As summer winds down, it gets increasingly more difficult to find the motivation to get out. It should be the opposite, as, strategically, one might think the best plan of attack would be to hit it hard in the Spring, take a break for the first few weeks of summer, when there isn’t enough snow to ski, but just enough to make it annoying to hike. Then as the monsoon winds down, you’d wind up your trips, but any mountain man knows all too well the undeniable call of the wild and one’s insatiable desire to head back in to the hills – time and time again. Keep reading…
The title of this TR is a tad misleading, as it assumes a level of despair and emptiness. Congestion in Colorado has been a brain damaging experience, but I’m not waiving the white flag just yet. On the contrary, I was able to seek solitude, in addition to finding a dispersed campsite….in the Front Range of all places – and it even had a sense of solitude. Truth of the matter is, I spend the greater part of my work week ranting and raving about stuff that doesn’t really even affect me that much – I just have that natural urge as a human to fill that empty void in my soul by bitching about things out of my control, and at the end of the day, it doesn’t really do anyone any good. Keep reading…
Explosions in the distance were going off as I rolled out of bed at 1:00 AM on a Sunday. That might be the only time in my entire life I have been annoyed by the 4th of July. Much as I do not usually mind a bunch of high-schoolers lighting off fireworks in the middle of the night, it was an annoyance when trying to catch some sleep before a big day. The concert and midnight bedtime the night before were not helping either. Oops. I guess that one is on me. I silently reminded myself that if Andrew Hamilton can climb 58 peaks in 10 days on basically zero sleep (a record which was in progress during our climb), I could slog up Glacier Gorge for some rock fun on 1 hour of it. Keep Reading…
Because snow can be a tough commodity to come by in Rocky Mountain National Park, it pays to be patient and take advantage when conditions are right. A week ago the Longs massif was as stacked as we’d ever seen it, so Rick, Marc, Brian and I decided to go for the Dragon Egg Couloir on Mt. Meeker. Keep reading…
