Any article about death on a mountain is difficult to write. I am concerned about getting the facts wrong, perhaps offending family and friends. However, it serves a purpose of exploring the reason for incident and reminding everyone that mountains can be deadly. The best source year after year is the American Alpine Club’s – Accidents in North American Mountaineering published annually to members. This article is a partial overview of the tragic events thus far in 2010. Many people associate death in the mountains with the well publicized events on the big climbs like Everest or K2. But each continue reading

Sometimes a goal is not a goal until you near the end. That is my story for climbing all of Colorado’s Mountains over 14,000 feet. My first 14er was Longs Peak in 1992, then a few more in 2002. I got serious after meeting Patrick Vall and Robert LeClair. They both wanted to climb all the 14ers and I needed the training for my Himalayan climbs throughout the decade. Thus one by one, we started climbing them all. This weekend I will travel to an area named the Chicago Basin and climb three of the ranked 14ers thus competing my continue reading

Late June 2010, I teamed up with my regular 14er partners, Patrick and Robert to complete some unfinished business. The 14er combination of Castle, 14265′, and Conundrum, 14060′, stand outside of Aspen at the end of a long mining dirt road. I had completed both in 2009, (see the reports for last year’s Castle and Condundrum) while Patrick had climbed Castle with me and Robert had been thwarted twice for both peaks. So as a team, we took on the pair to check them both off once and for all. The early summer of 2010 had been hot with periods continue reading

I will be climbing an old friend this week – Mt. Belford and the neighbor, Mt. Oxford. They are in the Sawatch range in Central Colorado and I climbed them both in 2005. These are not particularly difficult climbs but this will be special for an entirely different reason.

It has been a good summer for climbing my beloved 14ers – I have 8 new climbs with a few repeats. My goal is to climb the 58 peaks above 14,000′ however more importantly I am working on various aspects of my climbing skills for the upcoming 7 Summits journey to raise $1M for Alzheimer’s research. This week, I will be traveling to southern Colorado to climb 3 peaks in the Sangre de Cristo Range: Blanca Peak, Ellingwood Point and Little Bear Peak. My regular partners, Patrick and Robert will join me for two of these. These are not difficult continue reading

After last week’s mixed results – summited Snowmass but tweaked a knee stopping my bid on Capital; I will try again on Thursday. This time I am watching the weather carefully. September in the Colorado mountains is a dicey time. It can be sunny and warm one minute and harshly cold with snow the next. A cold front is passing through today (Tuesday) and the lows are around freezing at 12,000′. I expect some icy conditions at 14,000 near the summit. Capital is known as one fo the more difficult 14ers since the standard route involves traversing a knife-edge ridge continue reading