The Ouray 100 ultramarathon probably ranks as one of the hardest races in the country, clocking in at over 100 miles, ~42000 feet of vertical gain, at an average elevation of 10200 feet.

What a fun name for a mountain! Mount Sneffels stands tall among its neighbors and it really does catch your eye driving south towards Ridgway. This is the outing where I really learn Colorado is a pay to win state and I won’t apologize for saying that 😤. Beeeautiful views though.

Checking out what I think is the more boring part of the San Juans, only because it’s so isolated from all of the other interesting peaks to the east. My second so called Great Fourtneer Traverses in Colorado.

I’ve always wanted to do this ever since I saw the Mediocre Amateur video in what felt like another lifetime before the pandemic. I took the ridge direct, making it an extra long scramble 😋.

A fun scramble variation on what would normally be a slog of a route. My first taste of bomber Crestone Conglomerate rock!

The tackling the first of the so called Great Fourtneer Traverses in Colorado.

If we thought going up three separate Sawatch peaks by themselves was monotonous, how about doing three in one day 😂.

Yep this is already getting old lol. The third peak with similar mileage, views, and terrain profile, all while taking the same amount of time to summit. Although I will say that this probably had the best views of the Sawatch Peaks we’ve done, probably because there is greenery & vegetation as I’m learning.

Tackling another mediocre peak in the Sawatch Range.

Unacclimatized, sleep-deprived, and not even 2 hours after arriving to Frisco did we decide to go up Colorado’s highest peak, Mount Elbert.

NFNWR is short for the north face of the northwest ridge on Mount Adams - what a mouthful to say. During the time I’ve been skiing in Washington, there’s been some opinions that this line might be less and less skiable as climate change impacts the mountain. With a fat high elevation snowpack and after seeing that some friends skied this line, I knew it was time to pounce.

The P3 Mount Defiance loop makes a rectangular shape on Strava I’ve come to recognize from everyone doing it over the years. A perfect low-stakes day for me and Haram as he prepares and crams some last minute vert for his upcoming race.

I’ve done Ruth Mountain previously in the summer and I thought it had some of the best views in the North Cascades for the relatively easy level of effort. I couldn’t say no to the same views with even more snow, tagging Icy Peak this time around, and skiing back down the enticing slopes of Ruth.

As straightforward of an up and down on Mount Baker as you can get. Great to revisit this route, but man is it kind of a boring slog in the sense that the views don’t change that much. The conditions this weekend were a little uncertain to go for anything bigger and I certainly needed the confidence booster after last week’s debacle.

I’ve always wondered what kind of outing I’d be capable of off the couch, and on this day I really paid for it trying to attempt two classic steep ski lines on Mount Baker.

I would love to be able to do this one again differently, but given that I found out than an aurora was happening the day of, I can’t be too bummed about it. Grateful to have even gotten to see such a rare phenomenon here in Washington at all.

The coastal mountains of British Columbia are a magical place. I was a little worried coming into this with the historically bad lower-elevation snowpack, but it ended up not detracting from the experience whatsoever. Indeed, the conditions at the bottom of the Whistler resort were a little dire, but it was sooo white once you got up in the mountains proper.

Bit of a different one. One of my big life regrets in life is not seeing the total solar eclipse in August 2017. In hindsight, I realistically could have made it to Santee, South Carolina as a reasonable day/overnight trip from the D.C. metro area. It’s entertaining thinking where else I could have been, and it’s been fun to hear from friends where they were when they saw it (map of trajectory).

It must’ve been a true spectacle to be on Mount Jefferson in Oregon, most of the southern Idaho ranges, and the Tetons or Winds in Wyoming. I think mathematically it’s going to be a looong time before the solar eclipse passes over that part of the American West again.

I can’t be too hard on myself, since I was only two weeks into a new job and really didn’t know anything about it at all until we were handed the solar eclipse glasses the day of. In Virginia, we had an 81% obscuration, so I still did take part in a bit of the experience as well as seeing the resultant pinhole effect. But finding out later what I missed, I had to see the real thing.

A Fifty Classic Ski Descent of North America that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. This one was especially special since Chris and I crossed paths interning at some random company back in my hometown on the east coast many lifetimes ago.

A warmup and scope out of the snow conditions around the Mount Baker Ski Area. Chris is so speedy!