I slept fine… Not well,  but fine. Creepy nightmares stalked me, as often happens on summit morning, no doubt a sign of deep stress and anxiety working its way through my system. The upper mountain would go, but how much would it hurt getting there and back? Would I have the stamina to make it out and back in a reasonable time, or would we epic? These were the unanswerable questions I wrestled with. Time will tell. Indeed, I woke a few minutes before the alarm was set to trigger at 3:45 AM. Sleeping naked in the bag had been a luxury, and now I had to face the reality of wet, smelly cloth ..read more

Video digest of the day’s travel:   We were all tired, and it was soooo tempting to sleep in that morning, but there was much ground to cover (none of which was on trail), and the slope would get hot early when hit by the AM sun… we resolved to start walking by 7 AM. So, up at 5:30 it would be. I slept pretty well, and awoke feeling largely replenished. This was good news, because I predicted day 2 to be our most challenging day of the trip. It would involve (slightly) more elevation gain than the other days, we would still be relatively heavy, and it involved climbing a slope that was n ..read more

Our Plan: For our annual PNW trip, Justin, Ann, and I would Climb Challenger via Big Beaver. I had tried twice from the Hannigan side, and had been skunked by the weather both times. My buddies John and Tom had actually tried THREE times and had not made it.  We swore that we would never try it again unless we had five days and a perfect weather forecast. And, surely, Big Beaver was the ticket. This would be a new route and new mountain for all three of us, so adding the route finding aspect to this trip would make it more “epic.” Our Reality: COVID-19 made travel to Seattle unsafe for An ..read more

In April 2020 I was so fortunate to climb Wy’East (Mt Hood) with my friends Teresa and Marjorie. It was a great experience. One of the best things that came from that particular climb was my sharp ear overhearing T and M discussing an upcoming trip to Ecuador with IMG. Ecuador! I had visited Galapagos years earlier, but knew almost nothing about the mountains of the highlands, other than their reputation for being tall and austere and beautiful. Oh, hell yes… I had to invite myself onto that expedition. Somehow I managed to do that, and whether it was actually welcome or not we will never know ..read more

Our agenda was simple: Train for the upcoming Ecuador expedition. Someplace close to home. Someplace quiet. Someplace challenging. Someplace not overrun with hipster d-bags. This may sound like a tall order, but we have a secret weapon: Teresa, Queen of Logistics… Soothsayer of Occult Terrain… Keeper of Secret Routes. And thus, the genesis of our adventure: BOOTALICIOUS PEAK. Mostly unheard of, rarely discussed, virtually unclimbed. Purrrrrrrrfect. True, the weather was predicted to be grody, with heavy fog in the area, but that is no issue for us. We thought it auspicious, and might help ward ..read more

It has been a great summer for my mountain pursuits. So far I have been fortunate to bag a number of training climbs, plus Wy’East… Tahoma… Olympus… Loowit… backpacking in the Alpine Lakes…. What more could I ask for? Kaleetan, that’s what. Tom proposed a group outing to the North Cascades, but only I was able to join… and the weather really did not look like it would cooperate, with thunderstorms predicted for Saturday afternoon… these are very unusual here in Western Washington. But… perhaps we could thread the needle and get up and down Kaleetan before things turned ugly. I had climbed the ..read more

That night I tossed in the sleeping bag, made a bit of urine, dreamed of the route, adjusted my layers when chilled… I slept in total for a few hours. Another party passed by quietly circa 12:30 AM, but otherwise there were no surprises that night, except for the tent getting buffeted by gusts of wind that felt slightly ominous. The wakeup call came at 2:20 AM, which seemed perfect to me. We got right to business by packing and simultaneously eating a quick breakfast of oatmeal and instant coffee. My bowels were quiet, no need to visit the latrine except to empty the cold, gnarly looking cont ..read more

In Puyallup mythology, Loowit (AKA Mt St Helens) was the object of affection from two god-brothers: Wy’East (AKA Mt Hood) and Klickitat  (AKA Mt Adams). When they could not stop their quarrels, their father Sahale struck them all down, and they formed into the volcanoes we see today. In Cowlitz mythology, things are different: Tahoma (AKA Mt Rainier) had an argument with his two wives, Lavelatla (AKA MSH) and Pahto (AKA Adams). Lavelatla became jealous, blew her top, and knocked the head off Tahoma. So, Loowit has always been a special place, long before 1980. Each of us had climed it be ..read more

Here is a video summary of the day’s climb. This version without soundtrack, so you can hear the snow and the wind, and our chatter…. This version with the soundtrack that hummed in my mind during the ascent… I slept fine that night. For the most part. An odd feature of being guided is that I’m not in charge of our start time each day. Nickel wanted to be sure that everyone got a solid night’s sleep, and apparently some climbers get stressed out by watching their watches all night, counting down the hours until the appointed time. For me, the opposite was true: I wondered when we would get a ..read more

Tahoma (AKA Mt. Rainier) is one of my favorite mountains…  I am fortunate to be 4 for 5 up there, twice on the Emmons and thrice on the DC, most recently as a team leader in July 2017. It is a sacred place for me, actually, and always provides that unique combination of challenge and beauty and proximity to home. Climbing via the Kautz Ice Chute would be a different kind of challenge:  A new aspect of the mountain… steeper terrain, including vertical ice… a full traverse of the mountain, meaning heavy loads all the way over the summit. Teresa invited me to join the expedition ..read more