The day is Tuesday, August 28, 2001. I started the day having Justice Warren stretch my legs and arms for 30 minutes. Then I went back to the motel and had a bowl of Total to help fuel my body for a long day of hiking and climbing.

I met Mark Kelly from the Colorado Mountain School around 8am to climb MacGregor's Slab, in Rocky Mountain National Park. We arrived at the trailhead at 8:45am and started up the trail. We had clear skies for the start of the hike and temperatures in the 70's. That would not hold true though for the top part of the climb.

We hiked for about one hour over to the climbing route on the left side of the slab. The trail up was steep from the start but not real long. It was about 10am when I started on the climb itself, with the skies still mostly sunny. The start of the climb had trees all around blocking the views till you got up a little on the slab. The first pitch and all the pitches were almost a full rope length, with the total climb being about 700 feet.

The first pitch had more 5.4 moves than all of the, Gina's route on the Pear, which I had climbed about a week earlier. The second pitch was also a very sustained 5.4 but on one move I had my feet slip out from under me, which had made me glad I wasn't free soloing it. The third pitch was also a lot of 5.4 moves. As I was finishing the third pitch the clouds moved in and it started to poor down rain and thunder.

We had one lightning strike about 200 yards away just as I was finishing the pitch. I didn't see it myself but I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up just before hearing the thunder. Mark though did see the lightning strike. Up to this point the views were spectacular of the mountains around us. There was also a great view of Estes Park, but now the skies became very dark and forbidden.

Mark decided, since we were only about 200 feet from the top and 500 feet or so back down, that our best way off was to hurry up and finish the climb. I had some problems getting started on the fourth pitch because the rock had become so wet. This also was a lot harder of a pitch than the first three because of all the rain that kept coming down in buckets as I climbed.

Mark had me get under a rock about 50 feet from the end of the pitch because it was drier there. As I was climbing up the fourth pitch, the thunderclouds had passed overhead and were moving away from us. You could still hear the thunder and see the lightning but it was in the distance, where we were it was just raining hard. Mark then climbed the last 75 feet or so to the top; then I climbed my last 100+ feet to the top.

These last 100+ feet turned out to be the hardest of the whole climb only because the rock kept on getting wetter. There were about 20 feet of the last 100 feet that I needed to use the rope. This was the only time I needed to use the rope to help pull me up on the whole climb.

This climb proved to be the most challenging for my cerebral palsy but also the most fun climb of the summer. From the top it's a walk off on the descent. As faith would have it, shortly after we started on the descent the rain and lightning stopped as the skies started to clear up.

On the descent you have to climb and pick your way over tons of fallen trees as you descend down through the gully back to the car. The climb took about 5 hours for me to complete and the descent about 3 hours to climb and pick my way over the tons of trees. After the climb, my back and body was sore so I treated myself to the hot tub at the motel.

—Tim Ashwood, Living the Life with MountainZone.com