Superhero activities are available to all of us. Not flight or X-ray vision like the movies, but real accomplishments completed within our own risk tolerance and physical abilities. These can be grounded tasks like the first walk to the mailbox after knee surgery or your first two-mile hike to completing your goal of running a marathon or something Himalayan. The key is pushing yourself and feeling good about the outcome.
After our family summit of Mt Fuji, I got the bug to climb some higher destinations. The first was Mt. Kilimanjaro. I chose that because it is one of the Seven Summits, the highest point on each continent. Kili is also one of the highest places a human can go without techincal climbing skills. It is serious altitude and perhaps the only one of the seven I could manage in my mid-fifties.
Nate, my #1 son, joined me in Africa. I chose the most difficult route, the Western Breach. This image is Nate reaching the top of the Breach after completing several rock scrambling sections. We knew the summit (19,340 ft.) was only an hour away the next morning after camping at 18,888 ft. Our joy is reflected in the pose he struck for the photograph, the hard part was over. Little did we know that sleep would be impossible for the Cheeseheads at that altitude. We talked all night about the climb and the food we’d eat back in Wisco. Attempts at sleep ended by being startled awake by suffocation.
Chris, our #2, copped the pose prematurely. This was enthusiasm for our first Colorado 14er, Mt. Sneffels. Colorado has Fifty-eight mountains above 14,000 ft.
The ridgeline above Chris was our route. The second half of the route was fairly straight forward, but getting there was a class three scramble (Using hands and feet). I had been on easier ground at Mountaineering School and used ropes which is class four. Even now, ten years later, pangs of dread from the what ifs will percolate when I replay our adventure.
In each case, the challenges were completed and the relationships with my sons only became stronger. And why not? They’re both superheroes, at least they look like one in the pictures.
The Adventures of Spaghetti Eddie 