Alpine Backpacking Adventures
One of our favorite trips of the year is back again! We’re off to backpack with our New Zealand squad and couldn’t be more excited about this year’s itinerary. This year, we’re heading up North and Nate, Grady, and I are meeting Zach, McCall, and Adam there to do a few days of backpacking followed by a few fun days at a cabin. The trip started off strong with some fantastic thai food in Cheyenne, WY. This place was the definition of a hole-in-the-wall spot, but the food was unbeatable. We enjoyed the food in a local park in Cheyenne and that fueled us up for a long drive to meet up with the rest of the gang. In the true spirit of this trip, Grady and I backpacked in with some large bags of potato chips - of course to continue the tradition of the chip-crunching competition - this time, in the backcountry. It’s certainly not very space efficient, but at least it’s low weight! Little did we know that Zach & McCall would have the same idea and we’d end up with more potato chips at a backcountry tent site than anyone has probably ever seen before.
We started hiking early the next morning, far before sunrise to be on the top of the pass at sunrise. It was a slog packing up camp and hiking the many switchbacks up to the top of the pass so early in the morning, but the views were worth it. We spent an hour or more on the top of the pass taking photos, enjoying coffee and oatmeal, and letting our legs rest a bit before another day of walking.
While Grady, Zach, McCall, and I packed high-volume, low-weight chips to share with the group, Adam decided to bring a full bushel of apples for himself. Apples might be one of the least efficient backpacking foods to exist because of their extreme weight and the fact that you have to pack out the cores - unless you’re one of the crazy people who eat the cores. All of that being said, Adam brought a full bushel of Honeycrisp. At least he brought the best kind of apple... but still, why bring apples backpacking!? This weight was starting to slow Adam down and the pain (and likely, regret of the apples) started to get to him.
Soon, we started to wonder what could be causing Adam such pain - and Grady offered to take his backpack for a bit - this is when we learned about the full harvest of apples he was harboring inside that backpack. We wondered if it was rocks or bricks hidden in there, but it may as well have been. The funniest part of all of this is that none of the apples had been eaten yet and we were halfway through the backpacking trip. Adam decided to hike out that day because he sadly hurt his knee, so we gave him one of the InReaches to keep in touch with us and the keys to the Jeep. When we parted ways with Adam, we started a long bushwack up to another lake - climbing over down trees and up steep tallus fields. It definitely wouldn’t have been an enjoyable scramble with a bum knee, but the view at the top made us all wish that Adam could’ve been there. We found a great spot to camp and walked around the lake to explore, take photos, and jump in the alpine water.
As the afternoon progressed, a few more groups showed up to camp and we could hear the echos of rock climbers descending the valley walls. In no surprise from our normal trips, we all climbed into Zach & McCall’s tent and played the card game “Presidents”. Somehow, Zach seemed to lose most of the rounds and he proudly claimed his last place spot by chanting it loudly for all to hear.
We enjoyed a beautiful morning at the lake before starting the hike out. As soon as we reached the trail after the long scramble, our pace picked up very quickly. Zach and McCall, the mountain goats, set a pace for me, Grady, and Nate that was almost unattainable. We were averaging 15-minute miles with heavy backpacking packs! Our feet were aching and uncomfortable, but we all were looking forward to Adam and our chariot waiting for us at the trailhead. You can understand then why we were quickly disappointed when Adam wasn’t at the trailhead right when we finished hiking out, but he redeemed himself by showing up with some fantastic summer beers. Turns out, Adam found an amazing pass nearby to drive up for sunset and camp on. The views from there looked amazing too so it was good that we all had a great second day of the trip.
We grabbed some lunch at a local restaurant outside and got ready to pivot over to a few fun days at a cabin. Our official chip-crunching competition was on the docket and we also queued up some fierce Kuub competitions. We couldn’t believe that we were playing Kuub here becuse we hadn’t seen it since a bunch of people were [playing Kuub at the trailhead in Iceland]. We hiked around the cabin, played a bunch of games, and most importantly, declared a new champion for our annual chip crunching competition.
This year’s champion was crowned a real trophy that we crafted out of my “WCC Swim Team 2000” trophy. A lot of thought and even more glue gun sticks went into creating this masterpiece. McCall became the 2021 Champion, de-throning Grady, and taking the trophy home to proudly display. We’ll have to see who wins next year! The stakes are raised with the addition of the plastic trophy to the mix.
The video below contains footage from this trip, among others. Check it out!