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: NOLS
“You can just leave it in my office.” It happens again and again. “Wait, do you even have an office?” or “where IS your office?” People ask, even if we are…
[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…
September 2015–It is a classic September morning in the Wind River Range. Orange, yellow, and reds splash across the frost covered meadows framing the meandering, slow moving Fall Creek. Upstream,…
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,…
“That’s not rain, it is Chuck Norris pee!” KG yells across the maelstrom to the neighboring tent. There is no pitter patter of rain, just a constant white noise, rhythmically…
We walked through the narrow portal in the cinderblock wall. A tall, wrought Iron gate clanked loudly as it closed behind us, keeping the honest people honest. The street below…
I sit there, entitled to my crammed seat, or one would suspect, given my non-deference to the elderly, the mothers, the workers. It doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t feel right. …
Zero five-hundred comes early. Burgers, beers, friends, and whiskey quickly turn twenty-three hundred into zero two-hundred pretty quickly as well. I guess that is why I drank coffee. Or maybe…
23 August 2016 “I need to get you to sign some paperwork before I leave” he says. He is sitting on the counter in the cookhouse shooting the bull. People…
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…
Editors Note: This is a blog post I wrote back in the Autumn of 2012 during my first sojourn south to New Zealand. Though slightly dated, the concept is one…
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…
The following is an essay that I wrote shortly after returning from my first NOLS course as an instructor. I am posting it here, today in remembrance of the events…