For eight of the last nine years I've celebrated the new year with an adventure. You can bet this year would be no different. What was different was that this year I'd be flying solo with five kids and the dog. And these weren't kids that nobody would miss if I didn't bring them home. No. These were all related kids: my three plus two nieces visiting from Kentucky.
While I'd been content to wander in the woods with the kids on previous trips, this year I figured I owed our out of state visitors something a little more impressive. They lack mountains out there in the middle of our great country so I thought they might like to see some of those.
It took a while to get to the trailhead for the Big Four Ice Caves. The drive is about two hours and I also had to convince both my wife and my sister-in-law that in spite of recent avalanches in the area none of the kids would be the least bit imperiled.
Situated at the base of the 4,000 foot high flank of Big Four Mountain, the ice caves are formed when snow avalanches down to form a cone of snow and ice several hundred feet high. When the temperatures warm, water falls instead of snow and carves the caves. In spite of the signs and the warnings and the memorial to the 11 year old that died there in 2010 people still get too close to the caves and even go inside. (I can't be too judgmental, though. On my first visit in 2004 I was right at the mouth of the cave and in 2009 we walked on the cone itself.)
Nationwide news coverage of an avalanche that trapped two hikers inside the cave just a week earlier would seem to be the perfect means to illustrate the danger of the ice caves, but did little to dissuade visitors. The trailhead was filling up fast. There wasn't a ton of snow on the ground, but what had fallen on the trail had been compacted into ice. We alternately crawled, tip-toed, and willed ourselves up some of the harder slopes. Those on the way down grimaced as they lost their footing and landed with hard thuds.
What made the challenge of the climb (a mere 250 feet of gain) easy to take was the thrill of my nieces. Both were in love with the various forms of frost. Hoar was most prevalent, but anywhere water was found it was frozen into crazy formations and most were new to them. My oldest niece kept grabbing the camera to take closeups of the frost so she could show her parents and friends back home. And we weren't even out of the trees yet.
The trail is only a mile long, but we took our time. I don't think anything goes quickly with five kids. When we got the first views of the mountain everyone was impressed. I consider myself pretty familiar with the mountains of our region, but even I could sense the beauty of the cliffs ahead of us. In fact, the only thing that was more wonderful was seeing the kids walking hand-in-hand down the trail.
I had to hold the kids back when they saw the throngs of people at the base of the entrance to the cave. They didn't whine, "But they're down there. Why can't we go there?" However, I know they were thinking it. Instead, we viewed the cave and cliffs from a safer distance.
Of course, none of the viewing areas are really safe. If they were safe there'd be big trees in the area, but they've all been wiped out by massive avalanches over the years. It was early season with little snow up high or down low so the likelihood of a massive slide was extremely low greatly reducing the overall risk. (Wha? Risk? What's that go to do with it? EVERYTHING!)
We did see a few small avalanches come down while we were there, but mostly we played in the dry snow and snacked. I think everyone was suitably impressed by the mountain and the cave and the pseudo-glacier, but they also all wanted to wear the Mountain Tutu and have their picture taken so it's hard to tell.
We had a chance to talk for a short while with a bunch of Twitter friends including a couple that hadn't learned their lesson a few nights earlier. Clara made the astute observation that "All of Daddy's friends are weird," which elicited laughs and then some deep thoughts. Children so often see right through us.
Our walk back was was a lot less falling down hard and more slyly sitting down and sliding much to my chagrin. A packed trail full of sharp rocks and embedded sticks doesn't bode well for the next wearer of a pair of pants, but at least there were no injuries.
Amazingly, even after a late night celebrating the new year, two hours in the truck driving up, four hours in the snow, and two hours driving back home the cousins were all still laughing and getting along great. I'm sure being separated by some 2,300 miles most of the year has something to do with it, but at times like these I sure wish we lived closer together.
