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Hiking with a Six-Year-Old

Yesterday, AralBear and I made our way up into the Cascades to spend some time walking. This is not the first time we’ve done this, but he did amazingly well.

We ended up hiking Snow Lake Trail 1013 despite seeing the parking packed with about 30 cars; more than expected for a Friday, but most parties were small and spread out along the whole distance.

Trail Conditions

By and large, the trail is good repair. There are a number of locations on the climb up to the pass between Chair Peak and Snoqualmie Mountain where rock retaining work has eroded and soil, as well as trail surface, is being lost.  The far side of the pass, where the trail descends to Snow Lake has a good deal of snow pack left over the trail. It’s melting rapidly, but still, presents a technical obstacle for hikes especially on the descent.

Between Aral and I we picked up a good collection of trash. A great indication of how much love this trail sees during Independence Day celebrations. Add to this that we encountered no less than three parties of people playing music over a Bluetooth speaker and you get the general idea of how the first half of the hike worked out.

Things to Follow Up On

As you can imagine hiking with a very active and curious young boy represents some challenges. The good news is that AralBear is both excited for the adventure and happy to be out on the trail. That really helps me stay motivated. We ran into a small pile of challenges on this trip because I didn’t prepare enough.

Dry Socks

We ate lunch near one of the many streams that feed Snow Lake. The sun was out and there are a bunch of different perennials in bloom right now. This particular spot was jam packed with both. Despite the temperature, Aral wanted very much to test the waters. I let him.

At one point, while jumping from rock to rock, he dipped a shoe and sock into the water and came up soaked. Then later, after I had spread out his footwear to dry, in the sunshine he sat in the water. I brought myself dry socks (which I didn’t need), I neglected to pack a pair for him.

To follow up on this I’m going to need to acquire some more hiking capable socks for him. I know he’s going to use them.

Lightweight Sunscreen

Usually, I carry zinc oxide in a tidy and lightweight tube for sunscreen. However, these days I’m having difficulty keeping the stuff on for any length of time. So far I’ve burnt my shoulders twice this season. The stuff that works usually comes in a big ass can, which is both too big and heavy for me to ever want to add to my pack.

I’m going to need to examine my options here. This may require that I start buying/wearing long sleeves for more complete coverage?

Keeping Clean

AralBear schooled me yesterday. What I learned is that I am not prepared to keep a kid like him even remotely clean over any distance. At one point, on our way back to the car, we had this exchange.

“Dad, what’s all this brown stuff?”

I turned and looked over my shoulder to be sure. His chest was covered with rivulets of grimy trail dust. “That’s dirt.”

“Oh good, I thought it was poop.”

Part of this solution set is going to be teaching him good trail hygiene habits. Right now he’s just into everything regardless. But, until that time, I’ve got to add something my kit to aid me in cleaning him up.

Teaching Aral About Wilderness

Last and perhaps most important I need to work on passing on the value of wilderness to Aral. I’m uncertain if he really understood the world he walked into yesterday when he passed the obligatory boundary marker with me.

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WTA Hike-A-Thon 2017


It’s that time of year again. I can hear the high country calling. Don’t worry I’m not going to run the whole month away and rack up tons of miles. This year will be the first time Aral and I do this together, so we’ll be hiking at a reasonable pace with lots of time to stop and soak in the scenery.

This is the same project I was working on back in 2009 when I ran into a Pacific Crest Trail hiker that had fallen near Alaska Lake. The Hike-a-thon is a big deal to me because trails are and have been a major concern of mine since I was a kid. Back in 1987, I spent a summer volunteering with the Student Conservation Association working on a segment of the Colorado Trail and this changed me forever. Right now trails and public lands are under constant threat. Budgets that were little more than bone and gristle are being cut, fire season is upon us, and here in the Pacific North West trails had a hard winter.

“What is the Washington Trails Association,” you ask? WTA’s mission is to preserve, enhance, and promote hiking opportunities in Washington state through collaboration, education, advocacy and volunteer trail maintenance. Learn more about WTA by visiting their website. From my point of view, the WTA is the single most effective and efficient regional volunteer organization stewarding foot trails in my experience.

“What do I get out of this?” you remain curious. I’ll be coordinating our trail days through my Patreon page which means that all donations there get special access to trip reports, pictures, movies, and gear reviews. Plus I’m donating everything I make through Patreon to WTA in July and August. Finally, donations are 100% deductible. Even better, all donations of $50 or more include a year-long membership to WTA. Membership includes a subscription to Washington Trails magazine, a member decal and special access to events and discounts. So, regardless of how you support me and the WTA, there’s something in it for you.

If you can’t make a donation, help me reach my goal by sharing this page on Facebook and Twitter! Or, even better, send an e-mail to friends you think might be interested in contributing and include a link to the Hike-a-thon.

