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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