Buh-Bye Seattle Hikes – Mountaineering Journey

It’s been ages I wrote. My life took an interesting turn as I moved to the Bay area and didn’t find high enough mountains to train here. There are great mountains around but further away, 3-4h driving. It’s nothing like Seattle where in 45 minutes you can get a decent hike and training with marvelous views (big plus)!

Unfortunately I didn’t finish the mountaineer course. I actually missed just one rock-climb & glacier traverse trip to finish it. However, I twisted my ankle few days right before the big day. Such a bummer. We were supposed to do Baker mountain! Hopefully I will go back and do it!

Mailbox Peak:

The irony is that I sprang my ankle while training for the big climb. Here is a picture from that day, training with 40lb backpack on MailBox Peak (~9m round trip, 4000ft alt gain).

I sprang my ankle going down, while not paying attention, very silly! I fell that it was bad right after I heard a broken sound inside it. Right then I knew that the pain will kick in soon, so I decided to run all the way down before the swelling began, while I was still under the adrenalin kick. After that I was doomed for a few weeks!

So yes, no Baker for me! I’m glad the the team went and summit though! The pics looked great! Those guys are fighters and super passionate! You can do anything if you really want! Unless you are injured – that’s reckless!

Comments and Learnings:

This is a good lesson for me that most accidents happen when people go down. Everyone is tired and not paying attention. They think that the most difficult part is done, now all they have to do is speed up and get out of there. Unfortunately, this way of thinking is prone to making mistakes and most of people get injured. Lesson learned! I’m glad I didn’t learn this lesson while on a bigger mountain!

Summerland Trail

My last week in Seattle was of course doing my two favorite things in the world: spending times with friends on the mountain.

Here are some pics with my friends on Summerland Trail. Very scenic trail with Mount Rainier in the background. Looking at this is a bitter sweet memory that makes me think “don’t be sad that you are not there anymore, be happy that it did happen!”