Planning to take a 6 1/2 day glacier skills course with a summit attempt in the summer of 2011 with 8 of my best buds.
One of my goals is to climb Denali in Alaska at some point in the fairly near future so I figured I better take some baby steps towards that goal. I asked one of my Ironman training partners, Tom, where I should begin and he pointed me to Mt. Rainier. Tom has gone on various climbing expeditions and Rainier was where he got started. He pointed me to the International Mountain Guides website to take a look at the different guided climb options and while I was checking out the website I noticed a familiar name on their list of highly accomplished mountain guides. It was my best friend from grade school Mike Haugen. Mike's family moved away from my hometown after 5th grade and we never heard from each other again until recently. A couple years ago my parents read an article about Mike climbing Mt. Everest and helping to save someone's life on the mountain in the process so I knew that he was an accomplished climber but didn't know he was a guide. After looking through their climb options I decided on their 6 1/2 day Glacier Skills Seminar. This course is an expedition style climb where we'll learn climbing skills on the mountain each day such as crevasse rescue, ice climbing, rope tieing, etc. We'll also make a summit attempt during the course of the 6 days on the mountain. I thought it would be the perfect introduction to mountain climbing.
The next step was to invite some of my best friends from throughout my life to join me. The course only has room for 8 climbers so I thought it was be an awesome experience to get a bunch of my favorite people together to hang out on the mountain with no TV, email, cell phones, etc. If we fill the group then it will be our own private climb and will be more likely to tailer the course to our fitness level and needs. I asked a handful of my buds from high school, college, and beyond and nearly all of them said they were in on the spot. Now that the group was assembled I wanted to see if we could get Mike as our guide so I contacted him via Facebook and we got the ball rolling. I called up the IMG team and they said we'll just need to all sign up for the same seminar date once the dates come out in their newsletter in the middle of this summer. So at this point we are just waiting for the dates to come out to get signed up for Jul/Aug of 2011. I'm excited to catch up with a lot of my best friends that I haven't seen in a while as well as get challenged and learn some mountaineering skills in the process.
Here's the roster for the Rainier trip:
Adam Lindell (Buffalo, NY) - Ran xc & track together @ Marquette
Clarke Rodgers (Charlotte, NC) - Train for triathlons together
Dave Hornak (Charlotte, NC) - Train for triathlons together and is my neighbor
Eric Zack (Burlington, NC) - Ran xc & track together @ Marquette
Matt Dunlavy (Somewhere in Kansas) - Ran xc & track together @ Marquette
Nick Frank (Charlotte, NC)
Pete Hoskow (San Francisco, CA) - Roommates in college and ran xc & track together @ Marquette
Tyler Wichmann (Charlotte, NC) - Train for triathlons together