Small Expeditions

Odette and I backpacked quite a bit before Will was born – in fact he was conceived way up Thunder Creek.

When Will was really tiny we did a few trips and even though they worked they were complicated by all the baby stuff I had to carry.

As Will got older we gravitated more toward car camping, and as Odette got older we ended up doing more and more “credit card touring.”

A few years ago, on a weekend when Odette had to work, I took Will and hiked to the basin where climbing routes start for Liberty Bell and the Early Winter spires. We slept in bivy sacs and Will had a great time chasing the goats. We didn’t climb anything.

The next summer Will and I hiked to the little lake between Vesper and Sperry and we climbed Vesper. We spent an afternoon trying to find the trail from Headlee pass to the old Sunrise mine. Once again we slept in bivy sacs and had a great time exploring the lake.

For our next outing Will and I hiked to Cascade Pass and then climbed Sahale Arm to the bivy sites at the snout of the Sahale Glacier. We would have tried to climb Sahale but for the fact that it rained really hard the whole time we were up there and so we spent the night and got out as quickly as we could. At least we were in a tent (not bivy sacs) and weren’t too uncomfortable, but even inside the tent we got very wet. Breakfast in Marblemount at 10:30 was really welcome.

Here is a list of my Hiking books.

Here are book lists from some of our more memorable family backpacks:

Spider Gap
Devil’s loop
Holden
Goat Rocks
Dutch Miller Gap

not a family trip, but here is the book list from the Bailey Range Traverse