Planting the Seed

High altitude air, breathtaking vistas, single-track trail, ice cold mountain streams, cold mornings that make you want to stay in the sleeping bag, and silence. 

Those are a few of the things I wanted to share with my 10-year old this past week while on our first backpacking trip together.  He’s finally at an age where he can easily cover mountain terrain and decent mileage each day.  And, I wanted to share with him something that brings an enormous amount of peace and happiness to me.  It’s not as much about backpacking, but about being in the mountains in the wildest place I can find, within reason.  Plus, I would get to spend some much anticipated time alone with my Son with no distractions from everyday life.

I had lofty goals on our route and where we would spend each night.  But, I, also, needed to temper that with reality and let the day unfold on its own.  I left an extremely detailed itinerary with Olga on our exact route with precise locations for our campsites.  Additionally, I provided contingency plans in case the snowpack prevented us from adhering to the original route.  While this was the only way I was taking my Son into a 225,000+ acre designated wilderness area, it did limit the options.  But, it was a necessary compromise to ensure our safety, especially his, in case we ran into unexpected trouble.

He was extremely excited and had been for a few months.  I was promising an experience he couldn’t get in his scout group and he thought that was cool.  I won’t go into the excruciating detail, but we had an awesome time!  His first glimpses of high mountain meadows filled with wildflowers, walking barefoot through the willows and braided river in soft grasses to reach an enormous beaver dam, seeing more snow than he has ever seen in his life, yet happy once we got back onto a snowless trail after post-holing and having cold feet, to just spending time together.

We didn’t reach our original destination and had to turn around at 11,400 feet after losing the trail for good in several feet of softened snow.  He said he was “disappointed”, but happy we tried.  He was a very strong hiker and having fun was the main objective. As we hiked out on our last day, he was already making plans for the next time…