Continental Divide

Let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). Our first summer camp was to Rocky Mountain National Park. Our hike would entail about 2000 feet of vertical climb to top out at 12,300 feet on the Continental Divide.

Our first camp was only half a mile from the parking lot. Big Meadow. When I arrived in camp (you had all practically run the half mile) Noah informed me he had saved the best tent site for me and Paul (my brother in law). I had remarked on our scouting visit to the site that it was a very cool place to put a tent. I scoffed at putting my tent there but was glad he had preserved the site because it was the absolute worst place you could put a tent. The site was in the bottom of a depression with dead fall all around it. In a storm I knew the site would become a shallow pond - been there, done that - and I wasn't up for round two. I chose the highest ground right in the middle of the camp.

As we prepared dinner I kept getting remarks about how good my food looked and smelled. This was going to be fun watching you first timers for a week. A week of Top romin sounds good at home but gets old in a hurry. My dinner was stuffing, freeze dried peas and jerky topped with a tall water bottle filled with pink lemonade. Very satisfying.

During dinner everyone kept asking me if it was going to rain. Large billowing white clouds were forming overhead and then disappearing. I kept saying I didn't know until in my frustration I shouted "No. Those are big white fluffy clouds. Rain clouds are dark!" Paul and I retreated to the meadow for some evening fly fishing.

The trout in the stream were tiny but very ferocious. Often they would jump out of the water to get our fly before it hit the water. If the fly did hit the water the trout would usually hit it so hard they flew out of the water. We were having a blast! Suddenly it got dark and we looked up to see black storm clouds rolling over the peaks at an incredible rate of speed. A couple more casts then a huge bolt of lightening followed by some very impressive thunder. Paul and I looked at each other with the same thought "We are in the middle of a meadow with lightening rods in our hands!" We left the rods on the bank of the stream and headed for the trees and camp.

Everyone but Paul and I were in there tents to wait out the storm. Paul and I wandered about camp with our rain gear on watching the water pool up. One tent - I think Matt and Matt's - had a mote around it. They were on high ground but there was a depression all around them with the very corners touching the water. The site Noah had saved for me was now a pond - it only takes one night of living hell for me to learn - good teaching moment. Jared's tent had one corner pretty well into a puddle and his sleeping bag got a wet.

After the storm blew over, which was maybe fifteen minutes, Paul and I returned to the stream for more action in the trout nursery. After a while we saw Jared walking across the meadow with his head down and shoulders slumped. Paul looked at me and said he would move upstream so Jared could talk to me. Don't be too impressed with his thoughtfulness. Just upstream was the best hole we had been working toward. He headed straight for it.

Jared wanted to go home. Things had piled up on him and he was feeling the weight of it all. His dad had recently been laid off from the airlines and money was tight. But they had scrounged the money for the camp including a new backpack and Jared felt a little guilty about that. The next problem was that his food and tent buddy was Shawn Riley an adult leader (This was before the days of leaders and scouts not being able to be in the same tent - or at least I hope it was). Riley, as the boys called him, really didn't want to be there. He was an aspiring golf pro and only went because the bishop told him he really should go. As a result he didn't participate with Jared on the meal planning. Only when they got to Big Meadow did Riley learn that he would spend the week eating power bars and similar energy foods. Jared loved the stuff but Riley didn't care for it so Jared felt terrible. On top of all this his sleeping bag was wet. He wanted to quit.

We talked for a while and I was tempted to hike him out but decided that was the wrong thing to do. Jared's folks had sacrificed to get him on the camp and I felt that sacrifice would have been in vain. Riley made his own bed and now he would have to sleep in it; that was not Jared's problem. The sleeping bag would dry out. But most of all I did not want to teach him that when the going gets a little rough you can just quit. His walk back to camp wasn't much happier then his walk to the meadow. I really felt bad for him. Those aggressive trout eased my pain when I caught up with Paul at the prime fishing hole.

Well, that is my memory of Big Meadow. I scanned some pictures from that day and a few are attached. Now I want to hear your take on that day. What do you remember from your day at Big Meadows?