I was that tough once...

Here are links to my first two podcasts! Podcast1 and Podcast2 P.S. It takes a few minutes to download each, and some computers won't notify you while this is happening. Go figure.

On Saturday my 14-year-old daughter Sarah and I went on what was supposed to be a 14-mile hike high into the wilderness of Rocky Mountain National Park to the most remote, hidden and seldom-visited lakes at the base of the northernmost 14,000 mountain in the entire Rocky Mountains, Longs Peak.

Sarah wanted to take pictures for her new blog, her My Space, and for this blog (I'm sure I'll use at least one, posted when she returns from her train trip to Illinois on Saturday).

As a parent, you're looking for such teachable moments, or signs of enthusiasm and passion, so you're all over them like a cheap suit.

We wanted to be at the highest lakes as close to the Magic Hour (the hour before sunset) as possible, so we left Boulder at 9:20 am, ate a big breakfast an hour later at the entrance to the Park, drove around trying to find a parking space (good thing we didn't take the shuttle - I had a premonition about this) near the trailhead, finally found one a half-mile away, packed up and left the car around noon.

Sarah had been, well, a teenager so when she suddenly went from sullen to chatty (like most teenagers, she doesn't have a dial but a toggle switch) we got lost in our conversation and lost on the trail. Like an idiot I had been too arrogant to even glance at a map and we walked almost two a half miles down the wrong trail right from the trailhead.

I finally realized my mistake and we backtracked and by the time we got to the trailhead that should have been the start of the hike, we'd already gone five miles.

Then miraculously I DID THE SAME THING AGAIN on another trail and this time we went at least a mile out of our way (fortunately to gorgeous Loch Lake where Sarah got some stunning photos while trout almost nipped at our toes). I asked Sarah if she wanted to continue to another lake and she said she wanted to go to our original destination and so we backtracked once again.

Along the way we met a group of climbers including one from Austria, and when we talked about ski racing I told him that I had raised Sarah to see if she could Alpine ski like an Austrian, Nordic ski like a Norwegian, speed skate like a Dutch person, play ice hockey like a Canadian, hike like a Nepali and run like a Kenyan.

I've mentioned that I'm a PSP and want to start a 12-step program for PSPs, or Psycho Sports Parents. "Hi, my name is Richard, and I'm a Psycho Sports Parent." I know at least 30 parents who I could get to form a circle and I'm sure I could get them each to agree that, "Yes, Richard, you are a Psycho Sports Parent."

So the climber and especially Sarah could see I was bragging obnoxiously and I vowed to never do this again. . .until now. Actually Sarah's been way above the average participant or even competitor relative to those from each of those countries, and I could've added short track ice speed skate like a Korean and in-line speed skate like an Italian (although Americans are as good at these last two).

After this little unpleasantness when we finally got to the junction to begin up the correct trail, we'd already hiked nine miles but we were only two miles from the trailhead.

It was a near-record hot day in Boulder and in the Park, so I soaked my t-shirt and hat in creeks and lakes (we were never more than 200 yards from water the entire day)and put them on dripping wet to keep me cool on our ascents. Hikers coming the other direction would stare at me and I'd apologize for sweating so profusely.

Finally we ascended beyond any continuous trails and Sarah showed her amazing routefinding ability through a fairyland of swamps, bogs, meadows, cliffs, creeks, snowfields, waterfalls, ponds and finally the lake.

We got to the lake right at the Magic Hour and Sarah took pictures. Just as I'd predicted the lake was still a quarter covered with ice because of the mountains and cliffs that surround it on all three sides up to 2200 vertical feet above it.

We waded in the obviously ice-cold lake, dried all our wet clothes and shoes (Sarah's were wet from falling in one of dozens of creek crossings, mine were wet from constantly soaking my shirt and hat), snacked and drank our last water.

Just like the first time we visited this lake in September (it was half iced over then) when Sarah had just turned 11, we had the lake and the area all to ourselves. On that previous trip we didn't notice anyone within a half-dozen miles of us in any direction, including the seven-mile hike back out.

Sarah wanted to explore the other high lake up there, so we traversed across what was probably a glacier 150 years ago when the Little Ice Age ended (it began around 1350), and was quite possibly either a glacier or permanent snowfield in 1971 when I started climbing glaciers (while there's been an overall warming trend for the last century or more, the period from 1940 into the Seventies cooled during the overall warming trend).

I didn't remember the snowfield that September (although new snow had fallen and stayed in such shady spots) so it's probably just one of thousands of glaciers and permanent snowfields worldwide that are no longer permanent through the summer, or that have disappeared until the next cooling trend, which could be thousands or even tens of thousands of years away - the most likely return of cooling will come as a result of nuclear winter or the die-off of the species that has emitted levels of carbon dioxide that the planet hasn't seen for most of a million years or more.

The other lake was even more shaded and thus was almost half-covered in ice all the way around the lake (usually the sunnier side of the lake becomes water first - I'd never seen this before) where the water was shallower and thus froze more quickly and completely.

We desperately tried to call Sarah's mom and Patti to tell them that we'd be home quite late and Sarah's cell phone played with us, taunting us by claiming to get service and then refusing to put through the call. We tried texting messages home, but nothing worked.

We traversed and descended the glacier, even skiing a little on our running shoes (fortunately trail running shoes we'd bought from our friend Mark Plattjes)and then Sarah did an amazing job of routefinding in encroaching darkness over quite challenging terrain.

We sat to drink water a camping climber who had plenty of water gave us, but other than that we didn't sit once in almost eight miles of descending in complete darkness (fortunately I had a good headlamp and flashlights and I'd just put new batteries in each of them).

Starting at noon, all in all we hiked 21 and a half miles, at least five miles going cross-country high above timberline and another six miles in complete darkness.

We got home at 1:30 in the morning, and six hours later Sarah ran five miles with her high school cross-country team.

I was that tough once, but only in a dream.