just as I'd hoped for in my wildest fantasies. I'll admit to being a little grumpy that I couldn't communicate with my dad to let him know exactly when to pick me up until I reached the station, but the grumpiness vanished when he not first arrived far sooner than I anticipated, then treated me to dinner and made appropriately appreciative murmurs when I showed him my sunrise pictures.

The sun had set by the time we returned to his house, marking the official end to Rosh Hashanah...and with it, given how persistent the snow was on the four sketchy peaks I had remaining**, the end to my new fourteeners for 2022.

5783, however, is just getting started. And while I have too much superstition borne of too much of an ancestral sense that some things are best not tested or trifled with to publicly declare any sort of specifics, suffice to say I've got reason to believe the beginning might just set the tone for the rest of year.

*Seeing as how "next year in Jerusalem" is the traditional closing for Passover, it does kind of amuse me that actual residents of Jerusalem (or at least denizens of locales within easy driving distance of it) used to spend roughly ever other year's holiday in Denver in the Before Times. But I guess we Denverites always gave up well before reaching that part of the service anyway.

**I did read conditions reports indicating that the individual Crestones were completely dry via Cottonwood in late October. Kurt, however, had told me that he also guides that Traverse and that going Needle to Peak has some fun rappelling without all the Class 5 climbing I was likely to hate, and as I'd gotten to rap down N. Maroon's chimney and enjoyed it, not to mention that it's enough of a drive from Denver to the Crestones to make knocking both out in the same trip seem like a desirable goal, I was okay with the idea of waiting until next summer to take those on.