Always Onward Adventures

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.

Back in 2014, my friend Pam who I met doing crossfit during my Amazon internship expressed an interest in doing some big moutain climbs. She, along with two of her friends (who I had not yet met), and I decided that Mt Baker would be a good first trip. This would be the first time up Mt Baker for me, but I had heard it was a much more managable mountain compared to the other PNW volcanoes.

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.

Way, way back in 2013, I took another trip with Brian and Golden climbing crew (but without my cousin this time) up Mt Hood. We did a one day trip - which is pretty reasonable for this mountain. I met up with them in Seattle and we drove down to Oregon and camped out at the foot of the mountain - taking off early the following morning for the summit.

This is my second trip down memory lane, and this one goes way back. In the summer of 2012, my brother and I attemped to climb Denali (formerly Mt Mckinnley) in Alaska. While we ultimately didn’t make it, it was an epic trip that changed the way I thought about the world. To be dwarfed by a mountain that big is truely awe inspiring. We started our trip in Talkeetna - a fun little mountain town where most of the climbing/hiking expeditions that go into Denali NP start from. We spent most of our time at the Alaska Mountaineering School (AMS) HQ (the mountain guide group we used for the trip) - but our climbing hotel/hostel was also worth note. It’s called the “House of Seven Trees Hostel” and it was run by this lady who lives on the premises. She had bunk room for probably 24 people - with a combination of bunks in a separate building out back and rooms in the building proper. There were communial breakfasts most mornings (cooked by whichever climber got up first) and lots of stories flying around about climbing challenges by this group or that. A few seemed like they were almost permenant residents - using it as their base for adventure for the summer. We met one guy who founded a “low pressure tent” that artificiality simulated high altitude while you slept. Kinda a weird guy and I don’t know how much of his story was true…

Back in 2012, I was given the opportunity to study abroad to finish up my MBA education - at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management. It was a great way to finish up my education and it offered the opportunity to travel around before heading back into the real world. 2012-04 At the end of the study abroad program, we made our way down through France and Spain to Gibraltar. I don’t actually remember how we got there, either the train or a flight, but we ended up walking across the border from Spain into the tiniest bit of England, where the rock sits. The place was not what I expected - there was some of the historical batteries and the like that protected the entrance to the Mediterranean, but mostly it was just a very touristy place where they sold everything under the sun that said Gibraltar on it. The most notable thing about the rock was the monkeys, there were probably a hundred of them on the rock and they were melicious - stealing things and harassing people. I watched one steal a little toy out of a babies crib and another distract someone while a different monkey stole an apple from his backpack.