The Path Less Traveled: Day 5: Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Beautiful days in Colorado continue. The women continued their climbs today, although the guys chose to take this day off from climbing. They didn't prep for these types of climbs, and to their defense, none of them knew that they were going to make these climbs until the last minute. They said it was a much needed break, however Thomas did say that he missed climbing today. They all said they have a new respect for these women as some of them were beasts climbing up and down the mountain.

It was a chill set for worship this evening with Josiah on guitar and both Josiah and Kate leading. I ran the lyrics and the others enjoyed worshipping. After worship, Jill (although its pronounced Jzhill) from Brazil spoke. Although she spoke for over an hour, what she said was amazing. What was even more amazing is that she thought she was speaking tomorrow and not today. She told stories about how parents in Brazil and other countries would sell their children into slavery, never to be seen again. Operation Mobilization's Freedom Climb helps these children by stepping in through the churches in these countries to help give these children a chance. Unfortunately some still get kidnapped back into slavery. The more I find out about Freedom Climb, the more I am seeing how the enemy doesn't like this...which is why Freedom Climb is very important to children and women, not only in 3rd world countries, but even here in the United States.

During the day, Dan and I went to Keystone and did some shredding going down hill. AMAZING!!! We took the ski lift to the top of the mountain and then went downhill on the trails. The first trip up was a bit intimidating, mainly from the fear of the unknown. But once we got down to the bottom, we couldn't wait to get back up. The first trip we took the "green" trails. The guy at the ticket counter at the base said their "greens" were our "blues" and our "blues" were their "advanced." For those who don't know, green is easy, blue is intermediate, black is advanced. Here at Keystone (and maybe others, I don't know), they even had a double-black diamond...to me this means the risk of injury or death...lol!

The dude was right, the greens were very much like our blues. The second trip we took mostly black runs. These got me very nervous. I was able to do them, but I was very uncomfortable doing them. They were filled with 1 to 2 foot drops off of rocks and roots which you landed on other rocks and roots. The main thing is that I did it! About 2/3 of the way down I had had enough of the black runs and we came to an intersection where one way was green and the other was black. Dan took the black and I took the green. Amazing that where the two trails re-connected we came out at the same time. Dan said it was crazy and intimidated him. He also said I chose the correct route! Ha! But props to Dan, no spills.

Finally in the 3rd time going up the lift it started raining and sleeting on us. When we got to the top we started to hear thunder so we decided since this was our last run, we would take the greens and blues just to get down the mountain due to lightening. Unfortunately during the 2nd run, Dan's contact came out and so he was now riding with only one contact in. We just left the top of the mountain when he took a little spill, nothing major. It rained and sleeted on most of our run down the mountain, and yes there was lightening. We probably did our fastest going down of all three runs. Dan took another spill on a small bridge, but to his credit he was riding with only one contact. When we got down to the bottom of the mountain we were covered in mud. There was a bike wash at the base of the mountain so we not only hosed off the bikes, but ourselves as well.