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Family adventure!
So a couple of weeks ago my wife was out of town for 5 days. We have been married almost 15 years now (oct 30 is our anniversary!!), and I am so used to having her around, and next to me at night, that when she is gone I just do not sleep well! I was up until at least 3 am every night she was away!
I took the majority of the week off of work so I could be home with my kids while Sarah was away. We stayed close to the house the majority of the time, but on one of the days we decided to take a little trip, and headed toward the coast. Lexi took a friend with her, so there were two teen agers, two preteens, and me. Oh yeah, did I mention I was the only guy on this trip?? Feel sorry for me yet? Well don’t, we had tons o’ fun!
We headed north on I-5 in my little saturn wagon, towards Longview. The plan was to cross over the bridge at Longview into Oregon, and then continue down highway 30 to Astoria before crossing back into Washington for the final leg. Sometimes it is hard just to go to church with that many kids in my little car. They tend to get anxious, and fight alot! Can’t blame them, it’s not really a comfy travel car. But on this trip they were all just great!
We stopped in Astoria Oregon for some lunch at Buger King. Then went out back to some trolley tracks for a photo op. Got some good pics of the girls. (photos from this trip can be viewed at davespics.tumblr.com) After messing around there for a bit we continued our trip, destination: Illwaco, WA.
Once in Illwaco we went to our favorite family camp ground, Cape Disappointment State Park. If you haven’t been here yet, I highly recommend it! Beautiful beaches, surrounded by cliffs, and a lighthouse on either end of the park!
We parked our car, grabbed our backpacks with our swimming stuff in them, and started hiking the trail to the north head lighthouse. About halfway along this trail is a side hike down a steep wooden staircase to a small, secluded beach aptly named “dead mans cove”! The name and the beach look like they are straight out of a movie! Beautiful, small sandy beach, surrounded by tall cliffs with ocean waves making it through the narrow passage. What can I say but “Wow”! (see pics!!)
I will never forget this day, I had so much fuch with my girls I didn’t want it to end. We had a nice hike, with beautiful views, played at this beautiful cove, then went in and spent the rest of the day at Long Beach where we flew kites, and played in the surprisingly warm surf.
After such a long day (we got home at 10:30pm!) I slept very well for the first time all week!
I am so thankful that I have such a wonderful, fun family.
Next trip, will it happen??
So I am in the process of planning our next climbing trip. Will this one happen? Only time will tell.
I have not spent as much time in the mountains the last few months as I would have liked, well no time acutally! It has definately not been due to a lack of planning though. I have made plans days, weeks and months in advance. The problem is getting everybody together at a time that works for the greater good (wich is of course, me getting into the hills!!). There are 4 guys that I climb with on a semi-regular basis, 1 of which is my main climbing partner. Rick and I have the same days off, therefore we are able to coordinate our climbs fairly well. The problem is that Rick has this idea in his head now that he wants to “better” himself! He has gone back to school and is now working on his bachelors degree! So now here I am, Rick has little to no time right now, Darrel works an opposite shift than I, and Josh has just been way too busy. What are these guys thinking? Obviously they are not thinking about how I feel!! School? Family? Work? Come on!! Climbing should come before all!! (ok, before we get too far into this, I am joking, sarcasm and I are one!)
With all my buddies busy all the time, I am wondering if I am making these plans in vain. Oh well, even if we aren’t able to climbing middle sister next month, at least I will have fun planning to do it! I’ll just have to keep pictures from last years trip handy, just in case!
Am I still a climber?
I spent a total of 31 days in the mountains on different trips last year, from rock climbing, to mountain climbing. This year I have done a total of 1, yes you read that right, 1! The one day I spent out this year, and may I remind you that it is now the end of July, was for a day hike! It had a total elevation gain of aproximately 500 feet. That is quite a bit less than the average 5000 feet of gain on my trips last year.
My question for you is this: Is a climber still a climber if he no longer climbs? How long must I go without a climb before I cease to be a climber?
I have wonderful, exciting memories of all the different trips I went on last year. My main climbing partner, Rick M., and I climbed as much as our jobs and families allowed. If I remember correctly we were on one mountain or another every weekend last August and September! Boy, my wife was not happy about that one! I had to stop spending so much town in the hills, and start spending a little more time with my family. I guess I may have gotten a little carried away. I had no clue that would lead to me not climbing for a few months. Actually, it has now been about 9 months, 15 days since my last climbing adventure!
The last trip we did was an attempt on Mt. Adams in Southwest Washington state, on November 15th, 2008. This is the second highest mountain in the Cascade range, only Mt. Rainier is higher. Mt. Adams sits at 12,276 feet at the summit. We attempted the south ridge route, considered the “easy” route up this giant volcano. I use the word easy very lightly, as this is not the easy people seem to think it is! Although this trail can be “hiked” (there is a trail most of the way to the summit in summer!) it is not an easy one. Once you leave your car and start climbing, you don’t stop. With the trailhead at 5600 feet, that makes an amazing gain of ove 6500 feet to the summit in under 6 miles! Better have comfortable boots, and lots of water for this one!
If you noticed, I said we “attempted” to climb it. There were three of us on this trip, and only one of us made it (not me). Josh R., Rick M. and myself both worked all day on Saturday and left right after work for the trailhead. We arrived at the mountain at about 10pm on Saturday night and started hiking immediately. Well as you can imagine, by about 2 in the morning we started to get a little tired, and we weren’t even to the halfway point yet! Climbing at night causes you to go a little slow as it is, plus Josh and I weren’t in the best shape, and we had all been up for about 21 hours at this time. We stopped at a popular camping spot called “the lunch counter” at about 9500 feet to get a little rest. After about an hour we put our crampons back on, grabbed our ice axes, and started to climb. What beautiful views!
By the time we made it to 11,000 feet Josh was done. He stopped, found some rocks, and went to sleep. Rick was long gone from view, deciding he didn’t want to wait up for us slow guys any more, and I kept going on my own. After another hour and 400 more vertical feet I called it quits also. I sat on my butt and slid back down to meet up with Josh. After waking Josh up we slid on our butts a little over 1000 more feet to the top of the lunch counter area, found some rocks and went to sleep (well we rested, you can’t really sleep well on volcanic rocks with the sun beating down on you) and waited for Rick to come back down.
From car to car this is normally a 12-14 hour trip in the snow. For us it was an 18 hour trip car to car, and a total of 39 hour day for us. Even though we did not all make the summit thought we were going to die of exhaustion, this was a great trip. I think about it often now that I am not climbing anything. Dreaming of the day I get to return and try it again!
Im still a climber. I can tell because I have climbing gear all over my garage! And we all know it is the gear that makes a climber, not the act of climbing!
