Colorado Summit Flags

This last summer I was my friends post pictures of themselves on top of different Colorado “14ers” ( Colorado hosts more mountains over 14,000’ than any other state.) I noticed that most if not all the pictures were of them holding the ubiquitous “cardboard sign” with the name of the mountain and elevation. I thought it seemed odd that many of my friends would spend time and effort to climb a 14er (many of them are on their way to bag all of them!) but all they had was a cardboard sign. I’m not sure any of them even kept the signs when they were done.

That’s when I had the idea of creating summit flags for each of the 14k' peaks. At first I was just going to do a flag that had the name of the peak the elevation and a generic picture of a mountain. That idea lasted maybe an hour!! I know people that spend years peak bagging all of the 14ers. (and yes I am one of those people) I thought if I was going to make a flag that “I wanted” it would have a picture of the mountain on it. I also wanted to make sure I could display them. That last part left me a problem. “How big do I make the summit flag?” I put the idea on the back burner for a while and pursued other adventures. …Flash forward a few months.

While I was watching an old IMAX movie about Everest, I saw loads of Tibetan prayer flags everywhere in the movie! BAM!! It hit me. Everyone I know that climbs mountains, know what prayer flags are. So why not make “Summit Prayer Flags”? And that was the inspiration that lead to the flags available now.

I did research into prayer flags to try and create my summit flags as close to them as possible.