I just returned a few days ago from my attempt on Mount Rainier. Unfortunately I didn’t make it to the Summit of the mountain as I had hoped. My group made it up to Ingraham’s Flats at 11,200 feet, but had to turn around due to heavy snowfall and severe weather on our summit night. Very disappointed by this, so I'll try and climb the mountain again next year. Here is a photo of me at sunrise of 09/09/09 from High Camp.

This summer I have embarked on climbing the highest mountains in four states: Mount Hood in Oregon, Wheeler Peak in New Mexico, Kings Peak in Utah and Mount Rainier in Washington. So far I have managed to make it to the top of three of these four peaks, and will be leaving for Seattle Sunday morning to start my attempt at climbing Mount Rainier. This climb has been looming large in my consciousness for a long time now, and is the culmination of this project. It’s something I’ve been thinking about and training for over the past two years. I’ll be starting on Labor Day, and hopefully summiting sometime early Wednesday morning. My summit day is happening on 09/09/09; an interesting combination of numbers, and a very portentous day for those into numerology. This was not planned when I made arrangements with a climbing school several months ago. To say that I am intimidated is not a strong enough word to describe my feelings towards this climb. I’ve done some amazing and difficult hikes / climbs over the past few years, but Mt. Rainier is definitely raising the bar beyond anything I have ever done in the past including summiting Kilimanjaro back in 2007. It is the 4th highest and most heavily glaciated mountain in the continental U.S. and has been described as the most difficult endurance climb outside of the Alaska. I want to push myself, see what I am made out of; and so I have chosen to embark on one of the most frightening things I can possibly think of and could use the support of my friends and community. So I wanted to invite all of you to think of me early Wednesday morning while I am high up on the mountain. While I might not make it to the summit ( the success rate on Rainier is around 50%) I am going to make it up as high as I can where the air is thin and the subtle energies / ethers are strong. Climbing mountains has a way of significantly altering my consciousness, and cuts to the core of the raw and vulnerable heart of my very existence as a human being. It pulls me out of all of my preconceptions about myself and the world around me and opens doors that I never even knew existed. I don’t even know what waits for me on the other side of that door, it is beyond words beyond description. Hopefully I’ll be crossing the threshold of this doorway on the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of the new millennium. Any prayers, thoughts and energy you could send my way during that time would be gratefully accepted and most appreciated. Thank you friends and family..

1 Mountain
1 Very large moose blocking the trail as we are trying to descend at night without flashlight or headlamps.
2 Friends (Mendy and I)
3 Slides down the Timp Glacier on the way to Emerald Lake
3 Dogs on the Summit.
4 Deer (2 male 2 female)
13 Hours round trip of Hiking
18 + Miles of hiking.
20 + People on the Summit.
4000 + Feet of Elevation Gain and loss over the course of the day.
Millions of Wild Flowers.

IT WAS AN AWESOME ADVENTURE!!!

Summited Kings Peak this past Friday. It was a brutal three days and 31 miles of hiking up the tallest mountain in Utah (at 13,528 feet) and back. Will be posting the pictures sometime soon. This is the third of the four highest State mountains that I planned on climbing this summer. Mount Hood in Oregon was the first, and Wheeler Peak in New Mexico was the second. Next on the list is climbing Mount Rainier in Washington state in early September.

I stood on the summit of Mount Hood Saturday Morning May 30th at about 7:30 am - the tallest mountain in Oregon. Climbing Mount Hood was stunningly beautiful. It was terrifying, wondrous and fun all at the same time. I learned the secret to climbing steep high altitude ice is to simply never look down. You generally don't want to look up that much either. LOL.