I had just been revisiting photos from my time with him in Khumbu in 2012 when I heard the news that Jim Whittaker sadly passed away on April 7 at age 97. I'd been going through photos, looking for a specific one, of a specific peak, when I went down a rabbit hole. Photos of […]

Big Jim. A gentle giant. A gem of a human, and a loss that will be missed. Jim Whittaker, who passed away at 97 on April 7, was - to say the least - an amazing person. Like his twin brother - Lou Whittaker, who passed two years back - Jim was a massive man, […]

“Don’t get happy!” came the thundering voice from the sidelines. It was a classic saying of the late Norm Walker, my football coach, English teacher, poet, wisdom-giver, and wonderful man in high school at Holderness School. It sounded strange at first blush, but made sense the longer one played for Coach Walker: he hated cockiness, […]

Take meTo the magic of the moment on a glory night I wasn’t expecting to hear the Scorpions in the rural outskirts of Danilovgrad. And especially not belted out by a group of passionate, wine-buzzed, new Montenegrin friends roughly in tune with an accordion player. But, strange things happen when you open up on the […]