The heaviest burden as an adventuring parent is not carrying all the gear or the responsibility for planning and safety. It's the realization that this time is limited. These darn kids keep getting older and soon they'll be off living their own lives. At the same time I lament the sudden growth spurts, their new capabilities sure do open up a lot of opportunities.

For years, years, I've craved this trip deep into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. The time was never right, the conditions were never right, or the kids were not ready. Finally, it was time. In what turned out to be a brilliant move, we started on a Wednesday. Fewer people, less traffic, and when it was all done we'd have two days to recover before work. Who knew Wednesday?

We started at a decent hour, but not too early. I broke the rule of "Don't drive and hike," but it was close and the boy does ok early in the morning. Packs on, we started down the trail.

The trip can be divided into a couple logical sections. The first five miles is along the river, gaining little elevation. Cross the river, and start climbing up to a chain of lakes. The last piece is a steep climb to a rocky plateau littered with tarns. In a perfect world, we'd climb all the way to the tarns the first day, but prudence had us targeting one of the lakes in the valley.

As expected, the walk up the river was mellow. Lots of green. Lots of creek crossings. Lots of time to ruminate on where we were and what we were doing. Probably too much time as we thought about what else we could be doing. FOMO. When we crossed the river we put our heads deep in the water and did some thinking. It's amazing how effectively the sensation of icy cold water in your ears and little pebbles pressed on your forehead can help you recenter.

Once on the climb, there was no time for thinking. While the river walk had been leisurely, this was agressive starting with a talus field and progressing to some hands-on-roots, I thought this was a maintained trail, hiking. It wasn't hot, but we were. Every time we found a creek we went in. We looked like we were dying in the heat, but it wasn't all sweat.

The first lake we came to had a single site at the outlet. The other side had a cluster of sites already occupied by a bunch of tents. Needless to say, we claimed the isolated spot for ourselves. Tent up. Hammock up. Fly rod out.

HOS wanted to fish. A first for him in the backcountry. I was stoked. This was a perfect way to spend some time after dinner. Plus, it beat playing endless rounds of everyone's favorite card game, war. (Seriously. Has any game of war ever actually finished? War. Hoo hah. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again!) So fishing.

We waded out to a rock that gave us plenty of room to cast and flipped a fly onto the water. BAM! Well, that certainly didn't take very long. Granted, it wasn't a big fish, but it was a fish. We continued for about an hour before retiring to camp.

As we settled in for the night, Henry declared he wanted to sleep in the hammock. We got him all set up with twinkle lights to keep him company. It lasted about 30 minutes and he wanted to come in. Said he felt like a soft taco just waiting for a bear to get hungry. No worries. It's a big tent for a reason. (The next night I started in the hammock. HOS asked me back to the tent when he said he was lonely.)

The next day was the best day: Middle Day. Middle Day is when we get to go deeper into the mountains than we could in a single day and we don't have to carry all our gear. I went from a 40 pound pack to just 10 pounds and the boy wasn't carrying a pack at all. We pretty much danced up the trail to the head of the valley. That's when we turned up the hill and it got awesome in the most literal sense of the word.

On the map and satellite imagery, the way to the high lakes looked like it would be a tedious and demanding climb or a rock field full of boulders just waiting to trip us up. In reality, it was far easier. We were able to follow an unofficial trail most of the way and then walk on huge rock slabs after that. To our left was a sheer cliff a thousand feet high with snow piled up at the base. (Yes, we glissaded just for fun and I may absolutely have consumed a bit of the snow.) Ahead of us, the map promised a perfect little tarn.

Around the shoulder of the ridge and there it was. The lakelet was surrounded by rock and looked all the world like nature's infinity pool with the land dropping away into nothingness at the far end. Glaciated peaks tore at the puffy clouds across the valley and a few trees stood where the rock was fractured enough for them to take hold. And the water itself was a dark blue, just like the sky.

We swam. After the warm climb up from camp it felt marvelous to get into the water. Well, after the first shock wore off it felt marvelous to get into the water. A few muttered curse words and it was great fun. The water was just shallow enough I could stand on my toes and keep my head out of the water. I found a rock perfect for sitting on (still underwater) about 15 feet from shore and Henry swam out to me where he could stand. After 15 minutes we'd had about enough invigoration and climbed out.

The rest of the afternoon we wandered about the plateau. There are several other tarns, lots and lots and LOTS of rocks, and we did our SCIENCE!, of course. (This time we were collecting living snow.) We descended back to the valley and followed the trail back to camp.

No fewer than three separate groups, including a group of Forest Service rangers, asked if we'd seen the bear. BEAR! WHAT BEAR? Oh, you just missed him. He was on the trail about 10 minutes ago. Not only did we miss seeing the bear, it totally reinforced Henry's fear about being a midnight snack. (Hmm... Maybe the boy wasn't lonely on the second night. Perhaps he feared becoming a bearrito.)

We fished again, finally made an observation of the pika that had been yelling at us since our arrival, ate our second round of freeze dried macaroni and cheese (if they likes it, they eats it), and called it a night as soon as it got dark.

Henry, being a true mama's boy, woke us early so we could get home at a decent hour. To him, that meant by noon. With a four hour hike ahead of us and then a two hour drive, that was clearly not happening, but it certainly motivated him to hustle through the process of packing. And there was not an ounce of dawdling on the trail.

As with every year, I try to learn at least one lesson from the kids on these trips. This year it's painfully clear the lesson is to hold on to these moments while you can. The boy is 12. 12 isn't that old, but it's old enough he's developing his own tastes and interests. I'm not the center of his world anymore. I think I didn't notice it as much with the girls because our "baby boy" was still young. Sure, I still go on adventures with my father, but it's not the same as when I would take a four year old into the mountains. These days are too quickly passing by.

I've been accused of being a digital scrapbooker. That if I'd been introduced to Creative Memories in an age before blogging was possible, I would have albums lining the shelves. Whatever. I'm a rough and tumble adventure blogger, not some sentimental scrapper. Not even if I look back at the pictures and stories from when my littles really were little with a hint of a tear in my eye.