When most people find out I am a climber, they eventually get around to asking the question "so how did you get into climbing?" Before I get much farther, I should probably define climbing and what, in my mind, it means to be a climber. Climbing to me takes many forms and is practiced in many places, on a variety of mediums. Small boulders to alpine faces; city gyms to exotic crags. One of the reasons I love climbing so much is the incredible diversity of the sport.

      Based on informal observation over the twelve years I have been actively involved in and aware of the climbing community, I would say that areas of specialization within climbing have become more separate and even polarized within the community. I will attempt to not let my personal preference for climbing pursuits skew my thoughts, although I should warn you, I am an alpinist and a mountaineer at heart. I suspect I always have been (it just took a while to figure it out) and always will be.

      To me, climbing is people using their hands, feet, and tools to scale rock, snow and ice of all shapes and sizes, close to town or high in to mountains. I have wanted to try and paint a picture of the progression that some climbers make, from initial exploration, to current and future goals on a much larger scale than they at first could never have imagined. To do this accurately and completely is no easy (read short) task. Here at AAI our core focus is to help climbers achieve a higher level of skill and work towards independence and confidence in the mountains. I am constantly asked to help climbers lay out the most efficient way to accomplish whatever their personal goals might be, and balance that within their particular time and financial constraints.

      My hope here is to describe the series of events that led up to my development into an alpine climber and eventually into a professional guide in the hope that it will inform, answer questions, and provide a picture of what this sort of apprenticeship can look like over a period of time. Obviously this is just one person's experience, and for every climber you look at, you will see a somewhat different pattern, series of steps, or methods for working towards a higher level of skill and accomplishment.

      I moved from Wisconsin to Seattle at the age of 18 after having taken a summer intern position with a real estate agency in the area. Upon returning to Wisconsin from this internship, I was due to pack my bags and head to college where I had enrolled in classes and signed letters of intent to play for two sports teams at the college. Instead of following the plan that had been more or less been based on guidance from parents and counselors as well as uninformed personal decisions, I loaded my car and headed west to Seattle and my new home at the foot of the Cascade Range.

      A year or two earlier a youth counselor had taken a group of younger folks, myself included, to a rock climbing area in Wisconsin called Devil's Lake. I had enjoyed and thrived in the outdoors my entire life, and soon after my first climb, I was hooked on this new activity. This new affinity would prove problematic though. As a poor high school student with no idea how to even get started, there were some very real hindrances to my development and exploration in the climbing realm.

      After living in Seattle about six months, I had read the book several dozen times and I was able to afford a pair of rock shoes and a chalk bag. This got me going at a few local bouldering areas and to local training walls. My strength grew, and my balance improved, but my experience with and accurate perceptions of the sport did not.

      All this time spent learning the ropes at the crag eventually led to an interest in multi-pitch routes. My first significant climb was Outerspace on the Snow Creek wall in Leavenworth, Washington. This climb has a reputation for attracting newer climbers who maybe should be starting with a smaller climb. The climb is seven pitches long and is mostly 5.7-5.8 with a few 5.9 sections. We started early in the morning (in the dark) and ended in the evening wasted for the long drive home. It was awesome. I didn't yet sense where I would go with climbing, but there on Snow Creek Wall, a few hundred feet off the deck with rugged wilderness and craggy peaks in every direction, I knew I liked being up high, a ways off the beaten path, and on a long route with some element of the unknown much more than clipping bolts next to an angry pack of spray mongers at the crag.

      I am not even sure how we figured out which route to try and climb on Rainier, let alone what sort of gear to take and how to use it if things went wrong. We, in this case, two buddies from work, both rank beginners, and myself, ignorantly casual and confident. We stopped by REI on a Friday night, rounded up a few odds and ends including a rope, boots, ice axes, food, and most everything else we thought one would need to climb a glaciated peak. Things went well on the hike to camp Muir for almost everyone. One fellow had opted to use a 1980's era pack that was two sizes too small and looked as if a one armed orangutan had packed it, and he suffered a fair amount as a result. We had chosen to climb in a group of 3 because we had been told that on a glacier, three is safe and 2 is dangerous. We didnŐt know why of course, and a few more years of climbing would dispel that myth through clarification, understanding, and of course proper training.

      Dragontail Peak is a monster of a mountain in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in the North-Central Cascades Range. It's nearly 3000-foot north face towers over Colchuck Lake on the edge of the Enchantment Plateau. A few newer alpine climbers and I finagled a long weekend off of work and decided it was time to give a large scale alpine rock route a try. The Serpentine Arete is rated 5.8, but we had all been told that is was mostly easier. It's 12-pitch length and Grade IV rating seemed just about right. We climbed in two groups of two, on the largest wall any of us had attempted. We collectively knew little about route finding on a broad and complex face, even less about strategy for such a route. We wandered up to the base of the route and eventually (amazingly) found our way up the climb after a long day.

