Adventures with Oscar: Bear Peak

One of my objectives in life is to take Oscar on awesome adventures. There are many types of adventures, but this post will focus on one: hiking. And on one particular hike: Bear Peak. I chose to do the hike as a loop...because loops are better than out and backs and because I was petrified at the thought of hiking up Fern Canyon with Oscar in a backpack. See the elevation diagram to see why I was petrified. For those in the know, I started at NCAR, hiked the Mesa Trail to Bear Canyon, up Bear Canyon Trail to Bear Peak West Ridge and up that to Bear Peak. From Bear Peak I hiked down Fern Canyon to the Mesa Trail and back to NCAR.

So, first a quick glimpse into the madness of this hike. I would call the hike difficult, but with a baby backpack it qualifies as insane-o! The hike is approximately 8.5 miles according to other people's GPS units, supposedly 2990 feet of elevation gain, and about 6.5 hours of time. Check out the map and elevation diagram to get a sense of it.

I was lucky enough to have a good and patient friend to hike with - Ellie. Ellie lives in Fairbanks, but came down to Boulder for work. After hiking with me and Oscar and Andria on Saturday, she agreed to double down on Sunday and go big! This made me very lucky as my still injured hand makes it really difficult to take Oscar-in-backpack on and off my back. Here is a picture of Ellie at Bear Peak keeping Oscar occupied as the blood came rushing back into my head after putting him down.

The ravine behind and to the left of Oscar is Bear Canyon - the trail we hiked up!

So we started the hike up Bear Canyon and the colors were fantastic. Fall is coming, but it hasn't hit as hard in Boulder as it had hit in the microclimate of Bear Canyon. These couple of pics just give you a glimpse of the beauty. The ferns were changing, the aspens, and the ground cover. It was red and yellow and green and beautiful!

Ellie and I made some good time (with Oscar fast asleep) for the first 1.5 - 2 hours. But after awhile you gotta give a baby a break. He woke up and was clearly happy for some time - pointing at things, announcing himself, and pronouncing words of wisdom on the way up. He played with leaves changing colors, pine needles, flowers, rocks, pine cones, sticks, and just about everything awesome we could find to hand to him on the way up.

Finally, we stopped for a much needed snack - Oscar was ravenous from all that sleeping and announcing! After a good snack of cheese, apple, black olives, and pear, Oscar was ready to ruckus around a bit. But knowing how much more hiking was ahead of us, Ellie and I got Oscar back in his pack pretty soon and continued the hike. Oscar was playing a really good sport and got back in his pack willingly, so we set off again.

As we continued up the Bear Peak West Ridge trail, my legs started complaining - but not as loudly as my shoulders. I swear Oscar grew an additional 10 pounds on the way up to Bear Peak (on top of his already impressive 24 pound frame). Luckily he has since lost that punishing extra 10 pounds and returned to normal Oscar size. Near the peak, the trail turned into an extra long stair case - not kidding. It was like doing a weighted squat workout up the side of Bear Peak. But Oscar was loving it and so was I. We hiked through a burn area and started getting really good views. It became easier to see creatures like chipmunks and birds and Oscar was entranced.

This is not solid ground (Bear Peak)

Near the top we started to finally see a few extra people and, more importantly, their dogs. The dogs kept Oscar very excited between bouts of Ellie and I describing the natural world and all there is in it - trees and rock formations and birds and pine cones and very awesome sticks for whacking dad in the head. It was in a word - awesome!

By the time we made it to the top, I really needed a break. Unfortunately the top of the hike is not the top of the peak. To get to the top of the peak we needed to scramble across some funky rocks (me holding Oscar in my arms instead of in a pack). It took some effort, but we made it to the top at 8,461 feet. Vogels must stand atop tall rocks. This is known. And this was Oscar's second peak to bag. We did Green Mountain about a month earlier (the peak immediately behind me and Oscar in the picture at right).

I was lucky to have Ellie around on the way back down to the trail as Oscar was getting sleepy/fussy and was trying to twist out of my arms. Ellie jumped down and retrieved a bottle of water which Oscar happily drank from and calmed down, enabling me to finish the descent off the peak back to (somewhat) solid ground. These are the moments when you learn true patience - your child trying to squirm out of your arms atop a mountain peak as you calmly talk to them to calm them down. Rational thought isn't quite up Oscar's alley yet, so a lecture explaining to him the consequences of squirming out of my arms didn't really make any sense.

This is solid ground (City of Boulder below)

So we got back to the pack, ate lunch, and began the descent down Fern Canyon. Fern Canyon is a beautiful trail, but my god is it steep. With a pack of baby on my back I had to take about twice as many steps as normal just to make sure I didn't lose my footing and re-break my left hand...or my Oscar.

It was my second squat workout of the day, but this one lasted much longer. The trail seemed to go on and on forever. Of course, as soon as we started walking Oscar fell asleep - with his head falling out of the left side of the pack. This did wonders for my spinal alignment and my shoulders. But Oscar was in a peaceful place. Ellie and I got to catch up on various things and she got to re-experience some Boulder hiking after her years away in Alaska.

