By Jill Harlow — Loveland, Colorado…What resulted from a September 13-15 trip to the summit of Mt. Elbert was a series of lessons which, it their own comments, are shared by the participating students and their sponsors. These will prove themselves to be of interest to the NewsNuggets readers.

10. Be prepared
“We had to be prepared to sleep in a tent in the cold.  The first night I didn’t wear a lot of clothes, but then the second night I wore all my warm clothes and it was so much better. ” – Giovanni Silva

9. Drink water
“If you don’t drink enough water, you will feel sick at the top!” – Sydney Halvorson

8. Stick with a buddy
“You never know when you might get hurt and need a friend to help you.” – Sydney Cornett

7. Don’t be too quick to judge
“When we found ourselves blocked in at the parking lot, we were all upset at a certain red car that was parked in the middle of a lane. After thinking about it later, we realized that the red car actually had to have been parked before the entire row of cars that came in front of it, so didn’t deserve all the blame that we had been so quick to give.” – Jill Harlow
 
6. Encourage one another.  
“When you have a friend when things get rough, you can encourage each other to get through it.” – Kent Kast
 
5. Don’t look back
“Every time I looked back, I felt so high that it made me nervous.  I just kept looking forward to the goal of the summit.”  –Greg Lang
 
4. Relationships come first
“I learned that being the first or fastest isn’t always important, it’s the people that you persevere with, even if you don’t get to go as fast or far as you want with them, that are important in the end. – Jadon Harden
 
3. You can push through the pain
“I was honestly ready to give up and just turn around but I kept going even though it was difficult.  Having the accomplishment of summiting the mountain kept me going.  – Sami Hodges
 
2. Slow and steady wins the race
 “We set a slow pace, but we did not stop, and we were the first group at the summit.”  -Kean Jagitsch

1. Never Give Up
“When I was climbing the first false summit, in my head I thought I would just quit after that summit, but after I got there I saw the real summit wasn’t so far, so I encouraged myself to keep on going and at the end I made it.” -Jarrod Lang
 “You will have an incredible gift when you get to the top.” – Giovanni Silva

 

–Jill Harlow, compilation and photo