10 APRIL 24-30, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | to amount to anything.’” While Horvath took that very personally, it also was a catalyst for change. She and her father have since talked about that moment, and he admitted that he was scared when he made the comment. “He saw the bubbly little girl that he loved and raised turn into somebody that he didn’t recognize,” explains Horvath. “And he knew that he had to say something to get me up off the couch and to do something with my life.” Two weeks later, Horvath was bound for Colorado and school at the University of Colo- rado Colorado Springs. She became obsessed with the Manitou Incline, an iconic staircase that climbs more than 2,000 vertical feet in less than a mile and connects with the Barr Trail, which leads to the top of Pikes Peak. “I begged people to take me up the Incline and the general consensus was, ‘No, you’re going to kill yourself. You’re going to hurt yourself. You’re going to be a liability for the search and rescue resources in the area, so on and so forth,’” recalls Horvath. She was going through a dark time, deal- ing with suicidal thoughts and discour- aged by those dismissals of her abilities. But mountaineer Daniel Pond and a colleague heard her pleas and agreed to support her mission of climbing the Incline. In 2018, Horvath became the fi rst female double- amputee to complete the ascent without the use of prosthetic equipment. Using just her arms and hands, Horvath climbed all the way to the top of Pikes Peak less than two months later. Pond again supported her expedition, which raised funds for veteran non-profi t organizations Operation Ward 57 and the Battle Buddy Foundation. She did a second climb up Pikes Peak in 2019 in honor of another veteran nonprofi t, Cars 4 Heroes; former Army sergeant Travis Strong, a fellow bilateral amputee, was right beside her. Since then, Horvath has crawled up several other mountains and monuments, including Mount Kilimanjaro, for charities supporting veterans and conservation work. The story of her incredible journey up one of the world’s Eight Summits will be told in an upcoming documentary, Lioness. Horvath also completed Handies Peak, a Fourteener in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, in 2023; she hopes to summit other Fourteeners in the future. “I found a lot of purpose and meaning in my life through the mountains,” she says. “And I proved my dad wrong.” STEPHANIE ZELNICK HIT THE HIGH NOTES In the early days of her career, Stephanie Zelnick worked as a mountain guide as well as an adjunct professor at the University of Wyoming. She also held principal clarinet positions with the Boulder Philharmonic Or- chestra and Central City Opera, maintaining those roles even after she accepted a position at the University of Kansas School of Music. “All of a sudden, I started commuting from 800 feet [in Kansas] up to Central City Opera, which is 8,500 feet,” she says. Zelnick had to sound as good as her altitude-adjusted peers, a challenge she faced with hardly any guidance. “People in the mountaineering commu- nity write about how to acclimatize, and I started thinking, ‘Why is there no research when it comes to my community of musi- cians?’ There was very little literature on exactly what we should do to play at higher elevations successfully,” she explains. Despite their use of smaller muscles, Zelnick ardently believes that musicians are athletes and that their performance can be optimized. To determine how, she’s interviewed woodwind players, traditional athletes, pulmonologists and other experts as part of a research project that has grown into a comprehensive look at musician health and well-being. Though yet to be published as a book, re- search related to Zelnick’s study has already made headlines. In the name of science, she and a colleague, Lauren Jacobson, performed a clarinet duo at the Mount Bierstadt summit in 2022. This past September, Zelnick played the highest-recorded classical music concert in the Rocky Mountains from the top of Mount Elbert. As a triathlete, ultramarathoner and mountaineer with thirty years of experi- ence, Zelnick was ahead of her group that day. She made it up the east ridge and to the summit, where she performed a set for two hikers who happened to be there; one later posted the concert on Reddit. Then Zelnick went back down to around 13,000 feet to join friend Melissa Davis-Capka and videographer Chris Clark. Around an hour later, they made it to the peak together. Zelnick set up her music stand, weighing it down with a backpack, and paper-clipped her sheet music into place. “At that point, there were about ten or fi fteen people up there,” recalls Zelnick. “It was nice having a bigger audience and the camaraderie was amazing.” She played four songs, including a piece titled “Pika” by composer Anne Guzzo, and posted her performance at 14,439 feet on YouTube. Her next summit concert has yet to be scheduled. Right now, Zelnick is focused on completing her book, which she hopes will support the health and longevity of her community of musicians. CHRIS MEEHAN PUT HIS BEST FOOT FORWARD...IN CHACOS Most hikers who want to climb start out on popular Fourteeners like Mount Bierstadt, Mount Sherman or maybe Quandary Peak. But Chris Meehan is not like most people. After a night of college partying, he summited Longs Peak for the fi rst time in jeans, a sweat- shirt and a pair of K-Swiss shoes. “All things I recommend you never do,” he says now. By 2010, Meehan had upgraded from sneakers to hiking boots, which he wore while trekking the Colorado Trail. But they were old and by day four or fi ve, some really bad blisters were forming and he fi gured his camp shoes, a pair of Chacos, couldn’t be any less comfortable. Over time, this peculiar footwear choice became a preference — one that hasn’t hindered but helped him ascend more than fi fty Fourteeners. Meehan is partial to Chacos for a couple of reasons, he says. For one, stream cross- ings are no big deal as the shoes dry within minutes. Second, it’s easier to shake out pebbles than it is with lace-up boots. These situations occur often on Meehan’s adven- tures, especially on diffi cult traverses with rubble and rotten rocks. Of the many peaks he’s completed in Chacos, the Maroon Bells Traverse and Crestones Traverse were the most challeng- ing; on those expeditions, he admits that he carried a pair of back-up shoes. But he didn’t fi nd them necessary on the class fi ve climbs. Nor did he need a rope. But then, when it comes to Fourteeners, Meehan is an expert among experts. He’s summited all 58 peaks, some several times, and authored the FalconGuides book titled Climb- ing Colorado’s Fourteeners: From the Easiest Hikes to the Most Challenging Climbs. In many instances, he notes that novices should not attempt to follow in his footsteps. But some routes aren’t nearly as nerve-wracking. “You should always start with the easy ones,” he advises. “Elbert would be great to do in Chacos. It’s a pretty straightforward mountain, even though it’s the tallest. Handies was really fun to do in Chacos. It was an easy one and just a beautiful hike. I started from Grizzly Gulch, went over to American Basin on the backside and then thumbed it right back. It was an amazing day.” Peak Performance continued from page 8 continued on page 12 Connór Lock surprised hikers on Mount Bierstadt with a gourmet meal. Mandy Horvath, a bilateral above-knee amputee, has set mountaineering records. Stephanie Zelnick performed a classical clarinet concert on Mount Elbert. MIKE HEATH PHOTOGRAPHY MANDY HORVATH STEPHANIE ZELNICK
