Today I was reading an article that I found incredibly fascinating. It’s an article about the mental toll of football (soccer) players who are found to be extraneous to plans, whether by having another better person ahead of them in the pecking order, or coming back from injury and being seen as damaged goods and […]
Read more "The Unseen and Unheard – Injury and Mental Health"I woke up from the back of my car, the rainbow colored prayer flags that hang from my trunk fluttered in the dusty rusted sand, and I watched ash skies envelope the Six Shooter’s towered architecture. Across the fields of sagebrush, and over the black stained bacteria of the cryptobiotic soil, a small rabbit scurried […]
Read more "In The Heart Of The Creek"Why live a life that’s perceived as mad? My life is a love story. My life is a celebration of adventure, heartbreak, challenge, capability, and storytelling, the characteristic to which I hold myself dearest. My love story started in the mountains. From the granite walls of Yosemite, where I explored with my mother, a heritage […]
Read more "Question Madness"When I lived In Seattle, Nelson and Potterfield’s ‘Selected Climbs in the Cascades’ was essentially my climbing bible. So many magnificent climbs, summits, and remote approaches that made the North Cascades this mythical wonderland of relatively unknown and great ascents. I flipped through some of my favorites, Early Winters Spire, Washington Pass, The Pickets, Glacier […]
Read more "Eldorado Peak: The East Ridge"We’re officially on the other side, but the road is long and difficult. Last Thursday, about 10 days after the accident, I finally went into surgery to try and piece together my complete mess of a leg. In just over two hours, I had my ankle, which was badly dislocated, screwed back to my leg, […]
Read more "Healing"For my entire climbing career, I wanted to climb Castleton. That was my tower, it was my goal. Castleton Tower is a majestic 400-foot spire of magnificent Wingate Sandstone that sits proudly on a 1,000-foot cone of loose, rotten, decaying boulders. When I first came to Moab in 2011, my first time climbing outside, I […]
Read more "Castleton Tower: The North Chimney"Thank you Stanley Brand and REI for sponsoring my post and my adventures. On big routes, sprawling alpine walls, and tough climbs, food is meant for sustained energy and warmth. When I’m climbing for multiple days on end, I need to carry equipment that’s light, durable, and easy to clean. Alpine climbing is about constant movement, […]
Read more "Alpine Eating"I’ve always searched for adventure on the grandest scale possible. I like days where I wake up from a tent on a remote ridge. Mornings halfway up an ice wall on the way to the summit. An afternoon traversing a canyon, getting lost between the cracks, and an evening sitting with a friend, watching the […]
Read more "Embracing Microadventure"Exploration has become so routine that it’s been almost forgotten in today’s age. A major expedition may make headlines in a climber’s world, but it’ll make the back page of a website or newspaper, usually hidden somewhere in the Sports section. In the Golden Age of Himalayan mountaineering, the world held with bated breath, the […]
Read more "In Defense Of Exploration"I am a converted snowshoe believer. In January, I was invited to spend the first day of 2015 in ice-glazed valleys of the Mountain Loop Highway. I didn’t have a pair of snowshoes and my experience was limited at best to a jaunt with friends last March. Compared to my climbing and hiking exploits, snowshoeing […]
Read more "Tubbs Flex Alps Snowshoes Review"
MIKE OFF THE MAP 