Today Garry talks about me whining on Mt. Rainer (not true!) as well as the David Sharp story and the commercialization of Everest. Read it here.

Part II of Gary's interview is here.

Check out Part I of my three part interview with mountain climber Garry Porter.

We reached the highest point in Japan Tuesday at 5:30pm. We're huge in Japan!

Three and a half years ago I scaled my first peak in the Catskills and was hooked to get into the exclusive Catskill 3500 club. The 3500 club is someone who has climbed all 35 peaks of 3500 feet elevation in the Catskills, including 4 of them twice in the winter. You may say, that is easy, but considering that 18 or so of them are trail less and the Catskills can have a foot of snow as early as October 1 and as late as May 1.

Well I did it! It did take me long enough since I got diverted by the mountains in Bhutan, Machu Picchu, Everest, Denali, Mt. Rainer (twice), Kilimanjaro and a marathon in some strange land of Antarctica.

So in all of those crazy treks, Nepal is my favorite country (people, scenery, Buddhist culture), Rainer is my favorite, and Kilimanjaro is the one most likely to do more than once.

In the Catskills, I would do almost any of the mountains over again (and will do a bunch this winter) and most likely will start climbing some peaks in the White Mountain Range in NH.

So here are the peaks:

2002:

Slide (2/9)

Balsam (2/24)

Hunter (6/2)

Southwest Hunter (6/2)

Black Dome (9/8)

Thomas Cole (9/8)

Blackhead (9/8)

Whindham High Peak (9/28)

Graham (9/29)

Balsam Lake (9/29)

Panther (11/10)

Panther (12/29)

2003:

Blackhead (1/12)

Big Indian (3/13)

Eagle (3/13)

Westkill (3/23)

Table (4/19)

Peekamoose (4/19)

Indian Head (10/4)

Twin (10/4)

Sugarloaf (10/4)

Pleatu (10/4)

Katterskill High Peak (10/25)

Bearpen (10/26)

Vly (10/26)

Slide (11/16)

Wittenberg (11/16)

Cornell (11/16)

North Dome (12/28)

Sherill (12/28)

2004:

Balasm (1/4)

Lone (9/22)

Rocky (9/22)

Doubletop (9/25)

Fir (11/27)

2005:

Balsam Cap (5/15/05)

Friday (5/15/05)

Rusk (7/16/05)

Halcott (09/17/05)

On Saturday I reached the summit of the trail-less peak Fir Mountain. I am now only a few peaks away (4 peaks, 2 hikes) away from reaching membership to the Catskill 3500 Club.

The Catskill 3500 is a club where if you hiked the 35 peaks in the Catskill Range that are above 3500' in elevation. How do you get to 39 you ask? You have to do 4 of the peaks twice, in the winter time.

I should get in early next year! I have been working on them since February 2002. These hikes have been very rewarding and the views have been great!

Dad is nagging me to take him hiking in the Catskills, Slide Mountain on snowshoes will be the first peak I do after I get the other 4. Hope to see some of you there...

You climber snobs may say 3500' that’s it? To you I say become a member of the 3500 club and get back to me. :) Some of these climbs were just as challanging as any day on Kilimanjaro (except the last two days).

Mt. Rainier had a 3.2 earthquake yesterday-one mile below the surface of the crater. Mt. St. Helens had a similar earthquake before is started to spew last month, but scientists say the two events are not linked. But five quakes greater than magnitude 2.0 were recorded Oct. 25-31-the same kind of activity on Mt. St. Helens.

I am just glad that I got to the top of Rainier this summer since if it goes, it will go big. I think it may go soon, it has been waiting 150 years. You heard it here first....

More bad news from this climbing season. The 7th person died on Mt. Rainier this year on October 25th. What is worse is that this is the first person do die this season on the Camp Muir side of the mountain. Two locals were hiking across a crevasse on Ingraham Glacier, 11,000 feet up the 14,411-foot mountain, near Disappointment Cleaver, when an avalanche hit. One guy had only his had free and dug himself to safety, but could not help his buddy at all. I camped at Ingraham Glacier at the foot of Disappointment Cleaver. :(

Bagged the second highest mountain in the lowqer 48. It was super hard. But super rewarding. Kimberly Tripp has some photos here.

VSLive starts tomorrow so some techie blogs due soon. :)

So I am back and alive from Alaska. We were snowed in for a few days and I missed a slew of flights (and conferences) but the worst that really happened to me was a bad sunburn.

The climb was great. We all had to rope up just in case we fell into a crevasse and needed to be rescued by our fellow climbers. We had to break trail in snow up to our hips and sometimes up to our armpits.

I am the second person on the first rope.

Eventually we got to the summit.

In Alaska at the base camp of Mt. McKinley (Denali), at 20,320 feet (almost 7,000 meters) it is the tallest mountain in North America, and one of the “7 summits”.

