NOSTALGIA
Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if mountains were not a part of it -- if we inhabited a planet that contained none -- just flatness wherever one traveled. I believe the reason some of us are lured to the mountains -- sometimes with overwhelming resolve -- is just as Sir Edmund Hillary once said; "because they are there." The implications of this in my life has been a constant pursuit of the finest experiences the mountains can provide. One of my best climbing partners and long time friend once said, "it's not what you have, it's what you've experienced." I try to live with this in mind, though sometimes it is easier said than done.
I've made tough decisions in the past about how to allocate time and money to balance the desire to gain knowledge, have a career and own land, with the relatively selfish desire of exploring the world and its natural wonders. Therefore, I may never be particularly good or talented regarding any of those things, yet they are all important to me. I suppose all one can do is seek whatever balance feels right, and realize that trying to achieve some type of perfection in anything is basically a waste of time. But that doesn't mean what you do end up achieving isn't important to you, and at the end of the day, that's really all that matters.
When I look back two decades, the memories are sometimes comedic and sometimes intense. For as long as I can remember, I've believed that institutional frameworks and their associated safety nets often detract from the potency of a particular experience. In the Boyscouts, for example, I had little interest in obtaining badges, yet was chomping at the bit to go on as many trips as possible. Later, I began scheming with friends to detach ourselves from supervision and learn by mistake -- and we made plenty of those. I became interested in less organized, less predictable, and more random adventures. Below is a depiction of some of them: climbing my first multi-pitch route (in Yosemite at age 12) with my friend and his father, climbing El Capitan for the first time at 20 with a guy I met the same day we started the route, and a self-portrait at 28 while crossing the Himalayas to climb an obscure 23,750 foot peak.
I've made tough decisions in the past about how to allocate time and money to balance the desire to gain knowledge, have a career and own land, with the relatively selfish desire of exploring the world and its natural wonders. Therefore, I may never be particularly good or talented regarding any of those things, yet they are all important to me. I suppose all one can do is seek whatever balance feels right, and realize that trying to achieve some type of perfection in anything is basically a waste of time. But that doesn't mean what you do end up achieving isn't important to you, and at the end of the day, that's really all that matters.
When I look back two decades, the memories are sometimes comedic and sometimes intense. For as long as I can remember, I've believed that institutional frameworks and their associated safety nets often detract from the potency of a particular experience. In the Boyscouts, for example, I had little interest in obtaining badges, yet was chomping at the bit to go on as many trips as possible. Later, I began scheming with friends to detach ourselves from supervision and learn by mistake -- and we made plenty of those. I became interested in less organized, less predictable, and more random adventures. Below is a depiction of some of them: climbing my first multi-pitch route (in Yosemite at age 12) with my friend and his father, climbing El Capitan for the first time at 20 with a guy I met the same day we started the route, and a self-portrait at 28 while crossing the Himalayas to climb an obscure 23,750 foot peak.
What follows here is like a scrapbook for anyone who might get a kick out of it. I'll let the images do most of the talking.
Below 1993-1996: early days as punk skater/snowboarder who sewed his own clothes and got hurt a lot.
Below 1993-1996: early days as punk skater/snowboarder who sewed his own clothes and got hurt a lot.
Below: in high school, I sought friends who were more interested in doing things than being popular, and met excellent people I consider lifelong friends. The mountains around Reno, NV, became a magnet; I remember once taking a loaded backpack to classes so I could head to Mt. Rose for a weekend backpacking trip that much faster after the bell rang, even though I lived a half mile away. Building things was also fun: skateboard ramps and even boats.
Below: in 1998 I had the chance to buy a complete assortment of climbing and mountaineering gear in exchange for 6 months of savings and a bunch of lawn mowing sessions. I called my good friend Blue to say, quite simply, that it was on. We ended up using the gear in any way could until we figured out how to apply it to actual mountains. Sometimes we weren't too bright about this approach.
Below: by freshman year in college at the University of Nevada, Reno, I was hurling myself into projects that were guranteed to be the largest adventures I'd ever known: big walls. By then I'd only been multi pitch climbing a few times but tried my best to read about the techniques, go out and practice them, and try a big wall. We had some gnarly adventures; like bailing off pitch 21 of The Shield on El Cap after running out of water.
As the big walling was brewing up, so was the mountaineering, and I headed to Denali in 2000. And there was college too, at the University of Nevada, Reno. Kinda like high school but bigger I guess, and I got to study journalism and photography, later working at Climbing Magazine and the Reno daily paper.
