I know I promised to get you some photos of Santorini today, but there’s been a slight change in plans as the opportunity has come up to shoot off into the Rockies to hike a 14er – that is, a 14,000-foot peak – called Holy Cross tomorrow morning near Vail.

If you’re not aware, hiking 14ers is a thing in Colorado. I did my first last year, battling the altitude alongside packs of mountain goats, eventually reaching the summit to a crowd of beer drinking, pot-smoking freaks of nature. The high perch makes for great views and photos, but it’s more about the accomplishment than anything else. I recently wrote a piece for Travel and Escape Canada about my experinence last summer, posted below.

I’ll swing back later this week with photos of both Santorini and the hike, I promise. For now, I’m going to enjoy a little bit of spontanaity and pack up my camping gear. We’ll start the ascent tomorrow morning before the sun comes up.

One of my friends told me that she usually starts to “feel it” around 13,000 feet.

We were about a mile into our three-to-four mile ascent, and we had just come across a pack of mountain goats on the snow-covered rocks. The dog chased them as far as he could over the ridge, stopping when the pitch became too intimidating and looking down at the goats that now stood comfortably on the side of the mountain.

I inhaled deeply. We were around 10,000 feet and I knew the air was thin, but I felt like a million bucks—the blue sky, fluffy clouds, wildlife and distant peaks distracting me from the stress on my body. In a few minutes it would all change—this was no ordinary hill.

Read the rest of this post on Travel and Escape Canada.