Stella's First Successful Hike!

Ten months and one day old, and Stella finally made her first successful hike! We did a quick afternoon trip to Talapus Lake near Snoqualmie Pass. 

 It was all Nels' idea. Well, he wanted to go on a hike. I brought the fam. Best idea ever.

 2 out of 3 great smiles is good enough for me....next time say cheese!

A few pics from Boston Basin, Labor Day 2010

Well, only about a year late, but hey, here are some of my pictures from our climb Forbidden Peak from base camp in Boston Basin.

We had to abort just before gaining the ridge and making the final assault on Forbidden, it was raining all weekend and that had made both the rock and ice extremely slippery. The snowfield approach to the ridge is quite steep, and gave us a couple opportunities to practice arresting solo and as a 4 man rope team.

Since the weather continued to suck, we bailed out Saturday afternoon, and had a brutal hike/stumble back to the truck where a change of clothes, some beers, and a nip of scotch was most welcome.

Johannesburg Mountain is simply stunning from Boston Basin, the hanging glaciers and icefalls are amazing.

What the What???

Where did the posts go????

Well, Erica and I had a baby girl in October, and that has been such a handful I have been way behind on posting here and we haven't been able to make a huge amount of progress on the FLOG (our, ahem, latent food blog).

Anyway, here's Stella Iris, and you'll see some catch-up posts here right soon!

2010-07-19 Mt Rainier Climb, July 2010

Mt Rainier 2010!

This blog should have started about 7 months ago in the dreary warm winter months of 2010. That's when the word came out: Mt Rainier- THIS SUMMER. After years...decades even of saying "I should climb Rainier this summer" it was finally time. Training, and more enjoyably gear whoring, began immediately. Climbing my apartment stairs soon turned into springtime wet and cold hikes in the Issaquah Alps. If I had known what was coming on Rainier I would have trained harder...twice as hard...and I doubt even that would have been enough. As the climb drew closer I was filled with doubt. That doubt did not evaporate until reaching the summit cap, 700' below the summit.