After I landed in Albuquerque New Mexico, I drove about 3.5 hours north towards the beautiful Carson National Forest.  I was amazed at the spectacular golden aspens, the beautiful blue Rio Grande river and the awesome Wheeler Park Wilderness area.  I drove through wonderful  towns.  Red River Valley and Taos.  The day before summiting I drove up to the trailhead and climbed to Williams Lake.  The views were vast and amazing.  I could hardly wait for the next day to summit.  Wheeler Peak is ranked the 8th highest high point, at 13,161 feet.  The first 2 miles up were totally beautiful.  Then I got to the first of two scree fields I had read about in the guidebooks and the wind started to pick up.  There was about 30 people attempting to summit.  Then I got to the second scree field and the wind was getting fierce.  Once you clear the second scree field you start climbing along the open ridge to the summit, which is about 1/3 of a mile.  The wind knocked me down three times along the ridge.  At points I just sat hanging onto rocks so I wouldn’t get pushed off the backside of the ridge.  I noticed many people had turned back by this point and about half the group was still approaching the summit.  We were all being blown around.  I was thankful for the hand of a man, who reached out to me and pulled me back up on the ridge.  I did summit, but as you will see from the photos below it was impossible to take great photos.  And I did not get a chance to sign into the register because if I had removed it from the pipe, it would have blown a half mile away in a matter of seconds.  I did lose a handheld water bottle in the process.  I was also not able to take any scenery photos at the summit.  Once I was back off the mountain I looked up the local weather.  It said, 35mph wind, gusting to 65mph.  I was happy to be out of the wind… or so I thought…  I was off to Oklahoma where the wind persisted…

And on my way to Oklahoma…