>>1031388The fuck?
Not a mountaineer yet but my local club has an open Rainier trip that is accessible to people just graduating their mountaineering school looking to challenging themselves. And they are extremely safety-minded. The Cleaver from what I've heard is mostly just a long slog as long as you avoid the ocassional crevasse.
Anyway, I agree, mountaineering is like the apex of land-based /out/. I would put circumnavigating in a sailboat right along with it but that's on the water, just takes equivalent amounts of preparation I'd say.
My goal is to at least do our big peaks here in the Northwest. Adams, Hood, Rainier. After that we will see where I go with it. I just learned to rock climb so I can get used to ropes and some of the technical stuff. If I do enough of it I'll take trad climbing and ice climbing this year, and then mountain school starts in the Spring which I will take for sure.
I love MTB and backpacking and other /out/ stuff, but everyone needs to pose themselves with a challenge in their life and this is mine. I guess it's kind of the final push for me, mentally, out of the diseased state I was in as a teenager til about 21. Out of shape, quiet, wimpy, bullied in school. I'll always be an introvert, but I'm none of those other things anymore.
It's hard. It takes skill and experience. It's something so few people do. And those summit views take my breath away. I have to do it. I have to. As challenging as climbing is, and as nervous as I was about my first rappel, as intimidating as it is to set up rope systems at the edge, these things all get better the more I do them, and at the risk of sounding cliche and cheesy, the siren call of those ice fields and summits is too much to let these insignificant obstacles stop me.
Random picture of my orchard 'cuz it's all I have on my work computer.
