Bee Hive

We actually hadn’t pre-meditated this hike, or planned ahead for it like we usually do for our big adventurous hikes. This one just kinda snuck up on us and we couldn’t have been more pleased with the results! It’s actually a very unassuming trail on paper, being only 1.6 miles round trip and less than 500 feet of elevation climb. Sounds like no big deal, we’ve done much more treacherous trails before! But when we got out of our vehicle in the parking lot of Sand Beach and looked up at the summit, well....ok, since I’m writing this I’ll go ahead and admit....Daddy became a big ole fashioned CHICKEN! We’ve done the Grand Canyon, Angels’s Landing, and many other trails that included switchbacks, dangerous heights, bears, and even sheer cliff faces that could take your life, but none of those trails jutted out of the earth so sharply and none of those trails literally traversed a cliff face straight up into the sky, including sections of ladders and metal grips that took personal skill and grip strength, not to mention personal grit to complete. The more we heard from passers by about the trail, the more scared I got and the more excited Rebecca and the kids became. Don’t get me wrong, I knew I could do it myself, it’s just the loss of control factor that was freaking me out a bit. The fact that no amount of soothing words or advice from me would be enough to get my kids through this one. Their lives literally rested in their own hands. They would have to take their own careful steps around the narrow ledges and hold tight to the metal rungs of the cliff face ladders. Daddy could do nothing but follow and watch. For what it’s worth, if you’ve seen any of our other adventures, you know these kids are seasoned hikers. They’ve earned their stripes. They are not rookies who will make stupid mistakes and they are confident in their hiking/climbing skills after 6 years of tackling some of America’s biggest and baddest challenges. They were eager to summit this lump of rock and get back to the beach...Daddy was the only one concerned.

Needless to say, it was a freakin amazing hike and we’d ALL love to do it again, many times over...HIGHLY recommend that everyone do this hike. Unless you are scared of heights or not sure footed. We did have to pass one Father-Daughter pair where the daughter was paralyzed with fear and locked onto a juniper tree on the cliff’s edge...it was a long day for her.

My only regret is that I feel like I rushed the family through it and we didn’t capture enough pictures. Especially of Mama, she was the one taking the only pics we have. We’ll definitely have to do this one again and enjoy the ride a little bit more, now that we know we can do it safely.