Fred Leavitt: High Adventure, day 4

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Friday we all got up, enjoyed another amazing breakfast, and then broke camp and prepared to go hiking. We were blessed with a miracle this day.

A couple of weeks ago we started look at the weather forcasts for the week of high adventure. Rain was forecasted for most of the week and it was only getting worse on Friday and Saturday, the days we would be hiking.

We all prayed that the weather would be moderated so that we could have the experience we were all hoping for. As the week approached, the forcast got worse. Now they were talking about heavy rains on Friday. We had faith and while I’m sure we all were making backup plans in our minds, we headed up the mountain as planned.

As we started our week we were glad to see that they were now forcasting great weather early in the week, but the forcast for Friday got even worse. They were now forcasting heavy rains, thunder, lightning and even hail. By Thursday it was looking better but we still had that forcast of heavy rain, thunder, lightning and hail for Friday afternoon right when we planned to start hiking.

Friday morning I checked the radar maps and things suddenly looked more optimistic. While it was going to start raining at Big Bear Lake, it looked like the trail we were going to be hiking might only catch a little bit of rain around 3:00 pm. We packed our lunches and headed to a conservation center to eat lunch and decide what to do. On our ten minute drive to the conservations center, it started to rain and by the time we got there it was coming down in buckets. Lots of thunder and lightning and even reports of hail although I didn’t see any hail myself. This is what the Priests & Teachers saw from San Gorgonio. That rain cloud is right on top of Big Bear Lake.

As we were finishing up lunch, I pointed out that it looked like the trail may have missed the rain entirely and our trail could be completely dry. We decided to head to the trailhead and take our chances. As we neared the trail head, the rain stopped and we never saw another drop of rain.

The hike was amazing. We drove to the trail head and Kyle drove the trailer down the road as far as he could and then everyone put on their backpacks.

The trail was all down hill and even though we were only planning on hiking 1.5 miles everyone was nervous. They were even more nervous when they realized how heavy the packs really are. Thirty pounds doesn’t sound like much until it is on your back.

The hike was perfect because none of these kids (and several of the leaders) were new to backpacking and just putting on the pack and walking made them feel like they had achieved something significant. Walking a mile with the pack felt challenging to them but as soon as we got to the campsite they were so relieved and pleasantly surprised by how quick it went.

We were still a little nervous that we might get rain because it was 3:00 and according to the radar map the rain would come closest to us at 3:30, so we had everyone set up camp right away just in case. Girls are so different than boys. I never saw a boy’s tent with a pathway to the door.

The rain missed us entirely so everyone spread out and explored the area.

We went for a short hike, had a devotional and then everyone went to bed. That second picture is our devotional. THis is one of our devotionals.