Provided everything goes well in between now and then, I will be standing on the summit of North America's highest peak, Mt. McKinley (or Denali as the climbing community rightly calls it), in June of 07. Since the blisteringly hot August of 1993 when I decided to climb all 50 of the states' highest mountains, I've had mixed feelings about Denali. On the one hand: Hell yeah, Denali baby! One of the Seven Summits. Woo-Hoo! On the other hand: I could fucking die!



Well...it's done. I'm going. We put the $1000.00 "NON REFUNDABLE" deposit down and I received my letter of confirmation about a week ago. I'll be climbing with Alpine Ascents out of Seattle. They've been guiding climbs up the world's great mountains for about 20 years and have a load of experience on Denali. But deciding to climb and putting down the money is the easy part.

The first real hurtle is making sure I'm in good enough shape to climb, and already I'm having trouble. A week ago (Fri. Aug. 11) I slammed my knee into a car door in the Target parking lot. It hurt pretty bad. At first but I thought I'd get over it quickly enough. Apparently I hurt it much worse than I thought I did. Here it is a week later and I'm about ready to start training again.

I think I'm going to use this ill conceived blog as an area to record some of my thoughts on mountain climbing, training for mountain climbing and as is the case with blogs in general, thoughts on what ever tickles my fancy that day. I doubt I'll check in consistently but I will do it.