Always Onward Adventures

My 6th attempt at Mt Rainier was ultimately not successful, but it was one of the most enjoyable times I’ve had on the mountain - it really proved to us on this trip that this moutain is not for the faint of heart. 2016-06-16 The trip involved a whole crew of folks - including my wife and I, my cousin Sean and his wife, and my brother. Everyone flew in on a Thursday and we headed up to camp on Friday, heading up the Edmonds-Winthrop route again. The first part of the climb was pretty standard - sunny morning and we made quick progress up to the point where we rope up and drop down onto the glacier. We had done a few training hikes, which was good - everyone was strong and in good spirits.

Back in 2016, we decided to take a long sailing trip in the Bahamas with my family (parents & brother). This was just a few weeks before Angela and I got married. The trip was a bit of a culmination - we had taken all of the ASA sailing courses and we felt like we were finally ready for a really big trip… 2016-03-25 We landed the night before, but day one was when we finally met our boat. We boarded around noon (after the cleaning crew was done) and did some outfitting and hanging around for a while. Our boat was a Lagoon 38 I believe - 4 cabins and 2 heads and probably the coolest part for us was the galley on the bridge deck - where you could see out and get light while you were making dinner and hanging out. The next few hours were spent getting a tour of the boat systems by one of the captains, stowing away our food and gear, and getting to know the boat a little bit.

About a year after our san juan’s kayaking trip, Diane had this great idea of doing a sea kayaking trip in Alaska - in the Chugach mountains area. She did all the research and found us a guide group and we were on our way! We flew into Anchorage and then rented a car to drive to Whittier - which is the deep water port that services Anchorage and cuts through the small mountain range that separates Anchorage from Prince William Sound. The Whittier tunnel is 2.5 miles long (longest in North America), is one way, and can accommodate both cars/trucks as well as trains. It was apparently built during WW2 to provide Anchorage with access to a deep water port - as big ships were unable to enter the Anchorage port directly. To this day, cruise ships enter Whittier and passengers are bussed to Anchorage as they are unable to reach anchorage directly.

In 2015, I made my fifth climb on Mt Rainier but my first time going up the Emmons-Winthrop route - which is one the opposite side of the mountain from the more popular disappointment cleaver route. There were 6 of us in total on the climb, two groups of three. This was the 3rd trip I had taken with a few of them, but this was the first time climbing with the rest of them.

Back in 2015, with Oakley being only a few months old, I craved some adventure. For some reason Angela wasn’t able to come, so Oakley and I headed out to the Okanagan to a place called Eagle lake. This place really was the middle of nowhere - as I discovered painfully… 2015-03-18 We had a very long drive to get out to Eagle lake - almost 5 hours. I left on Friday morning and we didn’t end up getting to the trailhead until afternoon. The final stretch of road up to the trailhead was covered in snow - which did not bode well for our hike - but we went ahead anyway.

Way back in 2014, we went on an overnight kayaking trip with Derek and Diane to the San Juan islands. This was right after we all completed a sea kayaking class - so this was a graduation trip of sorts. 2014-08-23 We departed on a Saturday (which just happened to be the same day that Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie got married) and started on our three day trip - leaving from Jackson beach just south of Friday Harbor. The group we rented the kayaks from provided us with an itinerary for where to go on the trip - making use of two campsites on the Cascadia Marine trail, where campsite reservations are not required for human powered watercraft - which was great on the first night but not as awesome on the second.

This one is taking us way back. In Aug 2014, Angela and I had only been dating for ~9 months and this was the second backpacking trip we had been on together. The plan was kinda simple - park at the drop Sol Duc hotsprings, pay a van to take us to the Hoh Rainforest trailhead, and then hike from Hoh to Sol Duc over the next 3 days. Our van driver mentioned something about why are you doing it this way, most people do it the other way - not sure what he meant.

In early 2014, I took off with my brother and one of his friends to attempt to climb the infamous liberty Ridge route on Mt Rainier. This is a very different route from many routes on Mt Rainier in that it involves some fairly technical ice climbing - using dual ice axes and pick like crampons to climb up a 60+ deg ice slope. I even had to get some new gear for this trip.