Summer in Washington

After returning from Alaska in late May I spent about a week in Bozeman. I wasn’t expecting to come home between our expedition and starting work for the summer, so it was nice to get some extra time with my friends and family before leaving town again for several months. Bozeman has been my home since I was nine years old, but since I finished high school my time here has slowly been shrinking. As I write this I’m ten days into what will ultimately be a six-week stay at my mom’s house before I leave again for ten months or more. The mountains of Southwest Montana will always feel like home, and I’d like to try to actually live here again in the semi-near future. Finishing college has been put on the back burner for the time being while I focus on starting my guiding career and doing as much personal climbing and skiing as I can on the side. I still have no idea how these competing interests will all fit together for me in the future, but I do know that the prioritization of one (school, guiding, personal objectives) will often have to be at the expense of one or both of the others. For me the mental crux of this balancing act has so far been accepting the uncertainty of what the next several months or years of my life will look like, which is something that I can’t envision changing for at least the next few years.

After my short return visit to Bozeman I drove back out to Washington and began climbing the same mountain once or twice a week from the beginning of June until the end of September. While there is certainly a monotony that comes from constant Rainier laps, I found it provided a great environment to develop skills specific to mountain guiding that one would probably never use in their personal climbing. The lack of any real technical difficulties combined with an extremely high level of familiarity with the mountain and the route allowed me to focus on the finer points of guiding such as pacing and client-care rather than worrying about the more technical aspects of climbing the mountain. I did my best to maintain some technical climbing fitness with indoor bouldering and occasional trips to some of the world-class climbing areas the PNW has to offer such as Squamish, Index, Washington Pass and Smith Rock. After this summer, I feel that while it’s very difficult to climb any harder while guiding full time, it’s certainly possible to maintain your current level of fitness and skill, which is basically what I managed to do. At the same time, slogging up Mt. Rainier almost twenty times was definitely beneficial in building and maintaining a solid endurance base.

While I could make this the longest blog post ever by going through the details of every Rainier climb I guided and every weekend rock climbing trip, the whole summer is already running together in my mind, and will probably ultimately be remembered in little snapshots, like the pictures below.

Leading Exasperater in Squamish.

Two of my guests on the summit in gnarly weather. It's awesome when the clients remain psyched despite sub-optimal conditions.

Chase following a pitch in the midst of the Liberty Group Travserse on Washington Pass.

Trying to keep the fingers strong in our home bouldering cave in Ashford.

Teaching ice climbing in crevasses on the Paradise Glacier. We managed to find some solid Grade-4 alpine ice in late August!

Descending from the summit on a splitter weather day.

A September snow dusting at Camp Muir.

Cragging at Smith in late September.