I am in the land of the 24 hour sunshine, I have not seen nighttime since last Thursday. The weather forecasts are a hoot, “party sunny“ and “sunshine“ for the “overnights“.

I am not going to the top of Denali, but climbing a much smaller mountin next door to build up my skills. More to come....

I leave on Friday for Alaska to climb some mountains.

The nation's tallest volcano and the continental US' second highest peak, Mt. Rainer is a great climb. I plan to stand on the summit and look at the beautiful Pacific Northwest this July.

While I like to climb this mountain (my photos from my trip up Rainer last year are here), it is also one that at over 14,000' demands tremendous respect. Whenever I fly into Seattle (which oddly is quite often) you can see it standing there all menacing above the clouds. On Saturday two climbers from the east coast tried to summit Rainer. The climbers were stranded at 12,300 feet from Saturday to Monday on a 45-degree slope with steep and rocky terrain above and below them. The climber who died fell 30 feet early Saturday on Liberty Ridge -- one of the most difficult routes up the 14,410-foot mountain. His climbing partner was able to reach him, set up a tent and call for help on a cell phone. A dramatic rescue happened on Monday, but unfortunately the climber died in the hospital.

A sad day for my sport and a great peak. My thoughts go out to the climber and his family today.

One of the coolest places I have even been to, Aguas Calientes at the foot of Machu Piccu , was hit by a big mudslide. The rail link was covered and hundreds of tourists are stranded and 11 people died.

This is sad since it is the only town around. It is a 5 day trek to Cusco over a 13,000 pass. I'll be thinking about eveyone down there this weekend.

Brown Girl in the Ring

In 1985, two British climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates became the first climbers to summit Siula Grande (appx 22,000’) in the Peruvian Andes. On the way down Joe took a bad fall and broke his leg very badly. Simon who should have left Joe attempted an amazing rescue effort. Simon tied two ropes together and lowered Joe 300 feet at a time. While on belay, Joe fell off a cliff and was hanging while Simon’s anchor was getting more and more unstable. At some point Simon made the very difficult (but correct) decision to cut the rope. Joe fell into a crevasse and was presumed dead.

Simon made the very difficult solo descent back to their base camp. Joe meanwhile with a broken leg and no food or water climbed out of the crevasse with his two ice tools (what most people would call an ice axe, but an ice axe is actually something different) and only 1 good leg. This was an amazing climb, probably the most amazing one in all of rock/ice climbing history.

The movie Touching the Void, documents this heroic and epic ascent, rescue effort and Joe’s climb out of the crevasse and days long crawl over the glacier back to base camp. Went to see it last night with Linda and John and lets just say we were all pretty moved. The strength and courage to stay alive and never give up was very motivating. It also reminded me of the lessons I learned on Everest, both in climbing and living your life. Somehow after seeing this movie the little things in life that bog your down don’t seem to matter all that much.

PS Siula Grande has yet to be summited again. Joe still climbs.

Climbing Mt. Rainer, Missing Advisor DevCon

I speak at lots of developer conferences around the world each year. Last year I spoke in front of over 20,000 people at over 15 events on 4 different continents. Besides making many new friends and visiting awesome places, the most rewarding thing about speaking is meeting developers and trying to help solve their problems. I remember still helping a young developer in Kuala Lumpur last year (along with Fernando) with the DTS Package from Hell. She came to me with it printed out and we spent a long time fine tuning it. (If you are reading this, please drop me a line and let me know if it all worked out!)

A lot of people ask me how I became a “famous” international conference speaker.  I tell them to have no fear of:

• Speaking in front of large crowds (the #1 fear in the USA is public speaking, #2 is death, so the person giving the Eulogy at the next funeral you go to is worse off than the dead guy)
• Flying
• Admitting that you are not smarter than your audience and that the only reason why you are on stage is that you made every mistake in the book and are willing to admit it

Also you need someone somewhere to take a chance on you. That is what the folks at Advisor did about 7 or 8 years ago when they selected me to speak at one of their events. For that reason I have always “returned home” and spoken at an Advisor DevCon every year. Actually the last time I missed an Advisor DevCon, was the spring of 1999 (my girlfriend was in college, now I feel old).

This year, I am climbing up Mt. Rainer again with Kevin and Gary from my Everest trip.  We are going to sleep in the actual crater, kept warm by the volcano’s heat. We are doing this ourselves (Not to help the evil RMI.) Unfortunately it conflicts with the dates of the next Advisor DevCon taking place in Las Vegas from June 6^th to 10^th. Good speaking buddies like Ken Getz and Tom Howe are always headlines as well as folks from Microsoft like Robert Green (who has been speaking at DevCon for as long as I have been going-which is 1996).

So go check it out. You can read about my hike up Rainer in the blog, but will miss the content at DevCon forever. J