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!

Can’t remember why I came up here since Camp Muir is a relatively uninteresting objective, but still good to check out the area.

A lot of sentimental value coming back here as the Wasatch were my first “real” mountains I saw up close, and where I learned to really ski, which is probably responsible for this whole phase of my life. I wanted to write an entry for each outing I did in Utah but frankly I didn’t have that many pictures that I felt were all that scenic, so combining all of the pictures into one post with a bit of thoughts at the end.

A nice group run to see some larches in the Chiwaukum Range. I should come here more often.

A failed attempt to get up Gothic and Del Campo peaks due to time but a great outing to decompress after work.

My friend Haram ran the Teanaway 100, a pretty hard 100 mile ultramarathon here in Washington with around 30000 feet of gain, and did it with almost no training (no exaggeration). And he managed to place 7th out of 23 at 32.5 hours, so a pretty decent performance. His previous biggest day was running the Enchantments, a mere 18 miles with 5000 vert - pretty bonkers accomplishment if you work out the ratio of performance to time spent/effort invested.

Up Sahale via the Quien Sabe Glacier route. Waffled a bit due to the forecast but glad I made it out (although I regrettably stubbed my toe on a rock and broke it).

This traverse covers the ridge of peaks directly south of Rainier from Stevens to Eagle Peak. I don’t think I’d recommend this one lol, mainly because it was a lot of work for views that didn’t change all that much (although it was cool to see the angle of Rainier change a little bit going west to east).

I was originally going to note how unremarkable Sourdough Mountain is except for the fact that it casually rises almost 5000 feet from Diablo Lake below. I guess I do take some of the easy peaks for granted sometimes - but I still think the views from the road are unimpressive compared to other national parks.

My first foray into the elusive Picket Range and perhaps one of the few peaks day-trippable in the area for my humble aerobic ambitions.

Tried to milk out the last of a weekend in the North Cascades after an exhausting day yesterday. A top 5 “gotta bring my mom” type hike for sure though - probably the best view of the southern pickets.