There are places where heaven just feels closer, and Ranch at Rock creek is one of them.
From the moment I arrived and opened my car door, I immediately started to breathe a different kind of air. Somehow the creek, pine trees, crisp wind, sage and thistle all blended together and gave me that perfect quintessential Montana scent.
For a few moments before walking into the Lobby, I just observed the trees swing with the wind, the birds chirping, horses galloping in the distance, rays of sun peaking through the leaves, and the river streaming past us. It suddenly felt like a perfectly orchestrated choreography, and I was happy to be a part of it.
The neighboring peaks surrounding the ranch make this the perfect spot for you to live your western dream with a side of luxury.
The ranch, which opened in 2010, is located in 6,600 acres in the heart of western Montana between Sapphire, John Long and Pintler Mountains. The ranch was such a success that shortly after it’s opening, it became a member of Relais & Chateaux as well as the Forbes Travel Guide in the same year.
While the price is enough to make you think twice about booking, it includes award wining cuisine and top notch activities. The ranch is comprised by a main lodge with 9 perfectly appointed guest rooms, 7 luxury homes, 10 luxury canvas cabins and 3 Conestoga wagons. Every accommodation has a very authentic style which is updated up every year without fail.
The perfect accommodations for a family are both Sweetgrass and Cutbow. Both have 2 connecting tents next to the creek, making you feel like you are in some sort of Lewis & Clark expedition, the only difference is that you have every luxury amenity you might need including a stand alone soaking tub, a wooden barrel hot tub as well as 4 indoor fire places and a fire pit next to the creek.
However, if you are looking for a romantic spot, Trapper cabin is the one. For guests looking for a less adventurous accommodation, Bear cabin is one of my absolute favorites for a large family or a group of friends that want to sleep in an actual wooden structure.
The ranch has a great way to add to your accommodation if you want even more adventure. If you are staying in a tent or a home, you can rent a Homesteader wagon to be parked outside your accommodation for a fun overnight adventure. The wagons are perfectly appointed with a king bed, bunk beds and a bar.
Before you arrive, the ranch plans a personalized itinerary for each party depending on your needs. Our itinerary was comprised by horseback riding, fly fishing, paint ball in the woods, archery, rimfire, sporting clays, mountain biking and sapphire mining. You can do as much or as little as you want, but because we had 4 kids our itinerary was action packed.
Flint Forest Rangers is the perfect spot if traveling with children. It’s a kids program where they have super friendly counselors doing activities like adopting a horse, obstacle courses, among other activities while parents engage in adult-only activities like long horseback rides or spa treatments.
Lastly and possibly my favorite part is the Silver Dollar Saloon. This saloon as as legit as it gets. It has billiards table, four-lane bowling alley, saddle bar seats and the best drinks in town.
The Ranch at Rock Creek is a place where you will probably book your next stay before you even check-out.
We meet the team at 6:00am at Alpine Ascents office in Seattle. The last check-list items were being tackled by our team guides, while the rest of the team if 8 sat in silence trying to wake up and wrap our head around what was in store for us for the following 3 days.
We got in the van and started heading to the 5th tallest mountain in the lower 48, at a staggering 14,400 feet above sea level.
While planning this trip in mid 2019, Covid-19 hit the world hard, shaking most of us to our core. With an estimated death toll of 6.5 million people around the world, the entire world stopped and hunkered down at home. After a few months of this, people started to venture outdoors and explore open spaces, away from the contagion.
The pandemic had been going on for a year at the time of our climb, and there was no end in sight, so extra precautions were required like face masks, smaller groups and carrying you individual dehydrated meals versus having hot meals prepared by the guides and gathering in the cook tent to have some social time.
After a 2.5 hour drive, we arrived to the base of the mountain, a spot called Paradise.
Paradise is nestled on the south slopes of the glacier-shrouded volcano at an elevation of 5,400 feet. This spot is among wildflower meadows, mixed with snowfields and groves fir trees; there are few locations within the entire national park system this stunning, hence the name.
We gathered our backpacks and divided between the 8 climbers the gear that we needed in high camp. This means that our already 40 lbs backpack became even heavier after the extra items were being distributed.
At approximately 9:00am, we began our hike at 5,400 feet of elevation towards the first camp, Camp Muir at an elevation of 10,188 feet.
