AdAmAn sets out for New Year's Eve fireworks fun
- Details
- Created on Thursday, 30 December 2010 18:52
- Written by Dena Rosenberry
The AdAmAn Club set out along Barr Trail from Manitou Springs Thursday morning under clear skies and with no snow underfoot. The hikers plan to stay at Barr Camp Thursday night and then summit on Friday.
UPDATE: AdAmAn fireworks CANCELED
4:11 p.m: Fierce winds and snow forced the AdAmAn Club to turn back just a mile from the summit of Pikes Peak Friday afternoon and forced the cancellation of the club's annual New Year's fireworks from the summit.
Pikes Peak ranger Jay Vickerman said temperatures of 25 below zero and 70 mph winds hammered the climbing party as it approached the summit.
"Some of the worst wind conditions ever were today," Vickerman said. "A lot of the guys dropped out at the A-Frame. The climbing would have been just horrible - you would have had that wind blowing right in your face."
NOTE: The AdAmAn climbers passed treeline and the A-Frame early in the afternoon, and should be on the summit. (3:15 p.m.)
NOTE: The AdAmAn Club members left Barr Camp mid-morning Friday, Dec. 31, for the slog to the summit. Look for mirror flashes from treeline as they signal they've reached the A-Frame and are set to begin the final push up the Golden Stairs to the top of Pikes Peak.
BY DAVE PHILIPPS, THE GAZETTE
Being chosen for the AdAmAn Club has always been a dubious honor.
Yes, the lucky individual invited to become a member each year joins a venerable fellowship that reaches back 88 winters and has included such prominent Colorado Springs outdoorsmen as Fred Barr, builder of Barr Trail.
But the new member also has to break trail in the club’s frigid annual New Year’s Eve pilgrimage to the summit of Pikes Peak.
“It can be a challenge,” said Don Sanborn, president of the club. “Sometimes the group has encountered waist-deep snow.”
Lucky for this year’s added man, Bill Lahman, 56, Pikes Peak on Thursday was getting its first snowy blast of the year. While eight to 12 inches of snow were forecast to fall by the time the team would set out for the summit Friday, in previous years the group had plowed through thigh-deep drifts.
The AdAmAn Club got its start in 1922, when five local mountain climbing buffs with nothing better to do on New Year’s Eve set out for the peak. At the top, one of them set fire to a heap of scrap wood.
The group had such a good time they decided to haul fireworks to the summit the next year.
Every year since the group has added a member (hence the AdAmAn name). They hike eight miles from Manitou Springs to Barr Camp on Dec. 30, then push up the eastern cirque to the summit the next day to set off a few hundred pounds of fireworks at midnight.
In all that time, weather has never turned them back.
“A few years we have had to walk up the road instead of the trail because of avalanche danger,” said Sanborn, “But it is rare that we have too much snow.”
Pikes Peak is the driest 14,000-foot peak in Colorado. Mountains to the west usually squeeze much of the moisture out of passing storms, leaving only icy wind and a scattering of flakes for America’s Mountain.
“That can be as much of a problem,” said Lahman, who has made 10 New Year’s Eve trips with the group as a guest. “We get ice and gravel blown in our faces.”
Often gale force winds whip over the 14,115-foot summit at a sustained 30 to 60 miles per hour, making it difficult to stand, let alone light fireworks.
The gusts can bring the windchill to -50 or colder.
“That’s what we’re concerned about Friday,” said Lahman. The high temperature on the summit New Year’s Eve is expected to be -10 to -15, the low -20 to -25. With winds expected to blow at 15 mph, the windchill could reach -51.
That is perhaps why, when midnight approaches, the newest member is given yet another dubious honor. While the others warm themselves in the Summit House, he gets to stand out in the cold and set off the fireworks.
Lahman said he looks forward to it. “It’s quite a privilege.”
Folow the AdAmAn Club along its journey at the AdAmAn club website, Facebook page, or Twitter account.
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