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Welcome Back

I’m living proof that while you can go to the place where you grew up, you can never go back home. Situational distance, temporal dissonance, or the relentless march. I tried to go back home and what I found was a place “almost, but not quite entirely unlike tea.” This is the way of things, a truth from which we cannot escape.

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This morning I woke up to clearing clouds beyond my cliff-side abode to discover that a critical element of my youth has been resurrected just in time for Independence Day celebrations. That’s right folks, it’s been more than 30 years since the threat of nuclear annihilation hung over our collective heads. Not just the specter of death that we all deal with in one way or another, but the extinction of it.

And he sat. He told the Nutro-Matic about India, he told it about China, he told it about Ceylon. He told it about broad leaves drying in the sun. He told it about silver teapots. He told it about summer afternoons on the lawn. He told it about putting the milk in before the tea so it wouldn’t get scalded. He even told it (briefly) about the East India Trading Company.

As their last hurrah the Baby Boomer Generations, aided by a select proletariat from Generation X, have performed a sort of necromancy upon our time. They’ve elected a madman who’s never done anything in his life but sin against his brothers and sisters and given him the temptation of the ultimate sin; destruction of his enemies through the use of the ultimate weapon.

Make no mistake, Kim Jung-Un saved his test of their latest iteration of ICBM — designed to pressure the United States and subsequently South Korea into capitulation over our collective and long-standing war — for July 4th. This is an example of pro-level political saber rattling. And the first response from the ass-clown in our chief office is a series of tweets which abdicate American responsibility in the region and discommode our allies who live under threat already.

This, my young friends, is what it felt like to live with duck-and-cover exercises. Welcome back to the life and times of your ancestors.

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The Bad News

Yeah, so all has been quiet on this front for some time. The reason for this is pretty straightforward, I’ve been experiencing intermittent issues with the keyboard on my laptop which became catastrophically worse late last week. Look at yours right now. See all the letters between W and P? None of them on my laptop’s keyboard work any longer and most of them get used all the time to write simple sentences.

Today, after much hullabaloo on the phone with Apple, I drove to the mainland specifically to get it repaired. I’ve watched the surgery necessary on YouTube, and it’s pretty involved, so I sought help. Help, it turns out, cost considerably more than the laptop is worth.

“So there he is, banging away at this post,” you’d rightly point out. “How the hell is doing it?” Well, I bought a cheapo keyboard and turned my very expensive Macbook Pro into a desk potato. This may become my new mascot or something.

“What’s next?” you ask when informed of my clever and inexpensive workaround? Well, obviously a lot less portable computing. When I work away from my desk, I’ll necessarily be doing so on a tiny device like my phone. This is slower and considerably more prone to borkage, but possible.

Right now my big project is a Space Opera retelling of Shakespear’s Romeo and Juliet which I’m very glad to be working on once again. If I do anything to improve my workspace, it will be to add a bigger monitor to this potato setup. However, unless and until I’m able to sell some stories, this is going to remain an aspiration since it lacks funds.

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Doomsday Giveaway

This is Matt. He’s got a pile of books he purchased last January that no one picked up. Matt is sad because books without readers are indeed a depressing fact of life. But there’s a silver lining to the cloud that hangs over Matt’s troubled head.

You can pick up one of these excellent reads. Doomsday Chronicles is an anthology of short stories that reads like a laundry list. That’s if your laundry is, in this case, some of our time’s best genre writers.

You can click on the picture of the book or here and pick up your free copy on Matt’s dime, while they last. All he asks for is a) that you follow him on Twitter and b) that you leave a review when you’ve finished reading the book.

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Write For Yourself

This is Matt. He just wrote a chapter of a book he doesn’t need anyone else to approve of. This is the first time he’s done this in quite some time. He understands that there will be critics. The critics will likely read this chapter and say critical things about it. That’s what critics do, but Matt doesn’t care. He likes the chapter. It made him feel pretty good to write it.

Tomorrow morning Matt will get up and do things. Let’s hope that when Matt does writing he doesn’t become his own critic. No one needs critics who makes them feel bad for writing, especially Matt.

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Name The New Ride

Help me name the new ride

That’s right, above is the new 700 x 47 CC Surly Long Haul Trucker (in Blacktacular) I recently purchased for some long-range, self-supported action I have planned. As is the custom in my house I need to name this ride. The bike it replaces is an elderly gelding that has been rolling for almost as long as me. It was named Scout after Tonto’s horse.

I’ve since stopped naming bikes after famous horse (although Mr. Ed has occurred to me). Its companion, a plus-sized version is my 2011 Surly Necro Pug, is named Rosie from Farley Mowat‘s 1963 autobiography Never Cry Wolf.

“Bored to death!”