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Escapades
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In upper Blue Lakes Basin under the shadow of Sneffels reproduced with permission from Mike at www.miketittel.com
While this is a chance for bragging rights, the extended idea is to pique interest with a description of all the global shenanigans. This is very loose, but a reference point. For now, just drool...
Skiing
As a kid growing up in Vermont, I was surrounded by mountains, snow, and more snow (read: nine months of the white stuff). Oddly enough, the closest I got to skiing was watching the down-hillers at Stowe on lazy Sunday afternoon drives and it wasn’t until I returned from college for vacation that I picked up cross-country shussing. I took that up with a vengeance after an unexpected tutorial with Baroness Maria von Trapp when she took pity on my backcountry yard sale. My first alpine experience was at Crested Butte, CO, and while it’s been a non-stop love affair with the pursuit of gravity, the shift has finally been made away from resort insanity into the peaceful world of Randonee. My goal? Read the slopes, earn the turns, and revel in the power of solitude and self-propulsion.
Colorado's 14ers
Nothing like being a Vermont native surrounded by acres and acres of the Naturally Sublime. The first peak I ever bagged was Camel’s Hump, and while modest in nature it cemented the love I have for the mountains. In spite of the nomadic life I lived after my move to the Left Coast, I spent every moment I could in the Sierra to reunite with my true home. Try as I might to live the beach life, the mountains won out and a move to Colorado in 2001 reignited the fire. Summiting almost half the Mountain State 14ers in four years, most of them solo, may not seem like much. It isn’t, considering there are almost 400 13ers in the state to crest as well as all those beautiful peaks in the Himalayas, South America, and Europe.
Climbing
My first redpoint was on a steep gym wall in Virginia over 15 years ago. That led to thinking, living, breathing, training for the vertical world one fine summer in Sonora, California. My first trad lead sent on Glacier Point Apron in Yosemite, and from thereon the tick list fell at Owens River Gorge, Joshua Tree, Rock Creek Canyon, and Clark Canyon. A brief hiatus and move to Colorado where people climb as often as they brush their teeth, and the list expanded to include routes at Eldo Canyon, Golden Cliffs, Boulder and Clear Creek Canyons, Shelf Road, 11-mile Canyon and the South Platte. Toss in City of Rocks and Red Rocks for good measure. Don’t misunderstand me – I’m an average climber at best. But there’s something about that rock...
Ice Climbing
I don’t swim. Don’t ask me to put my face in water. I like my water frozen, whether as snow for skiing or a frozen pond for skating and, more recently, waterfall ice climbing. When I first strapped sharp pointy things to my boots and leashed sharp pointy things to my hands, bashing my way up the frozen ribbons of Canadian ice, I felt like a Great White North Ninja. Just imagine the fun – endless chunks of ice raining down on your head and sneaking down your back, feet and toes numbed from cold and constant clobbering, and the ever-present realization that the next hit with your pick could send you tumbling with a 300 pound block of ice in your lap. Nothing like it, and you couldn’t punch the grin off my face at the end of a day on the stuff.
Canyoneering
Reach into reptile brain and visualize the ages of erosion that carved the undulating byways deep in the desert sandstone. Blue John Canyon made famous by its loose chock stones and the lesser well-known Leprechaun Canyon offer a lean and enticing sample of the supreme Utah adventure. It’s a full-body voyage, too – scrambling, stemming, climbing, wading, swimming, rappelling, rafting if you choose as well. And you never know what’s around the next curve…
Asia
As every crag at Joshua Tree offers diverse geology, so every place, every acre on earth serves up something unique. Exotic is an understatement describing Asia, and the state of Sarawak on the Malaysian island of Borneo is no exception. In a hundred words or less, let a thousand images come to mind...Gunung Mulu National Park, home of the Headhunter’s Trail through a nearly impermeable rainforest...lit at night with the green eyes of the Huntsman spider...home to the Wind/Clearwater cave connection, longest continuous cave in Malaysia...trekking through alien limestone formations and warm, shallow rivers...gaping at a mountain from the inside out...Gunung Buda National Park, native land of the Iban people now relegated to longhouses and tourism as a means to survive...the Sarawak chamber, largest cave on earth and able to host two 747s end to end where the total absence of light leaves one guessing at its immensity...
Europe
Europe is home to Western history and some interesting traditions as well. One memorable trip, after making it across the gangplank from Boat A to Boat B in the middle of a Norwegian fjord, our group joined the Midsummer Night’s Eve festivities in some unknown village, threw wood on the bonfire to placate Baldur the sun god, then polka'd with the locals throughout the dim twilight. In Portugal, we soaked up tearful fado in a Lisbon cafe and jogged through banana fields on the island of Madeira. It’s a small world, after all, and ripe with possibility.
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I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
Vincent van Gogh