Chapstick required

I hadn’t bought a tube of ChapStick in so long that I couldn’t remember what decade I last used the product. That was before last week, when I made an emergency stop at Kwik Trip and had to ask the nice lady at the cash register where I could locate some. I bought Carmex as I remembered it tasted rather awful but was pretty great at healing cracked lips. I remembered correctly, as my lips are well on their way to being able to smile again without bleeding.

By now, you’re probably wondering how I came to need some ChapStick after decades of not using any.

A month or two ago, a friend of mine asked if I’d like to climb Mount Whitney with him. I had mentioned to him a couple of times that, if he was heading out to the mountains, he should let me know, and I might be able to sneak away from the farm for a few days and join him. It turned out our employees were available for extra shifts. The only extra activity going on when he was available to go on a trip was the second week of performances of a play our daughter, Hannah, was in. Her brothers were going to be around as well as grandparents to run her to her play performances, so I had no excuses not to join him. I cashed in some Delta rewards miles on an overpriced spring break time ticket to Las Vegas and told my friend Sam we were on for a mountaineering trip.

Like the way I feel before the first crop of hay of the season, I was making lists and checking them twice for things needed to successfully accomplish the goal: The right layers of clothes to be comfortable in temperatures anywhere from -20 wind chill to 65 degrees and sunny, climbing and safety gear like avalanche rescue gear, a rope, a harness and carabiners were needed. I had to buy an avalanche beacon, which can help someone locate me if I’m buried and vice versa.

Maybe most important for a good time while on a backpacking and climbing excursion were food and snacks, preferably very lightweight meals but heavy in calories and flavor. Thankfully, Emily doesn’t just enjoy cooking excellent meals for our family when we are home. She also has been experimenting with making dehydrated meals for our hiking trips for years and has come up with some stellar recipes. I seemingly had everything ready that I could possibly need within reason of what fits in a pack and could be hiked up a mountain.

The weather and avalanche forecasts for that week looked great. Emily dropped me off at 4 a.m. at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport and we were on our way; well, after the pilots spent an hour starting one of the jet’s engines, we got on our way. Four hours of driving from Las Vegas to Lone Pine, California, and we were ready to get our packs on and go.

We camped by the trailhead the first night to get used to higher altitudes and avoid having to find our way up the mountain a couple of miles in the dark. The second day, we hiked up above 11,000 feet and camped by an alpine lake surrounded by beautiful cliffs with a view down valley toward the sunrise and up valley at the peak of Mount Whitney. On the third day, we grabbed our ice axes, put on our crampons and hiked/climbed our way to the 14,500-foot summit, then back down to camp, thankfully not slipping and falling off any cliffs. Because the weather was beautiful blue skies, and the sun at high altitudes is more of a burning death orb than a warming friend, we applied lots of sunscreen each morning. Unfortunately, I did not apply any to my lips and not enough to my nose. I thoroughly burned both.

The adventure was a great success. I haven’t been smiling much outwardly because it hurts, but inside, I’ve been grinning from ear to ear. Until next time, keep living the dream and remember that, no matter how well you plan, some little thing will probably be forgotten, and that’s OK. It’s often painful but acceptable. Getting out there and doing something, even if you may not have every detail perfect, is worth it.

Tim Zweber farms with his wife, Emily, their three children and his parents, Jon and Lisa, near Elko, Minnesota.