My dad turns 70 this month, and has never been on an overnight hiking trip. He wasn't into sleeping on the ground, etc... so this was a good compromise. I planned for Crescent Meadow-Bearpaw on the first day, Bearpaw-Precipice Lake and back on the second, and then back to Crescent Meadow and drive home on the third day. My dad spent the last few months walking on his own and doing some long day hikes with me to get ready, especially for the second day.
Maybe five minutes on the trail and we saw this guy rooting around in a log:
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Obviously the camp is different than being off by yourself. For what it is, it was awesome. Really nice people (both other guests and the staff) and just generally a great atmosphere. There is something to be said for ending a hike like this (minutes earlier there was a brownie on the napkin).
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The next morning we started early (they made us burritos like two hours before they served the regular breakfast, and saved us dinner plates that evening, even though we didn't ask!). On the way to Hamilton:
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You can kind of see clouds off to the right. As we hiked up towards Precipice it looked pretty socked in. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, we’d be able to see once we got there. The trip was long, but my Dad was a trooper and we made it to the lake. The clouds came and went a bit, but it never really cleared up. I didn’t care; I was so happy and proud of my dad; it was a good lesson about the journey vs the destination. Or something like that:)
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On the way down the clouds lifted a bit.
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Once we were back at Hamilton it looked almost totally clear.
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We got back to camp a little before dark, had some very good leftovers, and then headed out the next day. On the way out we got lucky; they were getting ready to blast a rock our of the trail; I’m guessing five or ten minutes later and we would have been waiting there for a while. I would have liked to have seen what this looked like afterwards.
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