By the time we got back to the parking lot I was toast. Oscar was joyful - waving hello to everybody and making raspberries. Ellie seemed like she could do another lap. We made it home just after Andria got home from an epic mountain bike ride, which is not the order any of us expected things to work out. Luckily for me I had a beer waiting for me in the fridge to celebrate.

Later we let Oscar ruckus about and get out all that energy he did not use sitting in a pack for some 5+ hours during our hike. I asked him that evening if he wanted to eat a tomato - a new afternoon addiction of Oscar's. He heard what I said and ran up the driveway to our garden to get his afternoon treat. As we were putting him to bed I knew he had an awesome day. As Andria picked him up to carry him to his bedroom he lunged out of her arms towards me. This is not normal behavior as everybody knows mom is more comforting and more cuddly than dad. I am confident it was because we had such an incredible day together. I hope to do it again this weekend, but this time with Andria and as a family...and maybe with fewer squat workouts!

Oscar trying to summit Bear Peak solo

The Secret Walker

Apparently Oscar likes to walk when no one is watching.

Some backstory is required, as it's been forever since we posted to the blog. Many moons ago, Oscar started pulling up on everything he could grab, and did this for a full month before he started crawling. Crawling began in earnest right around his 9 month birthday. Shortly after turning 10 months, Oscar became obsessed with stairs, going up and down, up and down, up and down, and started standing up and balancing without holding onto things. At 11 months old, he's really really into walking around with aids - primarily the walker wagon and the wheelybug (featured in the video below, from July 19) as well as holding an adult's hands.

With all Oscar's walking around with aids and standing and balancing, people are always saying "any day now he's going to be walking on his own." I try not to get too worked up about these things, believing that Oscar will do them in his own sweet time, but I still find myself sitting a few feet away from O-Slice with a favorite toy and enticing him with "come to mama!" At these times, Oscar will get very excited and fling himself into my arms with a giggle - good thing I know the signs and am ready to catch him. Falling face first into mama's arms is way better than walking, apparently. Dang.

But yesterday at daycare, Oscar officially walked. His teacher Priscilla told me that Oscar was standing next to a toy bin and that she was sitting a few feet away with her back to Oscar, helping another baby. Then she hears Oscar giggling his little goober laugh, and looks over her shoulder to see Oscar excitedly walking toward her, wizard hands and all. According to Oscar, walking is only awesome if you can sneak up on someone. Hopefully someday he'll learn not to give himself away with a self-satisfied giggle while in the act.

Part of me is sad to have not seen his real first steps; I haven't even seen any interim stomp-stomp walking attempts either, although I've gotten reports of those from daycare as well. However, I adore the story of Oscar sneaking up on Priscilla - I like that he wants to walk on his own terms, not when some silly adult is trying to entice him. Oscar is walking for the sheer joy of it, not for praise or not because someone else asked him to. Someday I'll be there to see him walk ... and until then, I'll be looking over my shoulder.

And now for some adorable recent photos.

eating a raw mushroom at the grocery store

Playing with daddy

napping with daddy

playing in the street
(it's never too early to start)

exploring the shower
(a glass door is endlessly fascinating)

Adventures in baby rearing - the Betty Bear Hut

So my mission in life used to be to do awesome stuff. My secondary mission was to make Andria's life awesome. My new mission in life is to make Oscar's life awesome. I don't want to be the kind of parent that has a kid and cloisters him in a protective coasting of bubble wrap and silly putty. I want my boy to go on adventures! And, for now, the boy is basically really cute luggage. So I have a lot of freedom to define the adventures that we will go on.

Our most recent adventure was to go on a hut trip in a 10th Mountain Division Hut. We had signed up for this hut trip I think before Andria even got pregnant. That's the way these things work. But we have a crew of good friends that typically goes on one of these trips every year. And luckily, they have decided that we are part of the cool kid crowd. So 16 of us rent out the entire hut every year. Andria and I laid down our cold hard cash to ensure our bunk spots and then promptly got knocked up and had a baby.

So coming up on the trip, we had to figure out - do we lose the cash and bail on the trip? Or do we take Oscar on an incredible adventure at 5 months old? I think the answer is obvious, but, of course, there are a number of issues to consider. For example:

• Will our friends kill us if we bring a baby on the trip and he is up all night screaming because there is no oxygen at 11,100 feet elevation?
• Can Oscar survive if a freak blizzard moves in and buries us in 3 feet of fresh powder?
• How does skiing with a baby even work?
• Even if we ski uphill, do we really have the confidence to ski down, through the trees, with Oscar?
• Etc.

In the end, we consulted with a close friend who had a kiddo about 18 months before we did and she absolutely assured us that everything would be cool. Then she got pregnant with her second and bailed on the trip...so much for our safety blanket.

