Ben Clark and Jon Miller are on a ski expedition to return to 23,390′ Baruntse, their second attempt.

Ski The Himalayas Season 2, Episode 4 leads viewers on the Mera La trail to Baruntse. Miller and Clark share the adventure as the pair view the expedition footage often sharing a story “not for air”. In this episode the trail winds through high mountain passes and into remote villages.

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Having wanting to ski the remote Glacier Peak in the North Cascades for a while now, my brother and I finally lucked out with promising weather and hit the road for three days. With a great late snow season we were confident there would be snow left to ski, even if it was almost August, and we were fueled by our inspiration was to keep the turns all year spirit alive.

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So the summer plans have been in the works for a little while, and this year it is a return trip to the Adamant Mountains of the northern Selkirks in British Columbia.

In 2008 I headed there with fellow Mountain Guide Craig McGee to try our hand at a few routes. This year we are going back to try and complete some unfinished projects…b ut in the mean time here is a sampler from the last trip. It provides a good glimpse into what alpine rock climbing is all about.  Enjoy!

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Osprey’s own Sarah Harper Burke will summit Mt. Shasta for The Breast Cancer Fund “Climb Against The Odds” . Please donate to Sarah’s climb today! Whether it be $5 or $50, every dollar will help in the fight to prevent breast cancer. Donate here.

I live in an instant gratification type of society. Online shopping, instant messaging and smart phones bring me a sense of having things right now. So when we arrived at the trailhead to Snowdon Peak, all I could think about was, “that’s really far away”. I wanted to be at the summit right now. I wanted to be learning all the information I came to acquire right now.

The Breast Cancer Fund “Climb Against The Odds” Mt. Shasta climb is three weeks away. In preparation for the climb I needed to learn basic mountaineering techniques such as how to glissade and use an ice axe and crampons. Graciously, the Southwest Adventure Guides of Durango donated a day of training to the cause. It was 6:30 am and my guide Bill Grasse and I were geared up and ready to go.

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John Muir: “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”

Muir and many others share so many remarkable footnotes about the experiences we all share in the mountains.  They all have the same underlying message, “mountains are here to make us humble, to help us understand our place.”

Mount Rainier Flying into Seattle

Mt. Rainier was my big Pacific Northwest goal for this year. Residing in the Midwest it took planning and an organized logistical approach to make this adventure possible. The Big “R” has always been one of those mountains on my list, but it always seems to get put on the back burner for closer peaks in the west; Garnett, Granite, Wilson and Maroon Bell. Now with several buddies living in Portland and Seattle, a team could easily be put together and the logistics come down to only my worries of getting out to the mountain. This was the time to put the boots into Pacific Northwest mountain snow.

We decided on an early May ascent. A late winter ascent were the weather was a little more unpredictable but an attempt to miss the big summer crowds. Going into the adventure we all knew the level of risk and factors with a winter ascent.

I had talked to my buddy Jason Tanguay who has guided the Big “R” more then a 100 times, who said: “Those Rainier dates ARE really early, essentially a winter ascent. Won’t be crowded! It could be amazing, but you may get schooled by mountain’s weather.“

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Trip Planning...Way too Excited to Sleep.

by Mark Jobman

Standing on top of a summit in Nepal, kayaking down the Gold River in Canada, climbing one of the hundreds of lines on Devils Tower, or just planning a weekend get away in your own back yard; a big part of the adventure is the planning process. The logistics of making sure you have the perfect route planned, the proper gear, the bivy locations, and the most important — someone along to help make the trip memorable. After all it’s not about the destination it’s about the shared experiences.
For most of us, we are wanna be dirt-baggers, weekend warriors, and evening indoor craggers. We have families, and careers that drive our Monday through Fridays. Thus the planning process becomes even more important to us. It helps us maintain our dreams of the mountains, steep trad lines, and quick waters. The fun is spending countless hours over maps, reading through guidebooks, emailing friends, and dreaming of the epics to come. It seems to make the adventure begin sooner and last longer.

Yes, I will be the first to admit that some of the best adventures are those that we can place up on the “lets just wing it” shelf. These adventures pose epics that create engraved memories and some remarkable campfire stories.  Planning alone can’t take the epics out of adventure. Even on the most planned adventure something has to go wrong once a day. We just have to deal with it and move on to enjoy the moment.

This next week I head out to the Pacific Northwest to climb Mt. Rainier with a few buddies. A trip that we have been planning now for the past 6 months. It all started with a quick email, or phone call… “Hey you in?” From that point forward the adventure begins, dreams form and the excitement builds.

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by Evan Stevens

This is my first post as an Osprey Adventure Envoy! For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been teaching a mountain guide certification course in British Columbia.

Read more on my blog Keeping Track of Evan:

Burning the Candle from Both Ends…

Sometimes that is what the guide certification process is about. The alarm goes off at 5:45 am, coffee maker is turned on, weather is checked, bag is packed, lunch made, thermos filled. Skins? Check. Ski boots? Check. Gloves, hat, goggles, sunglasses, warm hat, gore-tex….check check check. And then the candidates show up at my house at 6:55am for the morning guide’s meeting and briefing. We discuss the overnight changes in the weather and snowpack, the anticipated hazards associated with our day, and then review our plans. We pile out of the house and head up to the hills for more ski touring fun.

That is how every day has started for me lately, and they haven’t been finishing until around 7pm at night, when the tours are done, the candidates debriefed, weather and snowpack discussed and plans finalized for tomorrow. Then its dry out my gear, unpack, eat dinner and go to sleep. Repeat the whole process the next day.

But we have fun out there everyday, because after all it is ski touring/mountaineering, and we are climbing peaks and skiing mostly powder. This week has been a blitzkreig of spring storms, that are seeming more like December than April. Low freezing levels on the coast of BC, has resulted in over 120cms of cold smoke at Whistler this week. It just doesn’t stop…which isn’t necessarily that great if you want to do some ski mountaineering! The last few days have been spent going over short roping and glacier travel, and attempted ski of Cayoosh on the Duffey Lake Road, tree skiing on Chief Pascale on the Duffy, and some more touring in the Blackcomb Backcountry.

Here are some shots to give you some visuals of what we have been doing this week.

Snowpack evaluation on Chief Pascale

Short Roping up Disease Ridge at Blackcomb

Disease Ridge

More Disease Ridge

Coming around to Blackcomb Peak

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“Livin’ The Dream” is the insiders look at the sixth of 14 episodes of raw footage used in the upcoming Ski The Himalayas film. Ben Clark, Josh Butson and Jon Miller continue the 17-day approach to 23,390′ Baruntse. On day 14, the team settles into basecamp at 17,000′ at the foot of 27,760′ Makalu and begins the search for the route to the top of Baruntse.

Click here for more adventures from Ben!

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