Lost Creek Wilderness, Day 1 and 2

As I am going to have a ton of pictures, I decided to break it up in to a few posts.

A month or so ago Ben's friend, Benji, messaged me - inviting the family on a backpacking trip. A couple of his brothers (Christian and Peter) would be there, as well as Paul Formisano. They were each, with the exception of Christian and his little children, going to be bringing a child along with them. We decided to bring our whole family along, of course. :)

After Benji's original plan of hiking to a high, beautiful alpine lake didn't work out (too much snow still left in the high-country, 0% overnight parking in the town, etc.), Ben and I had come up with our own trip itinerary and the friends all joined us in our plans. It turned out great.

Our map - which we had to change up a bit . . . But that was our original plan.

Our family left after church and drove the almost-4 hours to the trailhead. We were only hiking in a little over 2 miles that night and so it was a fairly "easy" backpack to our first campsite. Benji and his daughter Chloe, Peter and his daughter Swede, and Christian headed out before us and were there to greet us when we got to our camp-spot. We had a great evening: enjoying the fire, chatting, singing songs from their very own CD "Road-Tripping," etc.

We got up in the morning and slowly got ourselves re-packed for the day, and water filtered and filled in to our bottles. Peter and Swede had to head back home and so they went down. The rest of us went up . . . and up . . . and up.  My-oh-my it was hard. I felt really old. We climbed 2,000 feet in the 4 miles we backpacked that day. But we were rewarded with a stunning camp-spot!

Paul Formisano and two of his kids, Olivia and Maren, were to join us that evening. So around 5, Benji, Christian, and Ben headed down to the trail to find Paul and help carry gear for them. Benji came back - thankfully, because we had a good rainstorm along with booming thunder and lightning. My girls were especially scared and so it was nice to have Benji around just in case. Ben and Christian came back later without Paul and his girls. But, lo and behold, a couple of hours later they arrived - having a much-later start-time than anticipated. It was fun to have them there, although by the time they came, most of us were cold and getting ready for bed.

Okay, time for a gazillion pictures!

At the start of the Twin Eagles Trail-head. Here we go!

Our two beautiful backpackers.

Hiking along . . .

Enjoying the fire.

Emmy sitting on the cute bench at our campsite. :)

The first night's group: Lucy, Emmy, Bella, Brigham. Jonas, Miles, Benji, Ben, Peter, Swede, Chloe, and Christian.

An official "Lost Creek Wilderness" sign.

 Taking a break on a nice rock.

 Christian and Ben having deep conversations.

 Lunch time! We had climbed and climbed and climbed and finally came to the sign indicating we had about a mile left to our campsite. We were thrilled. Lunch was delicious: whole wheat tortillas with bananas and nutella. Plus jerky. Yum. The thunder was rolling at this point and so we were anxious to make our descent to the campsite. Also, the bugs were bugging so we didn't hang-out for too long there.

 Miles and Ben. Of course.

 Jonas taking a rest.

 Yay, our beautiful camp area! The pictures don't do it justice at all. It was super incredible.

 Our own mini Yosemite. :)

 A picture of our site with our tents set-up.

 Ben's marshy area to filter our water!

 Brigham was a great hiker! He even carried his own pack with his food and some extra water.

 Bella probably thinks she's a Wirehaired Pointing Griffon, too, and so she acts like a tough mountain dog!

 Getting some filtered water from Benji!

 Ben, Lucy, and the dogs carrying back some firewood.

 

 We'll just say it took some time to get an actual fire going . . . It was a little windy and a little rainy, I'll give us that (Ben was gone at this point). :)

 Bella was exhausted and so she let us actually hold her for long periods of time!

 Chloe hanging out at camp with our kids.

 We hid under the rock to shelter us from the storm. The thunder was so BOOMING - echoing off the mountains. It was intimidating!

Not long after we arrived at camp, I spotted a moose. He was huge. We enjoyed looking at him through Jonas' binoculars.

 Mr. Moose hung out near our camp most of the afternoon, evening, and night. He kept getting closer and closer to our site. Then he finally plopped down for bedtime - about 200 yards from us. We didn't see him in the morning.

 Just chillin' . . . probably literally. It had gotten chilly after that rainstorm. We had to chain up the dogs because we didn't want them investigating Mr. Moose. Brigham accepted his fate like the gentlemandog he is.

The end of days 1 and 2.