September 12, 2013, on the banks of the Bhagirathi, Gangotri, Uttarakhand, India "The river is insane," Wende texted via satellite. I was confused: She couldn't know that, at that moment, I was sitting on the bank of a raging Bhagirathi River in the hamlet of Gangotri. Sure, she of course knew I was in India, […]

The world lost a legend yesterday with the passing of Kancha Sherpa, the last living member of the 1953 British Mount Everest Expedition and, along with Jim Whittaker, the only living members of the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition. I didn't know Kancha well, but was fortunate to spend a couple days with him in […]

I’ve been meaning to write for some time now. There’s a lot to share, ideas and thoughts and concepts and simple ponderings bouncing around in this head of mine. But, it’s a struggle to make sense of them all, to conjure sufficient mental clarity to give form to the amorphous, to make sense of it […]

I remember when I first heard the term. Charley Mace and I were a couple pitches up a mellow, fun route in Clear Creek Canyon, trying unsuccessfully to outclimb thunderstorms, and talking about climbing, ego, and the like. One mutual climbing acquaintance kept coming up, one whose ego had come to define his persona, his […]