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…
Read More
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…
Read More
10:30pm. It’s dark. It’s cold. Fortunately there’s little wind. Amy and I crawl out of our warm sleeping bags. We get ready in our tent by headlamp. We slept in most of our clothes so we only need to add our top layers. After a quick bite to eat and some hot coffee, we’re ready to…
Read More
Today we tackle the Barranco Wall! This is the Barranco Wall. It’s nearly 1000 ft of almost straight up climbing. More of a scramble than hiking, requiring us to use our hands to get over several obstacles. It’s one of the most challenging parts of the climb, besides summit night, especially since I agreed to…
Read More
It’s day 4 of our 8 day climb. Today we head up to the Lava Tower at 15,200ft for an acclimatization hike, before heading down to Barranco Camp to spend the night. We’re up early to get a head start on everyone else headed this way today (as this is where the Lemosho Route meets…
Read More
This is a pretty easy day for us. We cross the relatively flat Shira Plateau, gaining only about 1000 ft, most of it at the end. With views like this, how can you not start the day in good spirits? At one of our breaks, I take pictures of Amy and our guides. They are such…
Read More
Day 2 takes us up into the moorlands of Kilimanjaro. It’s much longer (6 hours) and more challenging hike than day 1, so we get an early start. I didn’t sleep well the night before, and I realize it’s because I was still wearing the same sweaty clothes I arrived to camp in so I…
Read More
Oh my gosh this is it. It’s here. Our first day of our climb up Mt Kilimanjaro! We’ve been planning and training for this trip for over a year, so it’s really hard to believe that we’re actually heading to the mountain to begin climbing it today. We’re meeting our guide Innocent at 830am, so…
Read More
If you’re looking for a general overview of my climb up Mt Kilimanjaro, this is the post for you. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, or post a ton of photos, but I will give a brief description of each day, and a link to each post (eventually) for more detail…
Read More