      Since my first climb on Dragontail (the Serpentine Arete) I have climbed the peak five times, twice in summer and three times in winter, and I have learned something from each and every climb on the peak. My second ascent of the mountain was in late September and via the longer and harder Backbone Ridge route. It was also my biggest epic and perhaps closest call in the mountains to date. For me it was the end of a long summer of climbing that included the North Ridge of Stuart, Prusik Peak, and a handful of other alpine rock routes. I figured the Backbone would be a logical "next step" because it was a bit longer, and reportedly more serious than any of these. A perfect ending to one of the best summers of my life. Instead, it was nearly the ending of my climbing altogether, and I had nightmares about it for weeks after the climb.

      After the drive from Bellingham to the trailhead, we settled into our bags at midnight-thirty or so. The alarm went off at 2:30am, and we were moving by 3:00am. We planned to do the route car-to-car. An ambitious plan in mid-summer, it was an even bigger bite to chew in the short days of late September. Jeff, my partner for the climb, had recently climbed Mount Goode and Storm King here in the Cascades (40 miles of hiking and 10,000' of elevation gain) in one push, and I had been going hard all summer so we thought we were up for the task. We made the 6 mile hike to the lake in 45 minutes and as day started to break on the route, we could see that the face was covered in a dusting of fresh snow. The learning process continues.

      After much debate, we settled on a strategy, or perhaps more accurately, a lack thereof. It was looking like a beautiful day, and we didn't know how much the route and climbing would be affected by the snow. We started up the route thinking that we would climb a few pitches and see how it went. If it went well we would climb a few more pitches, and then a few more and so on. By the time we figured out that we shouldn't keep going, we were to high too go down and were forced to continue on. Believe me when I say that I can recount this climb blow by blow. Every long runout on icy rock, every cold and wet hand hold, every sketchy anchor, every near fall, and the sight of the sun going below the horizon from a hanging belay well below the end of technical climbing is burned into my brain permanently, despite my many attempts to forget and erase the thoughts and feelings. I haven't been on a climb since, nor will I, where I haven't remembered and drawn from the experience while being thankful for having survived it.

      As we neared the top of the face, the last of the light faded and we donned our headlamps to continue climbing, 2500 feet from the ground. Into the unknown we rappelled from the top of a feature called "The Fin" into a gully filled with ice and shattered rock. There were no opportunities for protection, so I stayed on rappel on one of our ropes, and put Jeff on belay with the other. Using crampons strapped onto our tennis shoes, one mini axe each, big lumps in our throats, we began trying to scratch our way up the 60-degree, unprotected ice to the top of the gully. After taking turns falling asleep at the belays, we reached the top at 10:00pm. We stumbled down for a few hours and fell asleep for a few minutes on the dirt before we couldn't control the shivering. We got back to the car at 8:00am the next morning, long after having been out of food, water, mental and physical reserves. We reached camp 30 hours after we had left it.

      The near-sighted lessons we learned on this trip had to do with new snowfall, time of day, and mixed conditions in Alaska. As you might imagine, weather patterns and snow behavior vary from place to place, from clime to clime. After a storm in Alaska, there is a certain "purging" that takes place. Depending on the solar radiation and factors like wind and the amount of new snow, this can take a day, or as long as a few days. The process begins with snowfall ending and the sun coming out. As if on queue, the steep slopes start to shed snow, the rocks start to melt out, and the once powdery fluff starts to harden. As the temperature cool back down, what would have been soggy wallowing during the day, can now be climbed with crampons on firm nevé. Our adaptations included waiting for this "purging" event after new snowfall, and climbing at night and when the temperatures were cold, much as you would on glacier routes in the Lower 48. These sound like simple concepts, but at the time they were in contrast to what we had both been told - "climb in the day, climb in the sun" - was the best approach to technical climbing in cold conditions.

      The more valuable lessons that we took away from this trip were that together and as individuals, we could plan and succeed on technical routes in large-scale ranges, adapt strategies and techniques based on the conditions at hand, and that we were ready to step up the next level. The experiences of this trip have inspired and motivated nearly all of my climbing since, and the Alaska Range has been my spring home every year since that first trip.

      The Moose's Tooth climb was nearly seven years ago, and much has changed for me since then. I made the transition to pursue trainings and certifications as a professional guide, and I now lead new and developing climbers on some of the same routes that were instrumental in speeding me along my own learning curve. I enjoy teaching them technique, but also teaching them the big lessons I learned, without them having to through some of the same failure and have some of the same close calls that I did years ago.

      Climbing, like life, turns into a cumulative pool of both conscious and unconscious thought and action, driven by past experiences, observations, and lessons learned. If I had it to do over again, I would change some things along this climber's path, but not many. I feel, as I hope most people do, that I did the best with what I had to work with, and that I got my fair share of lucky breaks along the way.