I'ts kick off time!!

Well its 10:00 at night and i should be in bed. I leave at the crack of dawn for Mt. Rainier. The team will be 2 rope teams of 3. 6 of us total and I am concerned about not taking snowshoes. The trip reports elude to deep snow. This is my chance to get the summit and say my goodbye's to my Uncle John who just passed this Tuesday as well as my Mom. Maybe I can make some peace with her passing finally. The weather looks like a good set of days and we will hopefully make it in the first two days. I will post photo's when I come back. Fingers crossed and fates please work with me, I will give it my all!

Namaste-

Well I was kind of right....is that a bad thing?

Well hopefully I am over my melodramatic whining about not going on the 4th through the 6th. The spring storms have been slamming the Cascades for weeks! The weather for the 4-6th was the only clear time in a long time. Common sense says we had to postpone the climb. The amount of snow pack under duress would have made it a dangerous and foolish venture. We have re-scheduled the trip for the 24-26th of this month. Hopefully the weather will permit. We have had a couple of really spectacular days of sunshine. It has been enough to bring a little hope into my spirit.

I turned 40 on the 10th and my very dear friends (headed by my best buddy Rick Glein) threw me a surprise birthday party. It was so much fun despite my oncoming cold. I even had a few drinks. I have been laying off the booze in hopes of losing some lb's. I am chomping at the bit to get out and start running again. This cold has had me in bed all weekend. I think my buddy Tim and I are off to bag a peak this weekend. Haven't yet decided on which one but the training is important. I am running a great deal but hiking uphill not enough. I need to work those muscles.

Will I be denied yet again??

I am trying desperately to not be negative but GEEZ! I am scheduled to make yet another stab at summiting Rainier this April 3-5th. Mother nature however seems to be throwing a rather large shit sandwich at me. We have had spring storms one after another! I begin to wonder when I will get the chance.

I have been turned back twice on this climb in the last two years. Once we awoke on the Ingraham glacier at midnight and the winds were flattening the tent I was in. We could not see the top half of the mountain. Complete white out. We waited for hours before having to call it. I then went back last year with a couple of good buddies. Colin Reedy (with whom I have climbed some great peaks, Shuksun/Baker to name a couple) and Tim Hicks (We did Hood not long ago). We headed up disappointment cleaver and as we climbed lightning strikes pummeled the mountain about every 30 seconds. It was cool to watch and we made sure to keep an eye on that storm. It stayed on the west ridge the whole time so we had no issues continuing. When we got to 13,000 ft on the switchbacks we saw a BLACK sky head toward us. We had hoped it would miss us and go behind the mountain....no such luck. We got crapped on and headed back down.

I will always try to make the "smart" decision and turn back when it is perceived to be dangerous. I don't have that much ego attached to attaining that peak. But it does start to grind. I even scheduled an extra day off from work in order to try this climb. I guess I will await to see what the climb leader on this says later this week. I will try to be hopeful.

Welcome to the first of many hopeful postings!

Well it's the middle of February in the year 2009 and I live in what can only be described as the Holy Land of outdoor lifestyle. I am one of the lucky individuals to live in this fine state of Washington, U.S.A.

I will probably wax poetic about how much I have come to love this state for it's amazing diversity of wildlife and natural splendor. Funny because I grew up in the even more expansive state of Alaska for the first 19 years of my life, and sadly enough never came to really appreciate the great alpine mountain experience until many years later. Oh why didn't I start this much earlier.

I will start by saying I spent the greater part of my youth trying to run from direction/family/accountability and fancied myself some sort of social rebel. Now I am 39 and I am trying to re-claim my life with a fervor! I was a smoker for the better part of twenty years. I started at age 14 and smoked an average of a pack a day until I was 34. After a slew of visits to the emergency room for what felt like heart attacks and declining health, I awoke one morning and said to myself "Twenty years is too much". Ever since then I have never picked up a cigarette and never looked back. Ahh but so much time and physical ability has been flushed down the toilet in the years gone by. What to do now?? I started hiking and running to help with the new nervous energy I was unprepared for. Tough at first.

I had really great inspiration between good friends and an ex-girlfriend. It was by watching them lead their lives with such a sense of adventure and willingness to try new things that I was inspired to follow suit. I joined a local group called the Mountaineers. I spent the next few years scrambling and climbing with the club and making new friends along the way.

I want to say that this blog is merely a testament to my experiences in the mountains either here in Washington or elsewhere in the world. It isn't meant to be a forum for bragging or postulation.

In the hopes that this doesn't come off as trite, I was raised in a home where my parents were both of the Christian faith. I myself never found God as it was written in the books and pamphlet's left around my home. I always found myself at odds with what I felt the church represented. I will say that the time I have spent in the mountains has given me the spiritual relationship I needed with a "higher power".

I look forward to writing more in the future about fantastic exploits and a wonderful world of exploration!