Garrett, What’s a Hike?
Garrett ‘hiking’ in July of 2009
One of Garrett’s favorite stories to tell was my (purported) question to him “Garrett, what’s a hike?”
That is his recollection. Mine is a bit different. I remember asking “Garrett, what kind of a hike are we going on?”
This was the weekend of our first date in 2009. We planned to go on a hike together on Saturday after a Friday night dinner. I was living in Omaha, Nebraska at the time. Garrett was living in Denver, Colorado. The mountains were his terrain. They were not mine.
While perusing (creeping on) Garrett’s Facebook photos, I noted his most recent posts of hiking on cliffs with ropes while wearing a helmet. Although I thought he was quite handsome with this mountain man look, I was also worried that his idea of a hike required ropes on boulders. In my defense, I think asking for specifics about our hike date was appropriate. In Garrett’s mind, it was a hilarious question from a flatlander from Nebraska.
Fast forward to 2023 and many, many mountain hikes later, both Garrett and I can now laugh at this hiking clarification. I have graduated to mountain girl status having just completed the W Trek in Patagonia. After spending 7 days of hiking with old friends, two guides, and adding some new friends, we took on the mountains of Torres del Paine National Park (the Chilean side of Patagonia). We slept in tents and unheated domes and shared community bathrooms. Through rain, snow, and wind, we did it.
No ropes or helmets were required, but we did prove that midwestern flatlanders can learn to hike. I documented and will share each day of our epic trip in a daily blog post over the next fourteen days.
(As an added plus, we were completed off-the-grid for a full week with no cell service or internet. I documented with the good old-fashioned pen to paper and will now translate to electronics.)
Photos from Garrett’s 2009 hike as posted on his Facebook page. Would you ask for hiking clarification?
