This morning we woke up and Dena was still non-ambulatory from our previous two days’ activities, so Carol, Jordan and I took off to climb up on top of a ridgeline we could see from our campground. There was no trail; we were making this up as we went. Dena stayed behind to have an easy day.
We crossed the road and started climbing fairly immediately. There was a slope to climb up, then we started getting onto some fun low-angle class 3 rock which charged Jordan up immediately. He doesn’t always get the fun in hiking somewhere just for hiking, but throw in some rocks to climb and he’s in fun mode. I have to say I much prefer class 3 climbing to talus slogs as well.
Along the way we used nothing but positive reinforcement to keep Jordan going – for instance:
- Instead of asking him if he was tired, we’d say we’re taking a break now and then say “ready to go?”
- Instead of asking him if he was hungry or thirsty, we’d say “you need to eat and drink now so you can be Mr. Energy and beat us to the top.”
- When he inevitably slipped and scraped himself or put his hand on a plant and got a thorn, instead of asking if he was hurt, we’d say “can you keep going?”
- Instead of reminding him constantly of the dangers of rock climbing, we’d say “we’re trusting you to be safe and not try anything you’re not sure of” – and then watch him carefully.
- When he got scared at the last big down climb, I told him it was OK to be scared, but he needed to use that to focus himself on what he was doing so that he didn’t make a mistake.
This all seemed to work fairly well as we got a lot further than I expected – but I digress…
We kept climbing into beautiful patches of alpine flowers and Carol got some great pictures. After some time we wound up on the ridgeline and got great views around us of more lakes, mountains, snow, flowers, etc. We climbed up the ridgeline, including a traverse across a snowfield just for the fun of it, then got some good views of Gaylor Peak. I started looking for a way down that didn’t involve retracing our steps.
I found a chute that led down to a talus field. It looked a little gnarly, but I was sure we could all do it and it would be fun. It was harder for Jordan, and I had to get him turned around with his butt off the rock so he could down climb. We both agreed that down climbing is not so much fun as climbing up. I don’t think Jordan gets a lot of down climbing practice; when one climbs in the gym, one usually gets lowered on rope, and although it is good practice to down climb what you just climbed, most of us just don’t do it.
Anyway, we got down and then had a few hundred feet of talus to down climb. Along the way, we kept finding more kinds of flowers and then I spotted a little frog or toad about one inch long. We stopped and watched it for some time. Jordan wanted to pick it up, but I pointed out it would be hard to do that without hurting it, so we left it in peace. After a time, we got off the talus and walked back into camp. We got some nice pictures from our hike.
Carol and I made bean tacos and salad for dinner; Jordan ate two bean tacos which I could hardly believe. Afterward, we retired to the Campah (mosquitoes and wind) for Uno, the last game of which turned into a marathon – I think we reshuffled the draw deck three times. Carol and I have come to appreciate the Campah so much…
In case you missed the pictures…