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: