Hiking Mt Huron with the boys (a Colorado 14er)

Well, unbelievably, we did it. I took all three boys up to Colorado by myself this past weekend to find some Colorado alpine camping– high and cool and up a bumpy 4wd road that thins the herd. Our notional purpose was to hike Mt Huron, a Colorado 14er—one of 54 peaks in CO that are over 14,000 feet tall. The Huron hike is 6.5 miles round-trip with 3,500 ft elevation gain, so I never expected us to actually reach the summit. Especially with me carrying Emerson the whole way.

I put the boys to bed early, already dressed in their clothes for the hike. I left the hot-chocolate water and coffee maker all ready to go on the stove, and packed all our backpacks in the back of the car. At 5am I woke up, started the stove, and got the boys up. We drove the half-mile to the trailhead and were hiking by 5:30. Bodie and Jasper started flagging around 8:30, and my offers of candy bars were no longer having any effect. I took Jasper’s pack for him (I already had Emerson in the carrier on my back and a small pack rigged to my front as well). I told them we were going to hike until 9:30, then turn around, that however far we got by 9:30 would be it. Bodie went up ahead with another group of adults (our boys were the only kids on the mountain). Jasper went up and joined him. At 9:30 Bodie yelled down to me that he didn’t want to stop and wanted to keep going—I told him we could keep going as long as the sky remained clear.

Bodie and Jasper did the last mile together, a couple hundred feet ahead of me, and I couldn’t catch up. I was thoroughly exhausted, and would have turned around if either Bodie or Jasper said one word. They got to the top ahead of me, and received a cheering ovation from the two dozen adults on the summit. I struggled mightily with the last two hundred vertical (step, rest…step, rest). We were on top around 10:30. I felt a few conflicting emotions: Disbelief, that I was on top of a 14er with all three of my boys; Pride, that my boys did it; Trepidation, about how challenging the descent was going to be.

The descent proved easiest for the boys. I had to stop a number of times to lay down and regroup. My legs were jello and would barely support me. I convinced Emerson to walk for about a mile towards the bottom. The promise of cold coke, a new Minecraft world, and/or a new lego set kept the boys completely complaint free — which was astonishing, given the circumstances. This was easily the hardest hike that Bodie or Jasper had ever done.

If we tried it another ten times, I’m not sure that we would succeed again even once. The attitude of the boys on that day was just right for it to have all worked out.