Friends of Friends

We have pretty good friends. Since our friends are good people and good people like to hang out with other good people, for the most part, our friends have pretty good friends. Sometimes we meet a friend of a friend and want to punch that person in the throat because they are driving us absolutely nuts, but in general, a friend of a friend is a friend of ours.

Every once in a while we meet a friend of a friend that really strikes a chord with us. It could be because they have an interesting back story or maybe they have similar interests as us or it could just be that we are meant to have an adventure together. It's hard to say why people connect, but sometimes we just do.

If you have been following along this constant stream of rambling that I have been putting out for the last year, you may know that we just went on a white water rafting trip with some good friends from Seattle and their good friends. While we were on this little rafting adventure, we got to talking with one of these friends of friends and found out that we shared some similar interests...the great outdoors and foot powered exploration. Our new friend of a friend just happened to be retired with nothing holding him down for a handful of days, and by luck, we have the same fortunate situation, so another adventure into the great outdoors was needed.

Our new friend of a friend is considerably older than us. He is a whopping 62 years old. If you are doing the math, that is 22 years older than me, but only 12 years older than Brenda (she looks good for being 50...that was a joke...Brenda is 54...that was a joke too...she is only 39...but she looks pretty darn good for a 39 year old...a lot better than this 40 year old does). I know what you are thinking because I was thinking it too...”he is older than dirt.” It's true, he is. When he told us that he loved to hike and that we should go on a little trek through the mountains with him, we thought “great, we're probably going to have to carry his walker.” When he brought out a map with the intended route, I thought to myself “this looks tough. There is no way this fella is going to make it without having a heart attack.” But what the heck, we are always up for an adventure, so let's do it.

Brenda and I love being outside, so an invitation is generally the only motivation we need to get out. When our friend of a friend told us that he had been wanting to do this particular loop and that the loop would take us up a large river drainage, through the woods, and into the high alpine environment, we were pretty excited...even if we would have to carry his walker. Brenda had been wanting to do another multi-day trek for a little while now, and I was feeling like a nice leisurely stroll through the mountains would do me right.

Since we knew we were going to be putting some miles on our feet and we knew that we were going to be climbing some serious elevation, we decided to pack light. No extra doo-dads that weren't absolutely needed were coming along. We packed just enough food and our bare essential gear to make the trip a success. Even with the light weight packing, our backpacks seemed heavy. It's amazing how much weight that gear, a couple liters of water, a water purifier, and a handful of days worth of food become. A couple of miles into our trek had me trying to figure out how to sneak some of my stuff into Brenda's backpack. She was on to me though, so I was stuck carrying my own gear. Bummer...so much for a leisurely stroll through the mountains.

“Where is your favorite place you have been?” is a reoccurring question that I get all the time and my answer is probably something that you are tired of hearing. I have a new favorite place on earth almost daily and my favorite place on earth is generally right where I am at. I have very fond memories of just about every place we have visited this past year, but if you ask me, I will almost always tell you that my favorite spot is right here, right where I am at (unless I am sitting in traffic). This trek was no different. I couldn't remember ever seeing anything as spectacular as these mountains. This little adventure took us through some of the most amazing scenery that we have ever seen, and we have seen some amazing scenery this past year.

One of my favorite things is standing on tippety-top of a mountain and having a massive 360 degree view, especially on a crystal clear day. You can see for miles and miles and miles. On one of our conquered summits, we had a view of Mt. Rainier to the south, Mt. Baker to the North, and about 12 million smaller peaks in between. We could see massive mountain ridge-lines, ultra green valleys, huge waterfalls, snow covered peaks, high alpine meadows filled with wild flowers, and even bears (holy crap...bears!). Truly magical.

In total, this little trek was just less than 30 miles and took us 3 days to complete. 30 miles doesn't seem like that long to me anymore since we have routinely had days of 15 plus miles on our feet, but these were some hard fought 30 miles. We conquered nearly 14,000 feet of total elevation (up and down), we climbed through 7 mountain passes, scrambled over scraggly peaks, forded ice cold streams, and crossed steep snow fields. We slept under the stars on a wind whipped stone island in the middle of a massive snow field on night one (if you are wondering, it was really, really, really cold), on night two we slept next to a pristine alpine lake fed by a waterfall that was hundreds of feet tall, we drank from ice cold snow melt streams that ran off of the high peaks, we ate delicious meals of freeze dried mush and instant coffee, and we walked for miles and miles. We had riveting conversations that would rival the words spoken by great philosophers, we laughed, we cried (it was mostly me that cried...we walked a lot), and we graduated our friend of a friend to the status of a good friend of ours.

This newly made good friend of ours pushed us beyond our normal comfort zones. Even at the ripe old age of 62, he was a powerhouse. I did my best to keep up with him and he did his best to keep up with Brenda (she is a freak of nature when it comes to foot powered exploration...think of the energizer bunny on steroids...somewhere near mile 25, she was skipping and singing on the trail...I was crying and begging for a taxi). On the more technical sections, Brenda and I would carefully plan our every move. We would plant our poles, make sure our footing was secure and our hold was strong, and then methodically execute our maneuvers. Our good friend would stroll along like he was waking on the sidewalk on a lazy Sunday morning, not noticing the 1,000 foot drop off to his side. (Mom, I know you are freaking out about now, but don't worry, we were perfectly safe.)

Brenda and I have a long standing rule. If either of us don't feel safe at any point on our adventures, we can voice our concerns, and with no questions asked by the other person, we turn around. After one of our summits, the exit on the other side wasn't something I felt good about. There was a huge exposure that I felt meant certain death with either a slip or a rock slide. Since I'm not ready to end my life and I'm not ready to lose my wife, I voiced my concerns and our good friend said “no problem, let's find another route”, even though I'm sure he felt like our route was OK. We poured over our map, checked our gps, and found another path that would take us safely on to the next summit. He did a quick scramble through some terrain that would have made me wet myself to see where our new route would end up, all while having the spring in his step like he was a teenage boy. He would later tell us that he is “comfortable” in the mountains.

I'm going to share another fact that we have learned this past year. Age is just a number. I know, I know, it's such a cliché, but its really true. We have met people this year that are in their 60's, 70's, and 80's that are out hiking and exploring in places that are remote, rugged, and grueling, and they feel great about it. We have good friends that are ancient but still sailing around the world, crossing big oceans, riding out storms, exploring far off lands, and still excited to tell us about their adventures. We have also met people in their 20's and 30's that can't get off of the couch and have a hard time climbing a flight of stairs because they are too busy playing video games. Not that there is anything wrong with the couch and/or video games, it's just that there is a fitness level that some of these 60's, 70's, and 80 year old's have that put's us to shame. There is an appreciation of life that some of these old timers have that we can only aspire to. We have said to ourselves countless times, “I hope that when I am their age I can still do what they are doing.” And it's true, we hope that in another 20, 30, and 40 years, we are still able to be doing this.

Now that we have a newly made good friend, we are going to try to coerce him into joining us on more adventures down the road. Brenda has a list of long treks that are begging to be conquered and sometimes an extra person makes a trek more fun. Our new friend even said what could be the nicest words we have ever heard after spending a few days in the mountains wearing the same clothes day after day that are soaked with sweat, dirt, and grime. “I don't even smell you. You could probably put off taking a shower for at least one more day.” I'm pretty sure he was either lying or he is so old that his nostrils don't work anymore. Either way, they were nice words to hear. So nice that I decided to not shower for at least one more day...Brenda said I need to sleep outside until that shower happens.