Below: in 2003, I bought a fifth wheel and moved into an RV park near campus to keep costs down. My girlfriend and I had a plan: to take it on a super long road trip after it was paid off. I also got a sweet job working for a non profit group on a national forest campaign. (details here, and here), and also parked cars at a casino to fund the next expedition.
In 2005 I hit the road solo in a smaller trailer, eager to reflect on the heavy experiences in Baffin Island. After months of traveling, I moved to Ely, Nevada, to continue working with Friends of Nevada Wilderness, which resulted in this. Those years exploring and snowboarding eastern, central, and northern Nevada were great. I began caving with my friend Neil Marchington and others, and putting up new sport climbing routes at a little crag outside Ely called The Gap.
Below: in 2003, I bought a fifth wheel and moved into an RV park near campus to keep costs down. My girlfriend and I had a plan: to take it on a super long road trip after it was paid off. I also got a sweet job working for a non profit group on a national forest campaign. (details here, and here), and also parked cars at a casino to fund the next expedition.
In 2005 I hit the road solo in a smaller trailer, eager to reflect on the heavy experiences in Baffin Island. After months of traveling, I moved to Ely, Nevada, to continue working with Friends of Nevada Wilderness, which resulted in this. Those years exploring and snowboarding eastern, central, and northern Nevada were great. I began caving with my friend Neil Marchington and others, and putting up new sport climbing routes at a little crag outside Ely called The Gap.
In 2007 the Maiden Voyage with the fifth wheel was back on track. Rebecca and I took four months to cover the northern Sierras, the Cascades, the Canadian Rockies, and the northern US rockies until running out of money in Crested Butte, Colorado (below), where I began planning a Himalayan expedition. Afterwards we visited Thailand. I also continued searching for land -- this time in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. In late 2008 we packed up the kit again and drove down the highway totally unsure where we would move next. We ended up in Bozeman, Montana, five days later, with no regrets.
In Bozeman, we just did what we could to scrape enough money together to continue enjoying the beauty of Montana. I spent a lot of time in the Beartooth Mountains, Hyalite Canyon, the Madison, Bridger, and Gallatin Ranges, and squeezed another one month solo road trip (below) in the spring of 2009.
I continued my search for a piece of land that felt right. I felt it was time to lay roots on a parcel and create a long term plan for it, and I couldn't think of a better place than the eastern front of the Beartooth Mountains. On the exact same day I signed a contract to purchase a 21 acre parcel, I accepted a job to start up a new environmental group in Las Vegas. But before starting, I finished my quest to traverse the entire Sierra Crest via the John Muir Trail. Las Vegas certainly has its perks, namely Red Rocks and the Spring Mountains, and the climbing was phenomenal.
As the campaign in Las Vegas wound down, I applied to run a mining-related program at the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, and my dream of living in the last frontier came come true. I took a month to get there: below are some of the last trips in the lower 48, the move north, and the first sights of my new homeland. From top left: Leviathan Cave, NV, the Kiener's Route on Long's Peak, CO, Englestad Canyon in Zion National Park, UT, my rig at Jasper National Park, Canada, arrival in Alaska, first glimpses of the Eastern Alaska Range, ice caving inside the Castner Glacier, ice climbing in the Delta Range, and caribou on the Chena Dome Trail.
As my third winter in Alaska was approaching, I paid off my land in Montana and headed south to build a big barn and get settled in on the property. That's a whole other topic, but briefly, it is the main thing that keeps me grounded these days; simply knowing that I have an inspiring place to hang my hat for whatever craziness is about to happen out there -- because the times are-a-changin', and that's probably a serious understatement. So, the following spring (2013) I returned to the Rockies for the foreseeable future, taking a job with Earthworks based in Ridgway, Colorado, to work on oil and gas and mining issues throughout the Southwest. It was pretty awesome; between the canyon country of Utah, the San Juan Mountains, and the desert destinations of Arizona and New Mexico, there were a lot of new sights to see and places to explore, and I hope my work helped to keep these places intact and unpolluted.
There are just too many awesome experiences to list here, but the images below cover a bit of it. Some of the highlights from 2013- 2018 include my first full Ironman triathlon in the Netherlands, working to detect methane emissions via helicopter using infrared imaging, ice climbing in the Adirondacks and in Vermont, rebuilding a vintage camper, climbing Lunar Ecstasy in Zion, drytooling at the Hall of Justice, climbing at the Motherload, backpacking the Salt Creek Canyon route in Canyonlands, and many more adventures. I also made a winter ascent of the Shield on El Capitan with Spencer (click here for the full slideshow), plus managed to visit eastern Mexico and northern Patagonia for work.
