Friday, July 17, 2015

Western mountains trip day 2: serious hiking

This is one for the record books.  The short version of Thursday is this: we went for a hike.  


The long version is this:  We hiked six hours, gained 2000 ft of elevation, picnicked on the grasslands at 10,400 ft, got a smidge lost on the way down, backtracked and gave up on finding the loop trail, headed back down the way we came, and that evening Matt and I looked at each other and said "I cannot believe we did that."


John Paul is definitely one of the hero-hikers of the day.  He walked farther than any four year old has ever walked :)  He just kept on keeping on, one foot in front of the other.  And he was THRILLED when this butterfly landed on his water bottle!


Luke's stamina and endurance is remarkable for a three year old.  He's just an athletic little kid.  But his three year old legs failed him at times, and Matt shouldered him up parts of the trail.  [yes, we all agree the real hero of the day is Matt!]


The kids had a blast.  Except for that one time when Lydia told me that every part of her body hurt :)  ha!  Seriously, they had so much fun.  Matt asked Julianna what her favorite part was and she said "every part".  Isaac loved it.  He attacked the mountain, scrambling to be the leader of the pack, hurling pine cones and discovering sticks shaped like guns and blazing "short cuts" that involved lots of scrambling up slopes.


After about three hours on the trail when we still hadn't made it to the grasslands Matt and I were seriously considering calling it quits.  We decided we'd give it 15 more minutes and then turn around.  14 minutes later I rounded a curve and saw the promised grasslands.  Isaac was the first kid to make it to the green space :)

The grasslands were gorgeous, sitting in a bowl surrounded by peaks.  Grazing horses and a Tibetan herdsman rounded out the scenery.  It was awesome.


We stopped for more snacks/lunch and then began the search for the rest of the trail.  This was the not so fun part ... did I mention it was drizzling?  And we were running low on drinking water?


Once we started down and knew we were on the trail home it took a bit of pep talking to get the crew in gear.  A long way down, mostly through pine forest (occasionally decorated with prayer flags) and then as we got closer to town the vegetation changed to scrubby brush and plenty of wildflowers.

It was really a great hike.  I'm not sure we would have ever attempted it if we had known just how far and how steep and how challenging it would be!  Some times it's best to learn things the hard way.

And the kids are proud!  We all are!  Today we were again up above 10,000 ft, even higher than yesterday and Julianna said "yea, but it's not as cool because we didn't get here by hiking".  She's got a bit of her Daddy in her,  huh?

2 comments:

Julie Redfern said...

Awesome job!

Grandmama said...

Didn't get there by hiking? - that's a girl who appreciates the challenge of getting there! What a wonderful memory day!