Considering that many indoor activities were canceled until further notice due to the pandemic, it was very visible that more people were taking into outdoor activities like mountaineering. Because of it, our guide pointed out that the mountain was busier than normal and our team was slowed down initially. I have to say that in a way it made me feel safer to know I was not the only crazy person attempting such a challenge.
In the beginning of the hike we saw hundreds of visitors roaming the skirt of the mountain, but as we started gaining more elevation the hikers started becoming less and less. We passed the tree line fairly quickly and got into the foot of the glacier which made my heart beat faster. We then took a break to put on our crampons, take the ice ax out, and attach ourselves to the line in groups of 3 due to the beginning of crevasse territory.
At about the 6 hour mark, I started to feel the very familiar feeling, “Why am I here? Why am I doing this? I am always so tired as it is, the only thing I really need is a hotel room and to sleep for a week straight”. Then a sense of peace took over me when we started hiking again and all I could focus was on each step, each breath, each sound of my boots compacting the snow; it was a walking meditation! And there it was, my first lesson: When life becomes overwhelming, place your focus in the present moment. Magnify the joy in the simple things like a snowflake or a leaf. After a few moments, I looked up and I could see the towering mountain in front of me, and it was calling me by my name. It was breathtaking!
As we reached the respite of Camp Muir, the view of the Cowlitz Glacier, the towering Gibraltar Rock, Cathedral Rock, and Little Tahoma (which seems dwarfed by Mount Rainier), were worth every second. To the right of the camp, a small tent city populated the area of climbers headed to the summit the following day.
After arriving to Camp Muir we all collapsed and took a long deserved break. We were then ushered to our wooden shelter with wooden planks (only a few guiding companies have access to it) where we all set up our sleeping bags right next to each other like sardines. We wanted to make sure we were protected against the cold as best as we could. I was so relieved to know I was going to be protected from the stormy night with more than a nylon tent between me and the outside world. It was not nylon anymore, but a piece of wood. I felt like I was moving up in life.
At around 5:00pm we heated up our dehydrated meals with hot water, made ourselves a blistering hot tea and got inside our sleeping bags before the night got too cold. Maintaining body heat was going to be our priority from this that point forward.
John and Carol on my right, and Rachel and Steve on my left, I was happy with my bunkmates since we all had an unspoken pact of helping each other if anything went aerie. That feeling is magnified when you are in a place that is unfamiliar and dangerous. I often thought this was the reason why people in combat develop such a brotherhood. You have each others back in the moments that matter the most.
The night was in the single digits, the air was crisp and the stars where shining brighter than I ever remembered seeing them, in particular the North Star, like it was trying to act as a lighthouse to guide us to our destination.
When I was about to turn off my head lamp off to call it a night, the zipper on my sleeping bag broke, and naturally I had a moment of panic. I asked John for help by pointing to my zipper because of my inability to talk due to fear of what will happen next. In the few moments after, the thought of the possibility of freezing that evening AND (a big and) if I made it to the next morning alive, the thought of having to turn back the following morning was too paralyzing. In the mountains, if you have the smallest problem with your gear, it might mean costing you the summit, if not your life.
John was able to fix it after fiddling with it for a few minutes, which to me seemed like hours. After crisis was averted, we closed our eyes, but none of the 8 climbers got more than 2 hours of sleep between the altitude, cold and excitement.
We woke up to a hot cup of really strong coffee, while assessing the weather for the day ahead. The sun was shining and it seemed like the perfect summer day to make it to high camp. Before we moved up, we had a full day of snow school.
After breakfast, we met at a snowy and icy hill to practice ice climbing, crevasse rescue, rest steps, pressure breathing, temperature management, hydration, self-arrest, avalanche transceivers, rope techniques and mountain psychology. After a few hours of working on winter alpine techniques, we had a quick lunch and started the 3 hour ascent to Ingraham Flats, also known as high camp. High camp is a camp set up by Alpine Ascents and RMI exclusively for their clients, this gives them a better chance to make it to the summit by dividing the last stretch in two days and avoiding burn out.
