After our glorious morning hike to Blue Lake to see the larches, Adrienne drives us a short distance to Washington Pass for more gorgeous mountain views. Unlike Blue Lake, the views at Washington Pass are only a short walk from the parking lot. The larches here in Washington are alpine larches. They only grow at high altitudes….
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Are you ready for Larch Madness?! I’m going to tell you about a place straight out of a fairytale, but you have to promise to keep it between us, OK? Roughly 3 hours northeast of Seattle lies one of the least visited national parks in our country – the North Cascades National Park. Carved out by…
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Since we’re on the topic of climbing mountains, now seems like a good time to share my hike up Mt St Helens with you! Back in 2011, Amy (who I climbed Kilimanjaro with) and I did our first big climb together. Little did we know what we would later go on to accomplish. I’m pretty sure…
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I’m just starting to doze off when suddenly the lights come on and Dave cheerful tells us it’s time to get up and get ready for the summit! He even gave us an extra 15 minutes to sleep, it’s 11:15pm! We have one hour to get ready, hot water is being brought in for coffee…
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Before I get into mountaineer school today, I should probably tell you a bit more about this climb. The program Lori and I signed up for is the four day summit climb through Rainier Mountaineering Inc. RMI is the original guiding service on Mt Rainier, and they have an excellent reputation. There are two other…
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Holy smokes it’s time. We’ve reached the climax of our training. The crux of our hikes. The hardest one of them all. At least until we get to Rainier. Mailbox Peak is practically legend in these parts. Hikers mention it with awe and fear. People speak of it in hushed tones. Ok, maybe not that extreme. But…
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As I mentioned last week, I climbed Mt Rainier this past weekend. And I’ll have photos to share with you soon, but I have a two more training hikes to tell you about first. Our second to last hike is Granite Mountain. I did this hike for the first time I tried to climb Rainier…
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Last year during my training for Kilimanjaro, I climbed McClellan Butte a couple times. If you read that post, you’ll know I didn’t make it all the way to the top due to the heat and a rather bothersome pain in my hip. The time before that, the view was blocked at the top and…
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Those of you who know me, probably know I did a summit attempt of Mt Rainier back in 2009. For many reasons, including not knowing that I had (and still have) exercise induced asthma, I made it to 11,200 ft, the Ingraham Flats, before I had to turn around. I have since gone on to…
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After last weeks ridiculously hot hike, I’m so glad today is much cooler and cloudy. At 8.2 miles round trip and 3326ft of elevation gain, Dirty Harry’s Peak has similar stats as Mt Washington, but it’s a much rougher trail. Not many people know of this hike, so let’s keep it between us friends, shall…
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Not the Mt Washington in New Hampshire. This Mt Washington is about an hour east of Seattle and offers some of my favorite views from the summit. At 8.5 miles round trip and 3250ft of elevation gain, this is our hardest hike yet and definitely well into the difficult range. Plus, I’m carrying about 50lbs…
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In my last post, I told you about my first attempt at hiking Lake Serene. Now, this isn’t a super challenging hike, and the reasons we didn’t make it weren’t because we weren’t strong enough. On that first try, we were turned around by the snow. Not wanting either of us to slip and break…
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