Tag Trip

How a nice little 5 hour day becomes a 16 hour epic.

Getting Started So I found myself in Granada, after about two and a half weeks of touring around Spain. At that point I hadn’t climbed a mountain in almost a month, and was starting to get itchy. I had heard that the Sierra Nevadas were nearby;...

In which Dorothy and Alan spend far too much time in a car

or Showing Dorothy my homeland Prelude After the biting cold winds of Iceland, and the moderate climbs of California, it was time to go somewhere hot. Somewhere hot enough that whenever Dorothy is stuck shivering at a belay on a frozen waterfall,...

August 26 After a late night of partying and reverie cleaning up and packing, Dorothy arrived home from work and we ported the large pile of worldly belongings from the living room floor into the back of her car. An hour or so later we were on...

For the first time in my memory Dorothy asked me to go on a mountaineering trip with her. Normally the conversation goes something like this (from me to her): Hey dear, we should go climb such-and-such. It'll be fun ... No, it's not that hard. It...

“Blow, blow, thou winter wind”—Lord Amiens August 22 We arrived at the Keflavik airport at 7:00. The weather was overcast with a brisk breeze. Little did we know that the breeze is unusual in Iceland. As we learned a few days later, it is usually...

Summary: I found this route incredibly fun. While mostly moderate climbing, the short steps add variety, and a great sense of adventure. Be careful with conditions, an avalanche on this route would be very bad. Last year, when I first came to...

With all the disappointment that this winter has brought for skiers there is one upside: mountaineering rocks. None of that soul-killing wallowing in powdery snow, all the trails are bare, and all the climbs are either dry rock or hard snow and...

She said yes