The evening of day 2, September 4th, 2021 we made it to high camp and took a well deserved rest while overlooking the prominent sub-peak of Mt Rainier, Little Tahoma. That evening we gathered around the tents and we got assigned a tent for each of us. We did not have to share one that night, which I was glad about, but nervous I would get too cold on my own. In the mountains is preferable to share a tent to keep your body temperature from dropping.
After dinner our guides gave us the disappointing news that the crevasse connecting the Ingraham Glacier to the Disappointment Cleaver (also known as DC) was widening by the minute and even 3 laters tied to one another wasn’t sufficient to cross the gigantic crevasse. My peripheral view shrunk and zoomed into the words he was speaking as the news was being delivered to me.
A flashback of all the sacrifices I made to be there were all rushing through my brain in slow motion. Orchestrating the logistics of leaving my 4 kids, convincing my husband that this was a good idea, my arduous training, my mental preparation and my expectation of what the climb was going to look like came crushing down like a 100 foot wave. I retreated to an area full of penitentes (an odd formation in high altitude glaciers in very dry air), where I found some privacy to let my frustration out. Lesson number two was that everyone in my team had probably sacrificed more than I did to be here and were much more composed than I was. One man in particular taught me so much grace with the way he dealt with the disappointment after using most of his salary to pay for his trip at the age of 60+. He didn’t say much, but the way he handled himself taught me a valuable lesson.
Once I gathered myself, I went back to the team and we finished that day by ice climbing around high camp, while learning new techniques, do it with more grace and more agility.
Rainier taught me more about myself that I cared to learn then. I was there to bag the summit and came down with much more. Disappointment is a very hard concept to grasp, and when something is out of your control it is even harder to come to grips with it, until it is forced upon you and your ego deflates like a balloon with lessons of humility and surrender.
Life rarely happens as you plan it, and it is in the twists and turns of life that reveal the beauty of what a full bloom looks like.
Climbing a mountain has become the metaphor I now live by and trying to control a mountain is like trying to control life. It is something uncontrollable and we must master the action of hard work while surrendering to outcomes out of our control.
It was 3:00am as I tossed and turned inside my sleeping bag wondering if I had made the right choice. My body was on overdrive trying to heat my wet long underwear from the previous night and my body was starting to feel depleted and unable to warm up as my core temperature dropped. A feeling you don’t want when you are 9,000 feet high on the day of the summit push.
Six months prior I had gathered a group of 8 friends that were in the top of their game physically to take on a small but mighty challenge, climb Mt Baker in Washington State. I hired Alpine Ascents, a top alpine company world wide, based in Seattle, to guide us to the summit.
The roster was Ashley Kronemeyer, Regina Bueno Ros, Stacey Duran, Kalene McGraner, Jennifer Jameson, Cody Sanchez and Shaina Shiwarski. There was a 9th person on our team, Jeff Wrobel, who probably thought he picked the wrong weekend to climb when he saw us arrive laughing, cracking jokes and being probably being obnoxious.
Mt. Baker also known as Koma Kulshan, located in the Cascade Range, is 10,786 feet high, which is medium size, but still technically challenging due to the ice, snow and crevasses. It has been rated (together with Rainier) as the best training ground for Himalayas. After MountRainier, Mount Baker has the heaviest glacier cover of the Cascade Range volcanoes. I had a feeling in my heart that this mountain was going to be the one that made me fall in love with mountaineering, and it succeeded.
For 5 years I had been pregnant for almost the entire time, having one baby after the other. I had finally finished having 4 children: Isabella 4, Nicolas 3, Allegra 1 and Michael 3 months, when I went to get an annual physical, and my dear doctor asked me what my hobbies were… I stood in silence, while my eyes swelled up with tears and I embarrassingly said at the moment none. I had no time, no energy and no drive. That is when the mountaineering dream began.
I had been suffering from postpartum depression and anxiety for about 5 years on and off, which was a mix of back-to-back pregnancies and a lack of self-care. All the adventurous activities that gave me the rush and the adrenaline, suddenly came to a halt when my first, Isabella, was born.
Having 4 kids was what I always wanted; In the beginning it was sweet, slow, soothing and tender. A few years in, it became fun, hectic and overwhelming. Michael, my husband, and I were in full throttle, holding on for dear life counting 4 heads over and over, wherever we went.
