I went camping with my dad this weekend. Him and I haven't had any one-on-one time in probably 5 or 6 years, it's always been with my brother, or mom, or a combination thereof.
There's a difficult hike he has been wanting to try for a long, long time, but my mom never wants to go. Even with me, he was hemming and hawing about if we should try it, or go for an easier hike... I said "Fuck it let's do it. We don't have anything to prove, if it gets too treacherous we can just turn around"
We got to a little bald overlook area lower on the trail and saw where the trail shoots above the treeline on a super rocky crag to the summit, it looked intimidating and steep, with no trees for cover. My dad was like "Holy shit we aren't even going to make it to that first cap"... But I pushed him, and we continued on, and DID eventually make it to the first cap, after a decent amount of hand-over-foot scrambling up incredibly steep rocks. Here's an unflattering picture my dad took of me climbing a section still below the treeline
Here's what the trail looked like at one point, it's really hard to see how steep it is.
And here's the view from where we ended up stopping to turn around. I wish I would have taken more time to get a better picture. This was my first time hiking above the treeline, and it was really exhilarating. I want to go back and do it again right now, but alas, I must work.
We didn't make it to the summit, but we did make it much further than we expected, and had an absolute blast. We will definitely be coming back next year with better footwear, lighter packs, and more preparation to get to the summit.
(Photos were taken on my Olympus D-360 point-and-shoot digital camera from the year 2000, which explains the... everything about the photos.)