Isle Royale

Well, the experiment was done.  It was successful in some ways, but less so in others.  Notably;

• I didn't like the big group hiking.  In part because I am very susceptible to heat exhaustion and heat stress (something that would probably be much less of an issue were I less overweight, I agree—but not entirely.  My dad used to have this problem at boot camp in the 70s when he was still really thin, for instance.) I really kind of need to go my own pace.  I ended up getting locked into a schedule that was not at my pace, and it ended up being really difficult to keep up, because I did have to stop to cool down once or twice, and frankly, we had at least one day, possibly two, where we just had too many hard miles planned.  Nobody really much liked it, but I was one that had the hardest time with it.  Again, were I on my own, I not only wouldn't have over-planned, but I could have much more easily managed my pace and my timing.  This has never been an issue before for me on my own, but only when I'm trying to stick to someone else's pace in the face of a difficult trail.  Other than that, the social aspect of it wasn't bad, and in fact I often kind of enjoyed it.  But that said, we didn't get that much of it, because during the day we ended up stringing out into several groups moving at variable paces.  (I was always with the slowest group.)
• I ended up admitting defeat the last day.  I was so tired and sore after our longest day that I had no appetite for the last eight miles that we were to do on the last morning to get to the seaplane dock, so we hired a boat ferry to take us from the dock we were already at to the end.  My wife was even more defeated than I was and demoralized, so the two of us went back via boat—after waiting for several hours on the dock, which wasn't really all that unpleasant, to be honest.  So rather than the full 45 mile or so hike, we cut 7-8 miles off of the end.  Two long days in a row left me much more battered and bruised than I expected, but it was some of the younger guys that almost had worse injuries and soreness.  One guy in his late twenties, my friend's son-in-law, had an ankle swollen to twice its normal size.  My 17 year old son was limping on a gimpy knee.  It took several days for us to all be able to walk normally, and my son is still limping a bit (in some ways, so am I).  So yeah—I'm not the most aggressive hiker out there, but even the really thin, young and athletic people had a tough time with this itinerary.  It was way too aggressive.
• I really prefer hiking in the more wild national forests and wilderness areas than the more developed national parks.  Part of the reason for the overly aggressive itinerary was the need to hit certain campsites that are spaced as they are spaced.  Yeah; in a pinch, we could have just set up camp in the woods, but we weren't supposed to, and I don't really like that lack of flexibility.
• Also; eastern hiking just doesn't really appeal to me very much.  I like walking through the woods as much as the next guy, but when only two or three mediocre views are your entire payoff for nearly a week of almost fifty miles of hiking, that doesn't seem like a great experience to me.  I guess I'm just a western hiker at heart, and the more open spaces of real mountain meadows and deserts and badlands are what I love.
• My wife hated it.  She put on a good face most of the time, and didn't mind the hanging out at camp with our friends and our boys, but she didn't sleep well, hated walking with a pack on, was footsore and hot and sweaty all the time and hated that, she's convinced that she was "attacked" by a fox and that I was going to drop dead and die in the woods because my heat exhaustion got to the point at the end of the long day where I threw up.  At one point she said that it was like a nightmare that she couldn't wake up from, and while that may have been said a little bit in the extremity of demoralization, it does pretty much describe her take-away from the experience.  Even if it's a trip that I plan under better circumstances, I doubt I'll be able to talk her into ever going again.  On the other hand, my boys are up for some excursions in the mountains next summer, or the desert at spring break or whatever.  Of course, one of my boys will be leaving for his mission long before next summer comes along, so he won't be hiking with us anyway.  But meanwhile, maybe my older married son will be available to go in his place next summer, especially if we go hiking in the Wind Rivers, or go see the Tetons and Yellowstone, etc.

My biggest lessons learned are, therefore, twofold:  1) I really would do better if I were in better shape; I need to get serious about both losing some weight and developing more endurance, and 2) I really don't like aggressive death march type hiking anyway, though.  I want to relax, go out in the wilderness, and just enjoy being there, which means actually minimizing the backpacking, quite honestly.  I like backpacking because I like getting somewhere that I'm away from the roads, not because I like the backpacking for its own right.  My trip during spring break where I went hiking without backpacking and enjoyed it quite a bit was a big deal; I might well do much more of this kind of thing in the future.  After all, although I stayed in an official campsite at Colorado National Monument, there's no reason I couldn't have stayed in a hotel in Fruita or Grand Junction and done exactly the same thing that I did do except with restaurants, showers and sleeping in a bed at night.  Which means... maybe I'll get my wife to participate after all.

Having landed at Isle Royale National Park...

Windigo; our starting point for the hike

I don't actually know where this is, but here's the guys on the trail.  The last fellow with the blue camping pad is one of my sons.

Almost the full group; missing one person who's taking the picture

My boys on either side; my friend's son in the middle

Some of us.  I'm on the far left, my friend on the far right; our teenaged boys and his wife in the middle

My two sons looking at one of the few decent views on this hike.

On top of the Greenstone Ridge trail.  This is the long day.

The older of my two younger boys and one of my friends' older sons (who's about the same age and pretty good friends my oldest, married son, actually.)

My wife on the trail

Arrived at trail's end at Rock Harbor!  This picture is almost everyone except my friends' one son who ran off somewhere and couldn't be found for this picture.  He may have just been in the bathroom; I can't remember now.

On the other dock, waiting for the sea planes that will take us back to the mainland.