I look down at my steps, one after the other. The hill is getting steep and I am out of breath. My pack seems heavier and heavier, like someone is placing rock after rock without me noticing. The sun is shining bright between the trees in the Summer Trail and sweat is starting to come down my chest and back. I go back to my thoughts and close my eyes. I feel the hot ray of sun in my face and immediately brings me back to Cabo.
I met Michael during a trip to Cabo, where I was hosting a party and he was attending a wedding of one of his best friends. After we met, he took me to the beach and we talked for hours until the sun peaked through the horizon and he had to rush to the airport to catch his flight back to Buenos Aires. I felt a light knot on my stomach as I knew I had to say goodbye to the man I wanted to marry, not knowing if I was ever going to see him again.
My mind took me further back down memory lane in order to not to think of the misery I was going through in this particularly steep and icy couloir.
During my college years in Monterrey I would rock climb in la Huasteca, the most magnificent mountains in northern Mexico. Gigantic vertical limestone spikes that cut the landscape like knifes. Was that the beginning of this itch for adventure?
I few years passed, I got engaged and moved to Boston. I had a job that didn’t fulfill me so I decided to get my pilots license for a piper warrior. Something I had always wanted to do since I saw a female pilot welcome us into the aircraft when I was a child.
I looked up at the sky and thought of my Guita, my grandmother. Could she see me? Was she watching over me? She had left me a small inheritance when she passed away and I quickly put it all towards pilot school. Maybe she was the reason I had the adventure itch. She was known as a woman too modern for her times taking on hobbies that usually were solely reserved for men.
I then got married and adventure was put in the back burner. When Dallas became home, I started searching for hikes in the city, and found a hiking trail on google called the Katy Trail. I was ecstatic since everyone I had met in the big D raved about this particular trail. I got there and was a little puzzled by the location at first. I got out of my car only to find it was a concrete trail with no elevation. That afternoon I found out there were no mountains within an 8 hour drive.
Since Dallas and adventure could never be put in the same sentence, I did the next most adventurous thing, started a travel business and had 4 kids.
It’s 4:00am, wake up call! Our head guide, Eric Murphy, from Alpine Ascents yells from his single tent in Bakers base camp. I woke up on a jolt from my dream about the reason why I was in the mountain that day. I quickly touched the back of my long underwear: they were dry! With one hour sleep I somehow had to muster energy for a 12 hour climb.
The hike had begun the day before, June 7th, 2021 with Eric as our head guide. He was slim, tall and very direct. He welcomed us with: “ I say what I mean, and I mean what I say, I do not repeat myself”. He had just descended Everest for the 6th time, making that year his 4th summit. The other 2 guides were incredibly well trained and extremely professionals. I was so happy with the decision of going with Alpine Ascents.
We drove separately and met the team at the trail head, Schreiber’s Meadow, did a long gear check and started the hike at 3,400ft. It started in an old growth forest, quickly passed the tree line and started getting into deep powder.
The hiking season was just starting and we were the first team out, so the trails were heavily snowed, which made the 6-hour hike into a strenuous 8-hour hike, making our 40 lbs packs feel like 100 lbs by the end of the hike.
Mid way up, we all needed to use the bathroom, but quickly realized there was no way to find any privacy. We were all a little confused and realized that if we needed to use the bathroom, you had to pull your pants down and do your business while the group was next to you looking the other way. When I asked one of the guides if there was a more private way of going to the bathroom he just answered; “Trust me, you are not the first person I will ever see pee”. The terrain was dangerous so we could not venture out. I was shocked, we all had to swallow our modesty and pee awkwardly looking down while the guides looked away.
Arriving to base camp, also known as Sandy Camp, we had a few minutes of rest time while we put our belonging in our tents. Once settled, Eric gave us an introduction on what we were going to be doing the rest of the day, snow School!
Snow School is an afternoon of basic snow training: Glacier travel, self-arrest, crampon technique, ice axe usage, anchors, and proper rope techniques including knots. After few hours of learning the basics it was time for dinner. We were all whipped!
