Our middle son, Dan, is an avid fly fisherman. He has been dreaming of the mountain lake
packed full of trout that can only be found by hiking where others fear to
tread. Dan is 11.
Luke, our youngest, has been aching to go on a “real”
backpacking trip for a few years. He is
9.
Caleb, 16, is a hard core backpacker, wilderness
survivalist, mountain biker, downhill ski racer, and experienced mountain man. He was game.
The problem:
To get to the “easy” access to our wonder lake, we had to drive
over a 12,000 foot high mountain pass.
This particular pass has a snow cornice on top that does not melt very
often. 2013? Not melted.
Will not melt. Snow all year
around.
So, we drove to the snow Friday evening. We were at 12,400 feet above sea level in
early August. We did not get there until
fairly late. The weather was stable. But light was fading fast. We had only a couple of miles to hike to get
down to our lake at 11,000 feet, but there is no trail to get there and the
slopes are steep. No, I mean really
steep. But hey, I am the wilderness
survival guy, right? What’s more, I had
made the hike before, so I knew where we were headed.
We strapped on our packs and made a run for it. An hour later, we were on the steeps. The sun was gone, and there was no moon. Our headlamps were not adequate to do any
route finding. We could see a few steps
ahead of ourselves, but….
I was determined not to make the local news. Determined.
So, when the slope rolled steeper into the void and we
could barely keep our footing and we had no idea what cliffs were below or how
high those cliffs might be, I called it.
No sense in becoming a statistic, right?
We were nearly down, but I did not want to get there airborne. So, we climbed. Up.
More up. Up on scree and rotten
granite outcroppings. Up into the night,
in the pitch black. Up with heavy packs
while the wind blew and the temperature dropped. Did I mention my boys were 9 & 11? Caleb took it all in stride, but I knew this
was a new challenge even for him.
Luke asked how long until we could stop climbing and the
obvious answer was, “Until we are safe.
Until we are off this slope. All
night if we have to.”
But it was not all night.
Finally around midnight we made our goal. There was a spire of rock I dubbed “the guardian”
that acted as an earth dam. It moderated
the slope from “way lose too steep to sit on”
to “we won’t roll off the mountain as long as we stake our sleeping bags
down”. 12,200 feet. Windy.
Temperatures to drop WAY down.
Bivouac.
Now before you call social services on me, please know that we
were prepared. We all had zero degree
bags and all the other gear to enjoy a crazy night at 12,200 feet no matter the
weather. And I did stake the boys down,
even though we were not on a precipice.
Soon they were happily snoring while I stared in awe at the stars.
I have seen the Milky
Way thousands of times before, but this was the first time that I could see the
shape of the curved arm on which our solar system orbits the galactic
center. This was the first time that the
10s of thousands of stars were millions.
I was amazed. It made it hard to
sleep. Never mind the 35 degree, 15 MPH
winds. Never mind that I was lying on
lumpy ground high above tree line. Never
mind the mountain goat whose sleep we disturbed who was tramping around. Never mind the pica that scampered around to
see what we were all about. It was the
stars that kept me awake while my cozy boys slumbered.
The morning dawned with a crisp crescent moon. 45 minutes later we were at the lake. An hour later we had a breakfast of fresh
trout. Yes, Dan caught his fish. After eating a few, we turned to catch and
release and lost count of how many lovely cut throats went for Dan’s hand-tied
dry flies.
We stayed that night at the lake and enjoyed a lovely
rainstorm--a magnificent living canvas of light and shadow, breezes and aromas. The mountains speak a language all their
own. Until you have heard it and lived
it, it cannot be described to you. This
is why we go.
Get out there!
