Mountaineering (New Zealand) "Immortality
and the Art of Losing It" Mountainfreak Magazine
The wind outside the
hut threatened the paper-thin
window panes with each
new gust, causing loose
paint chips to bounce
around on the sills like
Lotto balls. A storm
had been blowing in from
the northwest all night...
The gut of New Zealand’s highest range, the Southern
Alps, sprawled in every direction outside the hut’s crooked
entrance. From the soured mattress inside, I could barely make
out piles of mountaintops stabbing up through the underbelly
of a thick cloudbank...
Winter Big Wall Climbing (Colorado) "Misery,
and the Ridiculous Need" The Mountain Gazette
February had come down
hard onto the Colorado
High Country, muffling
the land with snow and
silence, and forcing
the scent of sagebrush
to drop from the air
and crawl back down into
its roots. The three
of us were beginning
to realize the severity
of all this as we stood
staring up at the North
Chasm View Wall of the
Black Canyon...
A thin glaze of snowfall was plastered across twelve hundred
feet of rock that was rising steeply above us. Great daggers
of ice were hanging from its ledges like frozen gargoyles that
had toppled over and were clinging on by their toes...
Travel/Humor (Peru) "And
a Side Order of Guinea Pig" Venture Magazine
A thin film of scum
clung to my eyes like
a layer of Vaseline.
I rose from my bed and
began feeling around
the room for my sneakers. "They
couldn't have gone far," I
mused to myself, trying
to remember if I had
even worn them home from
the discoteca the night
before...
I found my shoes by smell, slipped them over dirt-stiffened
socks and limped toward my snoring companions. "Rob, Dan — breakfast," I
announced...
Historical/Travel (Big Island,
Hawaii) "In
Search of Kamehameha" Infiniti Magazine (Premier
Issue)
The landscape in the
windshield was bleak – a
windy plain of sharp
a’a lava and bent
kiawe trees. A place
where the air blows with
an almost desperate breath
of heat.
Yet among the desolation, the struggle for life, was the sublime
splendor of a massive sky, cloudless and pure. With a strong
Hawaiian sun pressing up against my face, I could see tiny
white observation domes balancing 13,000 feet above on the
broad tee of Mauna Kea. And below, an ocean turned black from
the deepest shades of blue...
Mountaineering/Historical (Mt.
Rainier, Washington State) "When
They Called It Takhoma" Venture Magazine
Just past midnight,
I was stirred into consciousness
by the sound of crampons
biting into glacial ice.
The noise reminded me
of people walking over
spilled popcorn on a
barroom floor... I jiggled
my climbing companion
awake...
I zipped my parka up to my ears and peered around in the moonlight.
There was a string of headlamps moving past our tent. Their
faceless heads were bobbing to the rhythm of step-rest-step,
step-rest-step. Rising in front them was the bulky frame of
a mountaintop: Mt. Rainier. A tribute to Pacific Coast volcanism.
Icon of northwest mountaineering. King of the Ring of Fire...
It was late spring
in the Cabinet Mountains
and three of us were
standing below the Leigh
Lake cirque like little
ants stranded at the
bottom of an enormous,
frozen toilet bowl. The
only thought I could
pull from my mind was, "My
god, what has Paul got
us into?"
Bill and I squirmed around in our ski boots, speechless from
the great white maw rising above, and waited patiently for
someone to say something...
Rock Climbing (North Idaho) "Returning to Shangri-La" Sandpoint Magazine
The first thing rock climbers need to know about rock climbing in northern Idaho is that this is not the Sierra Nevadas, nor the Cascades, nor the Sawtooths. This is one of those unique places on Earth where black bears, overgrown trails and old-growth cedar trees far outnumber climbers. It’s a place where solitude is a reality – not a fringe benefit – and where the locals often come equipped with heavy artillery.
I was pondering all this while standing chest-deep in a patch of huckleberries high in the Selkirk Mountains above Priest Lake. We were searching for a climbers’ trail that leads up toward an illusive mountain called The Lion’s Head. My climbing buddy, Jason, was marching behind me through the willy-whacks, swatting off the occasional bee.
Mountaineering (Peru) "Pachamama,
the Hard Way" Mountainzone.com
At each
switchback, the bus driver
whipped the great metallic
beast around like a sailboat
on an erratic sea and the
tires spun out over an
abrupt 2000-foot drop to
the valley below. Our teeth
rattled around and the
driver’s cheeks slapped
together like a pair of
elephant seals jockeying
over a mate, and we all
thought we were going to
die. The only relief from
all this was to focus on
the picturesque layer upon
layer of 18,000-foot peaks
which were rolling past
our windows like Roman
soldiers marching abreast
into battle...
