June 1997 — We spent the overcast and wet day practicing skills. Placing snow protection, clipping through fixed pro, traveling on a rope team, ice axe use and self arresting. …
Category: Alpine Notes
Musings of an alpine nature…
(Author’s note: here is a piece I wrote about six years ago. I may have published this before, but… whatevs. My mind always wanders to this place, particularly this…
[Editors Note: I was recently “on deck” for NOLS to go to New Zealand to fill an emergency staffing position and this piece is one of the many things that…
“Lets run the Petzoldt”, I joke as we regroup from our last down. Anna is the quarterback and in this pick-up game of football, that makes the rest of wide…
Is it possible to de-assess myself? Stress is weighing on me, heavier than the sixty pounds of gear and food I am shouldering up this long, steep gully. Kick, kick,…
Editor’s Note: I am missing this so much right now. I have made eight trips to Patagonia over the past decade, and have been there for the past six Januarys. There…
“That is not my wish for you my brother” Rueben says in the pale glow of my headlamp. “No worries sir. I will see you in a couple of hours”…
Eventually, in the parking lot, gear and people sprawled everywhere, Jim came clean. “Jared, I need to tell you something.” The wry, maybe it was sheepish, smile on his face…
Jackson Hole Mountain Guides’ office is in a strip mall at the south end of town. The facade and interior are not classically strip mall-esque, except of course for Jackson.…
24 July 2017–The waning gibbous moon provides ample early morning light as our crampons crunch on less than hard snow. Despite the ample ambient lighting, all around me headlamps bob…
It started the same way and ended the same way. Driving in, the road was still rough. Walking out the beers were still in the river. The day was still…
They are the best of times, they are the worst of times, they are places of wisdom, they are places of foolishness, they are places of belief, they are places…
Doubt, fear’s twin brother, confidently raised it’s beastly head today. It came as I stared upward at the imposing chimneys. It was there again as I followed my partner’s lead…
Cassiopeia and Ursa Major make their slow, daily rotation around the hulking 6,611 meter shoulder of the Nanda Devi satellite peak, Nanda Khat (the bed of Nanda Devi). The squeak…