Adventure Reflection

“Stoopid photographers!” I yelled to no one, because there was no one there to hear. In reviewing my adventures, I find the most fun, exhilarating, and rewarding ones have one thing in common: I find myself saying, often in a stupor from cold, or…

Hiking Stories

Danu is my regular weekend hiking buddy. He’s been in the US for twenty years, but before that he was a mountain guide all over the Himalayas and has guided summits of Everest. As you might imagine, he has a thousand stories. He’s been back in…

In Search of the Larch

We were supposed to backpack to The Enchantment Lakes area, having jumped through all the hoops to secure a set of coveted passes for the restricted, fragile, high alpine region. This was the weekend we wanted because the change of season brings a very…

How Photographers Hike

Went on a hike to see pretty things and get a little exercise. But it was a photographer’s hike, which means doing it during hours that don’t make sense to most people. And the people it does make sense to are either mountain climbers…

What’s Left of the Glacier

During the last week of June I led a single overnight to the south foot of Mt Baker in the North Cascades. Anyone who is familiar with the hiking trails in that area is reading the first sentence again. Yes, the trails, usually not…

Twenty Four Hour Escape

Written Sunday morning at 5:40 am, after dawn, before the sun crawled out from behind Cascade ridges, during a 24-hour escape from regular life. I had a mouse on my head last night. I had just faded to sleep with the delightfully wild white…

Mt Dickerman Photos

The North Cascades in February. Usually this route is inaccessible until June. There is too much snow to manage, it’s prone to avalanches and requires too much plowing for winter maintenance, so they gate the road about 10 miles down, right before the perpetual…

International Summit

[From an old blog ca: 2009] I could tell you that I summitted Mt Si with 2 guys I barely know. I could tell you they were a Boeing engineer and a radiologist. I could tell you they were both older than me. That’d…

Secret Spaces

I love people. I really love people. But I also love untrammeled wild spaces and I think that the North Cascades are one of those places where the masses shouldn’t go. I think it’s fine for most of humanity to approximate the experience by…

Photographer’s Climb

“You see that saddle over there? That’s where we’re going.” Note the knob on the left (mostly un-named on trail maps) and the peak on the right (Mt Ruth, 7115 feet elevation) as well as the tiny tuft of trees you can see in the middle….