Dispatch #52 - My Daughter's First Backpacking Trip, Part 2
On fatherhood, red flag weather warnings, and making last second decisions with a 5th grader.
Last week, in part 1, I left off here:
At 7:38 a.m. the next morning, we shouldered our packs and walked toward the trailhead. The trail to Patterson Lake climbed six miles and 2,460 vertical feet. We tightened our pack straps, fist bumped the leaning wooden Wilderness sign, and started uphill.
That is how our day started. I didn’t know we’d also be finishing the day at the same trailhead. But I’ll get to that.
Where to start?
The wildflowers.
They were magnificent.
The first to greet us were woolly mule’s ears. They were impossible to miss. Great clumps of velvety leaves as long as my forearm, topped with oversized yellow flowers the size of drink coasters.
“Everything up here is giant-sized!” said Vivian throughout the day.
Bees. Ants. Flowers. Rocks. Mount Shasta.
Up, up, up we went, Vivian leading the way, carrying my old backpack.
It’s one of my most treasured possessions.
My grandparents bought it for my eighteenth birthday in Traverse City, Michigan, the same year Titanic came out, Jon Krakauer published Into Thin Air, and seventeen years before Vivian was born. I think it cost $79.99, which must have felt like one million to my grandparents, who were living on half an income in a cabin my grandfather had built himself. I still don't remember whether I helped pay for it or if they bought it outright (or if my parents reimbursed them after the fact).
It's worn and weathered now, like an old sock. The purple has faded, the straps are tattered, and patches of melted nylon bear the scars of flying embers. It has been a reliable companion over the decades through some of the most rewarding and challenging experiences of my life. Like hiking from Vermont to Maine on the Appalachian Trail, carrying food that was 93% candy and 7% nuts, where the thrill of reaching one mountain summit lasted about thirty seconds before you realized there were seven more to climb. It carried my gear for hundreds of miles of night hiking across the Mojave Desert on the Pacific Crest Trail with my sister. It’s held my passport through twenty-six countries and counting, from the Australian Outback to the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. Most of the time it hangs quietly in my closet, but every so often I get to take it out. Each time feels like visiting an old friend—a friendship built on mileage, trust, reliability, and a lot of sweat. We have seen a few things together.
As Vivian motored up the mountain ahead of me, my old backpack bouncing on her shoulders, I couldn’t help but shed some tears.
When you imagine having children, you picture all the moments you're supposed to. The day they're born. Their first words. Kindergarten. Camping trips. Introducing them to your favorite movies. Making Christmas ornaments together. Road trips.
You don't imagine moments like this.
Watching your eleven-year-old leading the way, climbing with the confidence of someone who already belongs in the mountains.
We took a lot of breaks those first few miles. The climbing was steady and the sun relentless. We rested under the shade of aspens, junipers, lodgepole pines, and whitebark pines, the trees growing more twisted and ancient as we climbed toward 9,000 feet.
We didn't see another person all day.
Adele kept us company as we moved through forests, volcanic tablelands, wildflower meadows, and along exposed ridgelines that separated one watershed from another. To our east stretched the alkali lakes and sagebrush of the Great Basin. To our west, forests rolled toward the snow-covered summit of Mount Shasta.
One side belonged to the desert. The other belonged to water.
Conversation followed the usual array of backpacking banter, which mostly revolved around food, pain management, water, animals, and how long until the lake.
There is only so much backpacking wisdom you can impart on day one. I tried to distill it into the handful of things that seemed to matter most:
To save your ankles, pretend your walking barefoot.
The pain is going to move around. First your feet, then your shoulders, then your knees, and probably everywhere else at some point. Don't worry. It's just saying hello. It never stays in one place for long and eventually it says goodbye.
Avoid surprises. Before you come around a blind corner or over a ridge, let the animals know you're here. Just passing through, we can yell. Or, if the mood strikes, we can howl into the forest.
We reached our destination just after noon. Viv ditched her pack the moment she saw water and then ran out ahead to strip off her shoes and socks.
The aqua-colored waters of Patterson Lake and the surrounding amphitheater of volcanic rock were, well, everything we had hoped for. Snow lingered in the gullies beneath towering cliffs, while the mountain above was etched with horizontal bands of basalt, each ancient lava flow stacked atop the next until the whole escarpment looked like a giant topographic map carved into stone. Along the rim, pines stood in silhouette, miniature against the cliffs, like the mountain had sprouted a fringe of green hair.
Arrival:
I set up camp and filtered water while Vivian sketched in her notebook. We spent the rest of the afternoon doing what you do at a mountain lake: eating, swimming, reading, and wandering aimlessly, reveling in the freedom of having nothing on your back.
We were ecstatic.
By five o’clock we were lying in the tent, resting the muscles that had carried us 2,500 feet uphill and the lungs that were adjusting to 9,000 feet.
That's when a weather alert lit up my phone. At the summit, it had suddenly found service.
RED FLAG WARNING.
Severity: Severe
Significant loss to life or property.
An incoming storm. Dry lightning. The potential for wildfire.
“What does that mean?” Vivian asked.
"I'm not exactly sure," I admitted, trying to sound more confident than I suddenly felt.
I called the nearest Forest Service station for advice, but no one answered. Then I called 911 to see if they could patch me through to the local fire department, but the operator could only confirm that "inclement weather" was headed our way.
“What should we do, Dad?”
“I don’t know.”
Getting a red flag warning and having to talk it through with my eleven-year-old was not something I anticipated.
“Dad, seriously. What are we gonna do?”
We sat up in the tent and started talking through our options. We could stay and hope the storm would miss us. But if conditions deteriorated, we’d be six miles from the trailhead and another fifteen miles of gravel road from the nearest paved highway.
Leaving meant asking Vivian to turn a six-mile day into a twelve-mile day. It also meant we’d probably be hiking in the dark.
“What do you think, Viv?”
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep tonight if we stay.”
“Do you think you can make it all the way back down the mountain?”
“Definitely.”
5:45pm.
We dismantled camp, repacked our bags and strapped on headlamps.
“You ready babe?”
“Let’s go.”
6:07pm. Departure.
Fueled by adrenaline, the falling sun, and the downhill trajectory, I’ll just note here that we FLEW DOWN THE MOUNTAIN like a pair of veteran long distance hikers. We touched down at camp before the sun had even made it’s final goodbye.
Our camping neighbor Doug (previously mentioned in part 1) greeted us as we arrived back, astonished we (Vivian) had made it to the lake and back in one day. I told him why we were back early.
“There was only one decision to make and you made the right one,” he told us with the kind of wisdom and certainty that seven decades of living can afford. “Just be ready to get out of here early tomorrow.”
A few minutes later, he walked over to our camp with a gift for Vivian.
It was a whistle hanging from a beautifully braided cord.
“To commemorate your first backpacking trip,” he told her with a smile as he placed it around her neck.
3:30 a.m.
I woke to lightning cracking north of camp, each flash ricocheting through the trees. Vivian slept while I stared into the darkness, profoundly relieved we’d chosen to hike out.
Sometime after four, still awake and pondering our next move, it began to rain.
I smiled.
The threat of fire, at least for a little while, had passed.
I closed my eyes and let out a long sigh of relief.
We had come looking for an adventure.
We found one.
Lovely. Lucky girl!
You're a smart dad! Way to go.