Youthful energy for mountains

Do you offer fam­i­ly and kids programs? 

This is a ques­tion we hear every sea­son in our office, and the answer is YES. We can cre­ate any cus­tom trip for you and your fam­i­ly, or mul­ti­ple fam­i­lies, includ­ing the kids! Here is one such sto­ry from an inspir­ing young moun­taineer this past summer: 

Meet Lin­coln.

Lin­coln is from Great Britain. He heard about climb­ing at a young age by watch­ing moun­taineer­ing movies and read­ing moun­taineer­ing lit­er­a­ture. At the ripe old age of 15, Lin­coln decid­ed he need­ed to get into the hills and expe­ri­ence the real thing him­self. He did a cus­tom four-day trip this sum­mer with guide Sean McNal­ly, and thus began his jour­ney to becom­ing a moun­taineer in earnest. 

The trip began at Mt. Erie, where Lin­coln was intro­duced to basic rope skills and knots, and, of course, some out­door rock climb­ing! After a day of climb­ing, he set his sights on the real prize, the grand mono­lith on the hori­zon, Mt. Bak­er.

Lin­coln made it to the south­side Mt. Bak­er base camp, aka Sandy Camp, and quick­ly took to essen­tial moun­taineer­ing skills, includ­ing cram­pon tech­niques, ice axe han­dling, trav­el­ling on a rope team, and self-arrest. In fact, Lin­coln was so enthu­si­as­tic about prac­tic­ing these new skills that he con­tin­ued to prac­tice on his own after the les­son was over, and even went back for more prac­tice after dinner!

The next day Lin­coln expe­ri­enced his first ever alpine start. The team woke up ​“bright” and ear­ly at 3 a.m. to pre­pare for an attempt on the clas­sic Eas­t­on Glac­i­er route. After a few hours, Lin­coln made it to the high­est ele­va­tion he had ever been to, 7800.’ Unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to poor weath­er and vis­i­bil­i­ty, he was unable to safe­ly make it all the way to the sum­mit of Mt. Baker.

How­ev­er, Lin­coln has def­i­nite­ly caught the moun­taineer­ing bug and plans to con­tin­ue on this won­der­ful and wild jour­ney called moun­tain climb­ing. He is eager to return to the Cas­cades next sum­mer to prac­tice crevasse res­cue and fin­ish Mt. Bak­er. He is also deter­mined to do some win­ter climb­ing in Scot­land this year! Thank you, Lin­coln, for embrac­ing the Mad­ness, and we can’t wait to help you reach even high­er ele­va­tions soon!

To book a cus­tom trip for your fam­i­ly and/​or kids, please reach out and send an infor­ma­tion request HERE.

Thanks to MM guide Sean McNal­ly for shar­ing this story.