So I’ve invited my good friend Mark Griffith to join me here and throw out a post from time to time. He does get a lot more mileage per year than I do lately, and I’m pretty sure he reads more as well. In fact, I don’t know of a lot of people who stay as routinely busy as this guy, so I’m not really certain he’ll have a lot of time to contribute. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing what he digs up.

Mark and I met through Flickr a few years back, having noticed that we both posted a lot of photos of the same places up near Snoqualmie Pass. Then we found out that not only did we both attend the same church (just in different cities), but we also rode the same bus to work in Seattle. A handful of excursions and epics later, we’re still managing to get outside and get lost from time to time. This is a good thing - most everyone else gets tired of us stopping to take photos every two minutes…

Mike is a self-described avid climber (alpine, sport and ice). I’ve never met him but wandered across his stream on flickr. He lives somewhere up in that great white land to the north that most of America ignores. He lives where in the winter it’s cold and the waterfalls freeze. When that happens he goes out and climbs them. Having never really been a real climber and only a enthusiastic junior mountaineer, I dunno if I’ll ever give it a try - but man, it’s impressive as all get out to look at. Here are some photos from a place called Valley of the Birds:

Mike’s set has more…

After having spent all day in a company meeting I was pretty much forced to stop by the Seattle Patagonia store to get my mind wrapped around something other than web strategy, design, development, UX, analytics, optimization, and social networking. Not that there’s anything wrong with that - but I just needed a bit of a distraction tonight instead of thinking about work all weekend. They usually have a pretty interesting book section at Patagonia, and tonight I found a couple of keepers.

1. Northern Oregon Wilderness Areas - Donna Ikenberry Aitkenhead
2. Early Hiking in the Olympics 1922-1942 - Paul Crews

The guide book is a bit old, but just seemed like a book that would be good to have given my current location, and ever since last summer’s Mt. Olympus trip, I’ve become a sucker for anything about the Olympic range. Should be a good read.

I’m in Seattle tonight for work, and just got back to the hotel after having dinner at the Dahlia Lounge up the street. I don’t travel a whole lot with my job, which I count as a good thing, but it is nice to get back up to Seattle once in a while. The crew from Portland and some of the Seattle team met up around 7:30, and I cut out after eating around 10 as the rest of the group headed farther downtown to - ahem - prepare for tomorrow’s meetings. Back down the cold streets, up the elevator, and then sitting down at the computer - what’s the first thing I find?

Just this:

Bummer.

If only I’d surfed CascadeClimbers.com more often at work… Shoulda, woulda, coulda. On the bright side though, seeing that post reminded me of the excellent couple of sites Mr. Skoog is responsible for.

1. Northwest Mountaineering Journal
2. Alpenglow

With the vast amount of content and history packed into these two links, I’m pretty sure I’ll be revisiting them at some point down the road…