Category: Alaskan Adventures

Peaks and Pee Funnels: My Month of Mountaineering, Part 2

Emma4 Comments

Another climber once asked if I knew the definition of mountaineering. I could have said a million things, I guess, but nothing came to mind. “What is it?” I asked.

“Moving slowly uphill while not feeling very well,” he replied.

Such moments of clarity tell me two things about climbers as a group: first, our chosen activity and its inherent unpleasantness, at least on paper, indicate a slight imbalance in our collective brain function. Second, and perhaps more importantly, we are aware of the first fact, and we have a sense of humor about ourselves.

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Peaks and Pee Funnels: My Month of Mountaineering, Part 1

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I woke up at 3:42 a.m. on May 5 and quietly unzipped the vestibule of my tent. It was calm, clear, and cold in the Talkeetnas for the first time in five days. In eighteen minutes it would be time to start melting snow for water, for today it looked like we would finally get a window to climb. For now, though, my two tentmates were snuggled in their sleeping bags like so many giant, cozy caterpillars. I suddenly felt a wave of affection for these people with whom I’d weathered the seemingly endless snowstorm. Despite our cramped quarters, our mutual excitement over the increasingly remote possibility of climbing had been enough to pass the time, and our spirits had remained high.

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Spring (break) fever: Alaska edition

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I have a long-standing tradition of waiting until the last weekend of spring break to even start thinking about completing any major assignments for the following week. This year was an exception in that I brought along plenty of homework to do, but I did not manage to break my pattern of not actually doing it. Now, a full week of classes after spring break, I’m still feeling the repercussions of I-climbed-all-week-instead-of-reading-itis, and my time would be better spent pondering assessment tools for outdoor programming than writing this post. But I digress.

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On being nice to spiders, gun control, and other hot topics.

Emma1 Comment
Don't read this book to your children, unless you want them to turn out like me.
Don’t read this book to your children, unless you want them to turn out like me.

When I was a kid, my dad used to read me this book called Be Nice to Spiders, which I’m told was one of his own childhood favorites. The book is about a spider named Helen who goes to the zoo and spins webs to catch flies, so all the zoo animals are happy, because everyone hates flies. Perhaps as a result of this story, I do not kill spiders when I find them in my house. Most of the time I just let them be, since I figure spiders are less annoying than those slow, stupid winter flies that buzz around and refuse to ever fully die. Sometimes if there’s a really big one I do the glass-and-paper trick where you trap the spider and take it outside. I never kill them. This practice, among other things, is what led to my nickname in college, Boulder Barbie. My best friend still calls me that, although she might change her mind once she sees this post.

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Back in the Saddle: My Triumphant Return to Mediocrity

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Days later, all this peeled off and my toe looks pretty normal now. Isn't it so gross?!
Days later, all this peeled off and my toe looks pretty normal now. Isn’t it so gross?!

When given a choice between sleeping in and being repeatedly hit in the face with ice, normal people would choose the former every time. Due to some kind of malfunction in my brain, I am drawn to the latter option, and when someone asks if I’d like to get up at the crack of dawn and endure hours of falling ice and freezing temperatures, I reply that I’ll be there with bells on. I guess my synapses aren’t firing quite as they should be.

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