The food was freeze-dried because of COVID-19 protocols. They could not prepare fresh food to mitigate transmission, so we each carried our food. My mac-and-cheese did not disintegrate with the boiling water, so I had to eat the entire my soupy dinner half cooked. I thought about skipping dinner, but in the mountains, skipping a meal might mean costing you the summit. Food is fuel, and it is imperative to eat about 500 calories every hour and 2,000 calories at dinner to have your body perform for you. Lesson learned, your body is truly a machine that needs to be fueled with the best quality food in order to stay on track.
On June 8th, our second day, it was a freezing morning dipping into single digits. The weather had not cooperated the night before and we got hounded by a storm, which meant knee high snow the entire way up.
After waking up at 4:00am and realizing I had not slept more than hour, I was at the lowest point mentally of that entire climb. I was feeling anxious and cold. I was thinking to myself “What did I get myself into? I just want to be home in my bed with my babies and husband. This is so hard and out of my comfort zone. Maybe there is something wrong with me for thinking this will bring me joy”.
While getting our gear on inside the tents, they passed boiling water around each tent for our coffee and oatmeal, a few minutes after I started to come alive and feel like maybe I could tackle the summit after all.
At 5:00am we were all assembled in teams of 4 and got hooked on the rope. We were going to be navigating crevasses in the glacier for the next 12 hours, so it was imperative to be on top of our game with our crampons, ice axe and rope management to avoid any accidents.
At 5:30am we were off for the summit bid. It was dark and the temperature marked 12 degrees Fahrenheit. The clouds that covered the mountain all night did not seem to dissipate, in fact, we started getting heavier winds as the sun came out.
Eric, Jay and Brandon, our guides, assembled and checked the InReach GPS because visibility was extremely low at 7,000ft. After a few minutes of looking for the best route, we climbed to the top of the Easton Moraine were we got onto to Easton Glacier. From there, we ascended to the crater rim at 9,800 feet. Our break here was a smelly one since the stratovolcano was steaming from the Sherman Crater of Mt. Baker.
A team member called it quits here, it was starting to get very steep, cold and windy. One of the three guides and the team member turned around, and the rest kept climbing the Roman Wall, an ice wall that has a 45/50 degree angle. Since technical climbing has always been the most exciting part for me, this was the part I enjoyed the most.
After about an hour of navigating the wall, we made it to the summit plateau at just over 10,500 ft. It is the size of a football field, and just when we all thought we had made it to the top, our guide pointed to the real summit a few hundred feet away. Those false summits are something I have grown to dislike a lot.
Right before walking towards the summit, we took one last break to refuel. The clouds opened up and we could not believe our luck, we were actually going to be able to see the view from the summit. A few minutes after we started walking together with tears of joy and exhaustion, a black ominous cloud appeared from behind the summit and as we were crawling to the top. We stepped on the summit, 10,781 feet of hard work, determination and endurance and willpower. My doubts were as clear as a bluebird day, this was my passion. Achieving goals you never thought possible.
A few second later an ice storm hit us so hard we had to cut our summit victory short and run down to our backpacks, hook ourselves to the line and start descending as fast and safe as we could. The wind was so strong we could barely stay upright, but about 20 minutes in we were able to get shelter from the storm on the side of the mountain.
It took us about 12 hours to reach the summit and back to camp that day, 8 going up and 4 coming down. We arrived around 5:00pm completely depleted and our faces burnt from the storm. We all crashed for a few hours before our guides came with boiling water to cook our freeze-dried food for the night. This time I got my dinner preparation right!
We had an assigned bathroom about one hundred feet away from camp. However, I was so tired that I just peed in a bottle and went right to sleep.
Pushing my body and mind to such lengths was so foreign to me growing up. I was never very athletic nor coordinated. I was always too tall and lanky for most sports, neither did I have any interest in pushing myself. I loved living in the comfort zone.
It was only after having 4 children and being pushed to so many breaking points that I realized I could push myself to such extremes and succeed. I had not slept properly in 6 years, had babies with no epidural, suffered from postpartum depression, severe anxiety, parents separation, miscarriage, almost loosing my 3 month old daughter, and my husband’s diagnose of Type 1 Diabetes. Yet I had found a way to come out on the other side with immense drive, new lessons and a new passion. I was bent into every direction, but somehow, I did not break. If anything, my roots got tougher, my roots got deeper, my roots got stronger.
In the words of my favorite author Victor Frankl: “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” ― Victor Frankl
