Okay, for those of you who have been to Yellowstone Bible Camp, you know that climbing T-Shirt mountain is a big deal. I've thought that Eli could have climbed it for a couple years now, but he is related to me and didn't really want to because he thought it would be too hard. This year he decided that he wanted to try it and I was very happy to guide him to the top!
We originally were going to go with a group with one of his friends that is a few years older than him, but they ended up going on a different hike so it ended up being just Eli and myself which was perfect for me. It really brought back memories of a few years back when my dad and I climbed it with just the two of us when he was 80 years old. Eli made the comment that maybe someday he could climb it with his son and that made me smile, he also commented that maybe he could climb up and throw my ashes off the top when I died and that made me smile too.
I like to go pretty much straight up the mountain climbing on the large shale rocks right from the start. The hardest part of the entire climb was about the first 30 feet getting from the road to the bigger rocks where you have to climb up some loose dirt and Eli had a bit of a hard time keeping from sliding back down. We focused on getting his footing correct and leaning into the mountain so that if he did fall, he didn't fall very far.
Here he getting started going up the large shale rocks.
We made pretty good progress, although he seemed to want to stop and drink a lot, but we actually made it to the top in just over 2 hours which really wasn't too bad at all. We tried out a new route for me and it is the best one I've ever been up, maybe next year I'll try to break the 1 hour mark again and if I do I will go up this route for sure.
He was very focused on getting his name on the T-Shirt and was surprised when there was actually multiple T Shirts. Another group had gone up just before us and we caught them at the top and Eli got to put his name on the T Shirt that they brought up. He was pretty pumped although it is hard to tell in the picture.
If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can see the little white dots on the right edge of the picture are actually travel trailers parked down at camp. You can see the barn to the left of them if you know what you are looking at. He thought it was pretty neat looking down at camp from that high up.
After a short break on top he was ready to head down. We had all discussed the slides that you go down and I guess he expected something closer to the slides you would see on a playground because he was disappointed in the dirt/rock slides that we ended up going down. Here he is getting ready to go down one.
He seemed to have quite a bit of fun going down. We had several talks about leaning back into the mountain and staying under control and he did for the most part. We had one spot where he ended up getting himself sideways and he started rolling, but thankfully I was only a few feet below him and was able to get him stopped quickly before he hurt himself. I took a short video clip and I'll try to get it uploaded and inserted too.
We ended up going off to the side a little farther than normal to keep from getting pelted from rocks that the group that we had caught up to at the top, but we made it down pretty uneventfully. Eli wanted to pose for a photo on another spot with the shale rock.
It really is a pretty steep and difficult climb and I've tried to take adults up and down before that ended up giving up so I'm pretty proud that he made it and did so well. He seemed to actually enjoy himself and we had some pretty good father son bonding time in my opinion.
I guess that's it. Eli's first trip up T-Shirt officially documented. He asked me how many times I had climbed T-Shirt and I really don't have even a very good guess. I think I've been to Yellowstone Bible Camp somewhere around 30 times and there have been some times when I didn't climb T-Shirt that week and there have been some times when I climbed it multiple times during a week. I told him I thought somewhere around 25 to 30 times and that's about as good of a guess as I can make. Hopefully he has many more times up and down the mountain as well. Maybe he will be helping me go up when I'm 80! I think that would be awesome for both of us.
That's it for now. Nathan
We originally were going to go with a group with one of his friends that is a few years older than him, but they ended up going on a different hike so it ended up being just Eli and myself which was perfect for me. It really brought back memories of a few years back when my dad and I climbed it with just the two of us when he was 80 years old. Eli made the comment that maybe someday he could climb it with his son and that made me smile, he also commented that maybe he could climb up and throw my ashes off the top when I died and that made me smile too.
I like to go pretty much straight up the mountain climbing on the large shale rocks right from the start. The hardest part of the entire climb was about the first 30 feet getting from the road to the bigger rocks where you have to climb up some loose dirt and Eli had a bit of a hard time keeping from sliding back down. We focused on getting his footing correct and leaning into the mountain so that if he did fall, he didn't fall very far.
Here he getting started going up the large shale rocks.
We made pretty good progress, although he seemed to want to stop and drink a lot, but we actually made it to the top in just over 2 hours which really wasn't too bad at all. We tried out a new route for me and it is the best one I've ever been up, maybe next year I'll try to break the 1 hour mark again and if I do I will go up this route for sure.
He was very focused on getting his name on the T-Shirt and was surprised when there was actually multiple T Shirts. Another group had gone up just before us and we caught them at the top and Eli got to put his name on the T Shirt that they brought up. He was pretty pumped although it is hard to tell in the picture.
If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can see the little white dots on the right edge of the picture are actually travel trailers parked down at camp. You can see the barn to the left of them if you know what you are looking at. He thought it was pretty neat looking down at camp from that high up.
After a short break on top he was ready to head down. We had all discussed the slides that you go down and I guess he expected something closer to the slides you would see on a playground because he was disappointed in the dirt/rock slides that we ended up going down. Here he is getting ready to go down one.
We ended up going off to the side a little farther than normal to keep from getting pelted from rocks that the group that we had caught up to at the top, but we made it down pretty uneventfully. Eli wanted to pose for a photo on another spot with the shale rock.
It really is a pretty steep and difficult climb and I've tried to take adults up and down before that ended up giving up so I'm pretty proud that he made it and did so well. He seemed to actually enjoy himself and we had some pretty good father son bonding time in my opinion.
I guess that's it. Eli's first trip up T-Shirt officially documented. He asked me how many times I had climbed T-Shirt and I really don't have even a very good guess. I think I've been to Yellowstone Bible Camp somewhere around 30 times and there have been some times when I didn't climb T-Shirt that week and there have been some times when I climbed it multiple times during a week. I told him I thought somewhere around 25 to 30 times and that's about as good of a guess as I can make. Hopefully he has many more times up and down the mountain as well. Maybe he will be helping me go up when I'm 80! I think that would be awesome for both of us.
That's it for now. Nathan
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