Umphrey Boys Hike. . . Lucifer Lake & beyond

Michael & Eldon took Israel, Daij and Gage hiking up to Lucifer and Picture lakes and onto the Garden Wall this last week.

Sort of spectacular country.

Israel & Gage catching some dinner.

All these photos are Michael's, but they're too good not to share. My main goal with this blog is to get better at documenting my kids (and yay! so far none have them have figured out how to break the internet so unlike everything else in my house, the stuff I'm keeping here is, so far, not destroyed!)  It's always a little unbalanced when it comes to the frequency of which kids show up here because I spend most of my hours every day following Lex around. It's easy to get photos of him when there isn't much else I see on a regular basis. Israel is on the other end of the spectrum. More and more he has his own life and activities that don't include me. But, they are more interesting than running around the yard naked (except for a cape), so I need to get better at including more of what he does.

All the snow we got this year made for some not-so-easy to navigate trails.

Israel drying out his boots for the second time. Forging through creeks damped them to begin with. Leaving them out all night in a rainstorm wasn't a great way to get them dry for the next day.  At least he was wearing them. The night before he told me he thought he'd do the hike barefoot.

Israel's caption for this one was "Triple Survival." Probably says a lot about the experience.

Going up. . . above the first lake.

And still going up. It's still pretty snowy up high.

See the tiny little people? (Eldon and the boys about 1/6 up the picture in the center of the frame)

Israel still climbing. . . up into the clouds.

His camouflage works a little too well. He blends into the background in all these photos!

Michael & Israel. . . top of Mountaineer Peak.

Israel making his way back down.

Glimpse of the valley on the way down. They hiked for about 12 hours this day and didn't get home until after dark. Still probably a better option than staying another night in the rainstorms.