At first, it was always about mountains. My first forays in the Coast Range and the Wind Rivers taught me I wouldn’t last long if I continued to solo everything, including down-climbing class five in the dark. Convinced of my need to learn pro systems, by happenstance, I met a guy who’d just come away from a multi-week course with NOLS in Lander and coaxed him into “showing me the ropes” in the Tetons. Established routes and obscure new routes throughout Wyoming and Utah, in the mountains and on towers in the desert, flowed under our hands and feet.
My initial end was the mountains, but I fell in love with the means along the way.