Super Kids

ISABELLA

When you’ve hiked to over 13,000 feet, you’re tired. You’ve completed grueling hours of constant movement. Your feet, legs, back … even your lungs are sore. And the weather has changed at least three times—always teasing with ominous-looking clouds. Now, factor in that you’re barely taller than your hiking sticks.

Meet 5-year-old Isabella Leverone of Firestone. Last summer, she came just shy of summiting her first fourteener: Mt. Sherman. “If I didn’t try, then that wouldn’t be good,” she says, adding with utmost enthusiasm, “This year, I might even get to the top.”

But let’s rewind.

As early as two, Isabella was walking over a mile, ready to explore the world around her. Today, that same energy is still palpable, even when she sits still (which isn’t very often). Bobbing her pigtails around, her hiking sticks become her own version of pogo sticks, as she props herself onto them and jumps high into the air.

These jumping skills spring from the tricks she spends much of her time refining on her trampoline. “I can do on-offs,” she boasts, “where you jump on the trampoline and then sit back on the floor of it and then jump back onto your feet.” I follow her into the backyard to watch her show off her pikes, tucks, headstands, and back flips—she calls out each trick to me as she does them—that she’s obviously mastered from hours of practice. After the initial round of tricks, she sits down to unzip her pants into shorts—“I need to cool off,” she laughs. Then it’s time for the grand finale, for which she’s saved her favorite trick on the tramp: popcorn. To pull off popcorn, Isabella jumps high a few times until she’s gained enough air to tuck her knees up to her chin mid jump, wrapping her arms around them. Like a ball, she bounces back down and all around, giggling the whole way.

Though she’s an accomplished trampoline jumper, let it be made clear that Isabella’s main activities of choice are hiking and camping.

During summer, Isabella and her family load their gear up and head all over Colorado on hikes and camping trips. With her walking sticks in tow, she puts on her fuchsia-colored Camelbak and zip-off pants—“Daddy has the same ones”—and sets off on trails in Rocky Mountain National Park, Loveland Pass and Heil Ranch outside of Longmont. “When I go hiking I collect stuff like rocks and pinecones, even a jar of sand,” she tells me. They’re all souvenirs from her adventures that she keeps in a plastic Scooby-Doo bucket next to her bed. Taking the different mementos out, she can name nearly all of the places that each item came from. “Bear Mountain,” she recalls as she holds up an otherwise ordinary rock, “I loved it because it was awesome.” For her, these pieces of nature represent a specific day and story.

While the hikes she goes on require a lot of stamina, Isabella doesn’t mind getting up early or putting in long hours. One of her favorite places that her love of the outdoors has taken her, is the Great Sand Dunes (or, as she calls them, Sand Dudes), in southern Colorado. She recalls how hot the sand was there—melting the skin off their feet—and the green sled that her dad brought along to slide down the mountains of sand on. But when you get right down to it, Isabella’s fascination for hiking and camping is quite simple. “I like being outside, I feel healthy,” she plainly states, “And I like s’mores!”