So, basically, we committed to the adventure. We spent the night before at a hotel in Carbondale. We figured we should be able to ski in, figure out we had made a completely bogus decision and ski back out before darkness. So we wanted to get on the trail early. The ski in was 7 miles with about 2000' of climbing. This was about 5.5 miles on an old road bed followed by about 1.5 miles of narrow twisting ski route steeply up through the trees.

We were the first people at the parking pull out and we organized ourselves and took off long before any of our other friends showed up. I think we were skiing by about 9am. For the first leg of our journey we put Oscar in a ski trailer. It is actually our bike trailer, but it has skis that you can switch out with the wheels and a hip belt that allows you to drag your little one through the snow. There's also the benefit of being able to stash extra equipment in the trailer. And since we were bringing food to cook a dinner for 16 people, we had a fair bit of extra stuff to haul in. Andria and I both had packs on as well since we needed to bring sleeping bags, extra clothes, diapers, etc. Luckily for us, Oscar seemed to find the ski in quite relaxing and ended up sleeping the majority of the way.

Skiing along the road was exhausting, but totally doable. Not much oxygen to be had, but we plodded along with only a couple of stops and made it to the place where the ski trail headed off into the woods and steeply uphill. This was the moment of truth for us. Would we be able to ski the trailer all the way in? As we suspected, that was simply not going to happen. The trail was really twisty and very steep through the  woods, making a very challenging approach. We had to stash the trailer, repack our belongings, and put Oscar in a front pack for the last mile and a half climb up through the woods. He was a little less sleepy with the occasional steep kick turn to switch back up the mountain, the periodic panicky back slide, and the rare snowfall of a tree that would hit both Oscar and I on the necks!

It was a gnarly effort, and I headed out with Oscar ahead of Andria to make sure we got there before dark, and because, quite frankly, I was too exhausted to go anything but the one speed that my legs would carry me. I can sum up the experience of skiing Oscar in with a single phrase: "dead weight." We got to the hut by about 3pm, so about 6 hours of skiing total. We got passed by a couple of super fit and super skilled women who were skiing in to stay the weekend with our crew, and they made it in just about 3 hours. From them I learned that Andria was on her way up and that some of our friends had stopped to help us carry some of the extra stuff we couldn't manage after ditching the ski trailer.

Once at the hut, everything was a whole lot easier. As people filed in one by one, we were consistently greeted with admiration at our moxy for bringing Oscar in and for dragging him all the way up the mountain. While I was pretty sure I was doing this adventure to make Oscar's life awesome, the sheer volume of compliments that came my way made me wonder if maybe I wasn't secretly doing this for myself. I have rarely if ever been so complimented in my life!

I'll admit that Oscar was not the best sleeper at 11,100 feet in elevation! The temperature was difficult to control and we had to share a bed with him (which we were not used to). He did an awful lot of kicking and fussing that kept Andria and I from getting a good night of sleep. While I could blame this on the elevation or the foreign environment, chances are it was simply that Andria and I are no longer used to co-sleeping with Oscar. He is always a room away, so fidgeting and kicking in the middle of the night is easily ignored at home. Not so much when he is gurgling in your ear or sending vibrations through your mattress with his kicking. Luckily for everyone else on the trip, there were two private rooms in addition to the main bunk room. So we were able to spare anyone else from Oscar's antics. Although, truth be told, there is usually at least one bad snorer in any bunk room that would put even Oscar's tomfoolery to shame when it comes to disturbing the sleep of others.

The next day we just hung out with Oscar at the hut. Andria and I were exhausted and Oscar seemed pleased as punch to be in this awesome wooden lodge. I noticed that he was fascinated by the ceiling - a structure of log supports and rafters and a wooden roof structure. It occurred to me just how boring it must be for Oscar always looking up at ceilings - which in our house, as in most places, is simply white drywall. No wonder this lodge was so fascinating!

And, as always, Oscar made a lot of friends. He particularly likes to flirt with the ladies, but he was sticking his tongue out at anyone who would pay him mind in an attempt to engage them in a baby babble dialogue. It was warm enough outside that we were able to take Oscar outside to see the mountains and the snow, which he did seem to find fascinating. We did the same at night when everything was lit up by the stars and moon under a clear cloudless sky. It was definitely an awesome place to be at five months old. I hope we will be able to do it again, although I bet that there is a lot more difficulty dealing with kids who can move around on such an adventure and in such an environment.

Finally it was time to depart on MLK Day - Monday morning. Andria had the good sense to bring snowshoes for the ski out. After the two warm days we had experienced, the snow was crunchy and very difficult to ski. I wrecked twice on the ski out through the trees - thus proving I was an inadequate mule to carry my son. But Andria just slipped on the snowshoes and hiked out to the road on the packed down ski track. She even made better time by doing so than some of the skiers. The ski back out the the car was only eventful because in my wisdom, I decided that Oscar would likely sleep as he did on the way up - thus we did not need to feed him. As a result we had a screaming, hungry, panicky baby in the trailer for the ski out along the road. Yes, I tortured my son, but hey - lesson learned, right? I'm making up this parenting stuff as I go along after all.

As always, some additional photos for your enjoyment: