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Climber, writer, margarita specialist. Trying to learn Instagram.
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Recent posts
@kellycordes inspiring motivational life coach moments. #needanewpartner
18 May 2026
Festivus for the rest of us! We begin with the (ubiquitous) airing of grievances!! Followed by (moderate) feats of strength!!! And then, should we be so lucky, joy, peace, and love. If our hearts triple in size. Anyway, while Frank Costanza would put the first two holiday events in caps lock, may the Festivus Miracle bring you minimal bickering and maximal beauty. Ho ho ho (insert mom joke here).
26 Dec 2023
Sometimes, especially when we are young, we tend to dismiss the wisdom of the old. I suppose the old occasionally get stuck. Tom Hornbein was old, as he often reminded me, but never stuck, and I cannot think of another human I have respected more. Gracious, understated, infinitely wise. And so it worked out when Steve, the mastermind at @adventurejournal, asked if I’d consider writing about Tom for their gorgeous print quarterly. I’d scribbled pages upon pages of notes on Tom over the years, after all—couldn’t help myself—whether we’d sat and talked or scrambled up rocks behind his house at Lumpy Ridge (“I see you’re making the same mistake as others,” he once called down to me as I spotted him, 88 years old at the time. “You’re stupidly getting beneath me, so that if I fall I also take you out”). And yet I hesitated, because how could I? The immensity of his life and his wisdom, and the inability to capture the essence of a person in a few thousand words. Everyone knows about his 1963 first ascent of the West Ridge of Mt. Everest, and with good reason. Sit and try, just for a moment, to imagine. The gear they had, the overpowering emptiness of the unknown, onto terrain never before touched by humans, with a descent that traverses the mountain? “Everest was just another event in my life,” he said. “Not the only event.” To Tom, his climbing paled beside his contributions through medicine and teaching. Yet he saw them as inseparable, because he saw risk as an essential element to life, integral to growth. After my piece came out in March (print only, AJ 28), at our next lunch date, Tom asked me to sign it for him and I could hardly speak, much less protest, and so I tried to mirror my hero and simply be gracious. He radiated gratitude and curiosity, up until the end. “Dying is not separate from living, but life’s final act,” he said. What a perspective. What a human, what a life. Tom Hornbein, Nov 6, 1930–May 6, 2023. Stardust, my friend, forever.
08 Jun 2023
In the original Top Gun, there’s this scene where Maverick gains critical intelligence on the mythical MiG-28—almost as mythical as this unnamed cirque way the fuck back in BFE, which I’ve daydreamed about since poring over maps in the 1990s. Thing is, you can’t see it from anywhere. You have to get close. “So, you’re the one,” says Mav’s instructor, call sign Charlie, stone cold fox, in a hushed tone. Pretty much the same thing I said to Justin Woods and @chrisgibisch. But Charlie wonders how he got that secret information? Mav crosses his hands and pantomimes: “We were inverted.” ¶ “Danger Zone” played in my mind, on loop. Gibisch revealed that in his sleeping bag he’d re-watched the opening scene to the movie K2 for motivation (he has it saved on his phone, apparently). Justin wouldn’t shut up about his “Certificate of Completion” from some Leadership Academy Training he’d just been forced into for work. Combined, we were finally ready. After all, this shit takes time. A few decades, about eight hours on skis with big packs (“Only a coupla spots where ya start to question your life’s choices,” Justin said while selling the approach as “not too bad”), and not only time but timing. Go too early and the days are too short and it’s just too fucking cold. Go too late and the grizzlies are waking up hungry and the ice is falling down. The cirque is an absolute death trap in the wrong conditions, which means most of the winter. Guess you gotta time the right part of the right day, too, because it was -2F while cooking coffee but a few hours later the sun melted-out a screw at a belay (ever be cracking jokes and then jolt onto a single screw? Talk about nearly inverted…). ¶ So patience, a shitton of luck, and, most of all, the right partners—thanks, guys, for everything. Took 25 or so years for things to line up on my end. Which, come to think of it, is about how long it took for Maverick to go from being a twinkle in his daddy’s eye to basically saving the whole entire world. Hmmm. Just a coincidence? Yeah, probably. But still. Thanks, guys—Little Buddy will be your wingman anytime.
11 Mar 2023
𝘓𝘦𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘺 @adventurejournal 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺: On the crumbling edge of Afghanistan’s River Panj, a clean-cut, unassuming avalanche mitigation expert named Doug Chabot stood alone, staring at the water. It was June 2021, and the river ran broad, swift, and frigid, fed by the melting snows of the mighty Hindu Kush mountains, where peaks rise to twenty-five thousand feet in natural strongholds of glaciers and stone. In the previous weeks, Chabot had traveled widely through the region, wearing a traditional shalwar kameez and newly grown beard, and in the remote mountain villages of northern Afghanistan the locals had welcomed him warmly. He was there for a simple reason: to prevent avalanche deaths. ¶ Then, suddenly, provincial districts nationwide came under attack. Local governments were falling. Two days earlier, a city where he had recently stayed was overthrown. If captured, he would surely be considered an American spy and tried in sharia court, if not summarily executed. The simple had become complicated. The opposite shore, Tajikistan, was a world away. Chabot stared again at the river. He would have to swim at night, when nobody could see. The Taliban were coming. @mtavalanche #dougchabot
24 Sep 2022
LOST: Left-foot TC Pro, original model, size 38.5. Well worn, but easily identifiable by its new shoelaces and fresh resole (the latter making this loss particularly hard). First photo is the last known image of said shoe (new laces clearly visible), which was last seen free falling 800 feet to Broadway and then pinballing down Field’s Chimney. Although the shoe may now be a little dinged-up, it retains sentimental value and the fresh resole had promised us more memories together. I scoured the base afterward, and amid the detritus of the remnants of the Mills Glacier I saw many shoes, none mine. I am thus to believe that my beloved shoe stuck a ledge somewhere mid-chimney (good rubber, the TCP). Should you find yourself rapping the shooting gallery that is Field’s, please keep an eye out for my shoe. It fit my foot really well and is the best trad shoe ever made. Will gladly pay shipping and buy beer for its safe return. Until then, RIP left-foot 38.5 TC Pro with the new laces and fresh resole, and thanks to @p_m_a for a fucking fantastic day on the Diamond, it made me feel alive. @rockandresole @patagonia_climb
09 Sep 2022
Such important and insightful reflections on the irony of this Independence Day, 2022, by Sonja Bjornsen @sonjacat . Poignantly expressed in a short piece, and a lot to think about. @allezoutdoor or navigate to here: https://allezoutdoor.com/blogs/news/feelings-of-independence
05 Jul 2022
I wrote an essay for @WildSnow on the joy of walking uphill, alone, on skis--and ripping skins atop a seven-degree slope. Which is also a reflection on growing old. Yes, I "shred" (in the parlance of our times). Link in profile.
06 Apr 2022
“Wait, hold on,” Justin says. “Look cool.” I smile, noticing both of his hands on the camera. “No! Look cool!” I smile again, step off the second belay, feeling a million miles away. “No!” again. “Pretend you’re in K2!” I gather my giggle, shift to Blue Steel and stare skyward. “That’s it, that’s the one!” Click. Well, maybe not, since I appear to be stepping off a snow hill. Dammit. Flat light, but I swear, I swear it really was cooler than it looks, like you shoulda seen it, so cool, maybe even moviestar cool. K2 cool? It’s Justin’s favorite movie (edging out Top Gun, apparently). “That movie changed my life,” he always says, and all these years later I’m still unsure if he’s joking or serious. Serious, I think. Anyhow, recently he’d called, “Conditions are great, ya gotta come up — chance of a lifetime.” (As you probably guessed, that last bit is a line from K2.) He’s right, conditions in that impossible place were great, and about 6 hours into the approach in way-the-hell-out-there middle-of-BFE Montana, on the still-spooky-when-solid death slope leading to the wall, I remembered, for the millionth time, that it’s a helluva lot easier to look at pictures and talk a big game, of which we’re goddamned professionals. When will we ever learn? I flashed back to my Missoula years, half a lifetime ago, and realized that in a sense we’re still the same big-talking, low-performing junkshow we always were. If you account for our fancy modern gear, we are unequivocally worse than the Chief, Earl, Marc & Kirby, and the few others who put up Glacier’s best ice lines, mostly in the 90s and early 00s. But that’s OK. A few days back we did a few climbs, nothing special to anyone but us, and in this one part, on the ski out, for at least a second, I looked damn cool doing 30 with a 30# backpack, pulling a one-legged ski pirouette. It didn’t end well, but if how it felt matters more than how it looked, on the whole I’m good, still sore and happy, done with ice, ready to rock climb, and dreaming about a return. We’ll never learn. Hope not, anyway. @patagonia_climb
19 Mar 2021
@thefirnline dives into the lives of mountain climbers. It tends toward thoughtful conversations, and I’m a big fan, so I was honored to be Evan’s guest on a recent episode. Alas, after some childhood stories (that’s me, upper left, 2nd photo), and some pre-climbing background, I then drifted into our days of debauchery in Missoula, reminiscing about the early times, the influences and the memories, and how the mountains and the people I was fortunate to share them with forever shaped me. The seemingly random photos all connect to our conversation. Link in profile, and at thefirnline.com
14 Jan 2021
It’s not that I’d forgotten about Glacier’s ass-kickings, but, as the kids say, it had been a minute. Twentysome years since I’d tried to climb ice in the Park, a place defined by wintertime rain, sleet, slush, fog, snow, wind, arctic cold, early starts and massive days, massive paw prints and insomniac bears, creepy frozen lakes and whiteout visibility, and forecasts that change by the goddamned minute. Oh yeah, and avalanches. I hate avalanches. I know of 3 horrifying cases where huge avalanches roared down and, miraculously, launched *over* the climbers because they were lucky to be on a vertical step. One of those cases was my own. Fuck that. Dumb luck, wild place, a long, long, time ago. But last week was Justin’s fault. He talked me into it. Justin Woods, you see, knows Glacier, and he’s always trying to get out—hell, his mom went into labor on the North Fork Road, up by Polebridge, only place I’ve ever seen a wolf, which somehow reminds me of the day twentysome years ago when The Chief and I carried heavy packs through snow and low fog looking for ice, finding none, but on the hike out realized we weren’t alone (sleepwalkers…). It was one of the 23 times, by my rough count, that we’d driven the 150 miles from Missoula, in winter, hoping to climb. I recall that we’d actually climbed only 5 routes, though now I remember only 3. Not sure what happened to the other 2, maybe they got lost in the fog. Maybe I forgot. Either way, every fucking day last week I was ready to quit before we roped up—the approach, the humidity, the gray, fatigue, fear, and, mostly, as Dr. Evil says, “general malaise.” I felt like a psycho, but we aren’t in charge up there. And yet, sometimes you get lucky—I’m still tired from Glacier’s gifts, and though we never saw the sun I’m still glowing. It was great to be back. I blame Justin. @patagonia_climb Pic 3 & 6 by Justin Woods, #5 of JW
23 Dec 2020
Goddamn wind (in the immortal words of Walter Sobchak). Oh well, can’t be that hard to run a chainsaw. Bet @tommycaldwell could help me figure it out.
14 Nov 2020
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