After climbing Mt. Hood, which capped off - in a good way, mind you - a fairly depressing and sobering alpine season for me, I took a month off from climbing. I sat around, watched TV, drank beer, and tried to get back into work. My girlfriend and I went to the beach for a weekend, where I failed to relax and I succeeded in getting burnt a deep tomato red. I read about climbing, to be sure - hard habit for me to break. I talked to climbers quite a bit. I even planned a trip to Alaska for next spring. But mostly I drank beer.

97% of the climbing I've done to date has been on snow and ice. I feel quite comfortable in these conditions. However, it's become clear to me over the last year that if I want to climb some of the more demanding alpine climbs that I have on my tick list, that I desperately need to improve my rock climbing. After my month-long hiatus I did a little bit of bouldering and very easy solo fifth-class climbing locally, around Great Falls and Carderock. I found it fun, challenging, and a lot warmer than Mt. Whitney at 13,000 feet in an April snowstorm.

I had done a couple of trips to West Virginia for skiing and mountaineering, and had marvelled at the formation not so visible in the photograph above: Seneca Rocks. An ancient seabed, the rock had been pushed up through the earth over many, many years and eventually had flipped up on its side. It is a truly marvelous place to climb.