There are just too many awesome experiences to list here, but the images below cover a bit of it. Some of the highlights from 2013- 2018 include my first full Ironman triathlon in the Netherlands, working to detect methane emissions via helicopter using infrared imaging, ice climbing in the Adirondacks and in Vermont, rebuilding a vintage camper, climbing Lunar Ecstasy in Zion, drytooling at the Hall of Justice, climbing at the Motherload, backpacking the Salt Creek Canyon route in Canyonlands, and many more adventures. I also made a winter ascent of the Shield on El Capitan with Spencer (click here for the full slideshow), plus managed to visit eastern Mexico and northern Patagonia for work.
The images below capture some events from roughly 2019 to mid 2022. I bought a old van in the fall of 2020 and completely refurbished and rebuilt it (I called it Rembrandt, as I painted it by hand with a brush), then took a month long road trip with Carolin -- who I had started dating the year before -- throughout the pacific northwest, to California, Nevada and Utah. Shortly thereafter, we travelled extensively throughout Germany, where Lina is from, to visit her friends and family, then we ended the trip with a week in Chamonix, where I (mostly) soloed the Cosmique Arete and snowboarded my ass off.
Then, starting in 2021, I picked up a new pursuit: solo multi-day wilderness kayaking adventures, mostly on Yellowstone Lake. I bought a kayak that breaks down into sections and fits into a large wheeled case (pakayak.com), so you can pack it into almost any vehicle and be much more mobile. Then in the fall of 2021, I sold the van and upgraded to a Montana-made truck camper and cleaned it up and did a ton of work on it. It's served me well and I've probably spent at least 50 nights in it so far on various road trips, mostly local in southern Montana and northern Wyoming.
It was on Yellowstone lake that I had my first real encounter with a Grizzly bear. I was on the kayak just 100 feet or so offshore and once it spotted me, began running down the beach at full speed, jumped in the water and began swimming after me as fast as it could. I paddled as fast as I could away from it, but Grizzlies can swim fast! It then returned to the shore, ran down the beach again, and jumped in the water again to chase me in the water. This happened three times until it finally gave up. Adrenaline pumping, I continued on my route, crossed the southeast arm of Yellowstone Lake and set up camp. I was convinced the bear wouldn't find me there, until I called the Park, reported the incident and was told two things: that it was the first ever encounter of a kayaker being pursued by a bear in park history, and also that they have GPS collar data of bears crossing the exact same stretch of open water that I had just crossed. Lovely.
Then, starting in 2021, I picked up a new pursuit: solo multi-day wilderness kayaking adventures, mostly on Yellowstone Lake. I bought a kayak that breaks down into sections and fits into a large wheeled case (pakayak.com), so you can pack it into almost any vehicle and be much more mobile. Then in the fall of 2021, I sold the van and upgraded to a Montana-made truck camper and cleaned it up and did a ton of work on it. It's served me well and I've probably spent at least 50 nights in it so far on various road trips, mostly local in southern Montana and northern Wyoming.
It was on Yellowstone lake that I had my first real encounter with a Grizzly bear. I was on the kayak just 100 feet or so offshore and once it spotted me, began running down the beach at full speed, jumped in the water and began swimming after me as fast as it could. I paddled as fast as I could away from it, but Grizzlies can swim fast! It then returned to the shore, ran down the beach again, and jumped in the water again to chase me in the water. This happened three times until it finally gave up. Adrenaline pumping, I continued on my route, crossed the southeast arm of Yellowstone Lake and set up camp. I was convinced the bear wouldn't find me there, until I called the Park, reported the incident and was told two things: that it was the first ever encounter of a kayaker being pursued by a bear in park history, and also that they have GPS collar data of bears crossing the exact same stretch of open water that I had just crossed. Lovely.
Below are a just a small handful of images from Gannet Peak, Wyoming, which I climbed solo in July 2022 over the course of a few days. It marked my last of the western state highpoints (including Alaska and Hawaii) -- an odyssey that has spanned many years, but one for which I was never in a rush to complete. I knew this would happen, but the moment I made the final steps onto the summit I broke down in tears, reflecting on an entire lifetime of climbing and mountaineering. I realized how damn lucky I am, how grateful I am, to have seen all these places. For years there was always another state highpoint to climb, but it was over now. There was nothing left for the biggest and highest mountains of good old 'Merica.
So, all this brings me to the moment -- late November 2022, when I have a much different kind of new adventure: a beautiful partner and son, and two amazing doggies, all of whom call the homestead home these days. Below are just a few of the many images showing some of the adventures that Carolin (we call her Lina) and I have done together, as well as some of some of our son, Damien, who was born on November 3, 2022 in Billings, Montana.
