On Top of the World

I breathe in the cold thin air and it stings my throat and my lungs. I'm breathing hard but I can't stop grinning. There's something about being on top of the world...
"Sarah!" My dad's voice jolts my out of my reverie,  or just me numbly putting one foot in front of the other as I stare down at the dark brown mud that has started to coat my clunky hiking boots and already mud colored wool socks, probably just for this purpose. "Let's stop for a minute". And so we stop, just reveling in the cold mountain air. I sit down on a rock, which is rough and icy against my skin. I take a look around. It's starting to get a little windy, with the cool fresh breeze blowing the misty fog and dew all around us, obscuring our view of the top. The deep green moss that covers the ground and rocks around us is moist and covered with dew. We're about halfway up a slick, steep section, and if you look down, you can see all the way down to the beginning of the steep sudden rise of the mountain that we just came up in the past hour. We try to spot the neon orange of my brother, or the white of my friend below. It's really beautiful, with the meadow flattening out and stretching into the distance, eventually meeting up with the stream, the tall pine forest, and our cars. The whole thing just smells like Colorado; dirt and mud and rain...
Rain! Oh no, it can't rain this early, can it? When you're above 14,000 feet, if there's a storm, you have to get down fast. Your basically a big lighting rod, standing on bare rocks at the peak of a mountain. And we haven't even climbed Grays yet, haven't even started Torreys.
I put the thought out of my mind and my dad and I keep walking. I take off my jacket, exposing my arms to the icy cool air. We keep walking. I move in front of my dad too, motivated by the song in my head. I dig my feet into the slick damp mud along to it. "I'm on top of the world, hey! I'm on top of the world, hey!" After a while it becomes more of a chant inside of my head then a song, occupying my mind as we move farther up into the cold thin air, the mist wreathing around our heads and slowly accepting us, engulfing us into it. My lungs are burning from the air.
And suddenly, there it is! The top! I grab my dad's arm and point. "Over there"! He manages to catch a small glimpse of it before another thick bank of fog drifts in front of it. I start running/stumbling up the path, trying to avoid the little sliding pebbles that tumble down and bounce over my shoes up into my legs, stinging. After twisting and turning, we finally have a clear shot to the summit. Being my usual impatient self, I'm frustrated when we go up, and down, and then up again, and then come over the final rise onto the summit of Grays. We take a picture, eat some Gourp (I save all of the M&Ms for last, and the orange ones until the very end), and contemplate what to do next. The fog swamps us, but seems to be drifting our way away from Torreys. My dad calls my mom and asks where they are, They're about thirty minutes behind us, so they might make it or they might not. My dad looks at me. "Should we do Torreys?" he asks. "We'll really have to boot it down from there". Also we'll have to traverse the ridge", looking down at the steep rocky knife-edge ridge that drops out steeply below us, and then curves up into the ascent into Torreys. I eat another peanut M&M, this one is yellow and I sear it tastes different from the green one that I ate before. I sweat that the flavoring is different, otherwise why would the orange ones be the best? "Well?' my dad asks.
I look up at the bronze peak of Torreys towering above us, sun reflecting off it in all different directions, no fog obscuring the view. On top of the world. "Let's do it".