Just when you think you’re fit enough…
You have probably seen this video on our facebook page, but i wanted to post it again because it is MOTIVATING!! It’s one of those video’s that gets stuck in your mind. Stuck in the way ,that as I biked home from work in the torrential downpour that is Squamish’s endearingly wet winter, I think about pushing it harder today up the big hill I have to bike every night . I think about kicking it down to a lower gear till my quads are burning and I can’t catch my breath. I get to the point where I feel like I have to stop, but I can’t…no I won’t, I know it’s just my mind trying to convince my body it’s had enough, so I decide to take the longer route home. I can’t let my mind win, I refuse to give in. “To climb high altitude mountains you need be more than an adventurer, you need to be an athlete”. Today in my own small way I felt like an athlete. I felt like that extra push was making me stronger. I don’t know if I can ever be at the athletic level portrayed in the video, but I am definitely going to keep pushing that little extra every day! Now let’s hope I can actually get out of bed when my alarm goes off at 5:30am tomorrow to go running in what promises to be another one of Squamish’s endearingly wet winter mornings....
Video: A year worth living
In the past year myself and Spring, bloggers on this site, bought our first pair of rock shoes, our first ice tools, our first pair of skis and our first mountain bikes. We haven’t led a sheltered life, just one without much interest in exploring mountains, until now. This is a short (~4min) video I put together trying to capture some of the moments of the last year. I find making them is a great way to take stock of the year, what worked and what didn’t and set in place a focus for the coming year....
Mt. Baker, N. Ridge: Anatomy of an Attempt
“At one point or another we’ve all cited percentages or experience levels and shrugged away risk. Given reasons for why it can’t happen to us, why it won’t happen…” I lay awake, semi in and out of my sleeping bag. It’s hot. I’m trying to sleep as I know I need to be awake and alert again in a few short hours. I want so bad for the temperature to drop, so that I can sleep, so that the snow underneath my tent and for miles around me will firm up. But there’s no wind, no sound, just dry, dead air and the dying light of the day. I’m listening to a podcast called “The Dirtbag Diaries” on my mp3 player. This episode is called “Anatomy of an Accident”. In it the author details a near fatal accident he had high in the mountains in a steep icy gully, he examines the simple mistakes he made during that trip early on that had a domino effect eventually leading to his accident. “Geez, this is the last thing I need to be listening to right now!” I say to myself. I hear a serac calve off Colfax in the distance, the impact shatters the silence across the entire mountain. It’s not the first serac we’ve seen or heard fall this day. “Maybe this is exactly what I should be listening to right now…” I let this episode finish and then try to get some sleep. It’s fitful, it never seems to get dark outside, the temperature is always uncomfortably hot and before I know it, it’s 2am and time to get up and ready. I give Dean and Adrien a wake up call. Spring is already up. Everyone moves in silence, boiling water, eating whatever calories we can paw at in the dull light, getting our harnesses on, prusiks dressed and checked, clipping all our gak where ever it will fit. We split into two rope teams of two and head out into the eerie glow of the near full moon to cross the Coleman Glacier. Only minutes have passed and we’re already jumping the first of a plethora of unavoidable crevasses, ice axes at the ready to arrest any sudden snow bridge collapses. I think to myself “I didn’t even need that coffee this morning, this is enough of a wake up”. At times it feels like tiptoeing past sleeping giants. Huge pillars of broken ice the size of houses, yawning crevasses the depths of which my 100 lumen headlamp can’t even attempt to see to the bottom of. As I inch across one of a few 3 foot wide...
