During the summer of 2016, Alyson Kirk started having recurring nightmares. She and her husband, John, were on a mission to ascend every peak of at least 12,000 feet in Colorado, and Turret Ridge near Ridgway, known as the state’s most difficult “twelver,” loomed next on the list. “It’s a mass of decomposing volcanic tuff where every handhold is subject to coming out,” Alyson says. But while the prospect of scaling a mountain that only two to three people summit every year haunted her dreams, she believed reaching its pinnacle would help her and John keep a much more important commitment.
John, 43, and Alyson, 36, began struggling with alcohol addiction when they were teenagers: Alyson was raised by alcoholic parents, while John built his high school identity around getting…
