8 Lessons Learned During the Non-Climbing Days on a Climbing Trip in Europe

Photo by Peter DoucetteWhen you’ve waited 35 years to go to Italy, the wine, pasta, meat and cheese will be just as good as you imagined.

When you’ve waited 35 yeas to go to Italy, you will likely have overestimated the amount of wine, pasta, meat and cheese that is reasonable to consume.

My Garmin Nuvi has a search setting for “Winery.”

It’s best to only use the Winery search setting on your Photo by Peter Doucetterest days.

If you are a real South-Tryol Italian, you have your own meat slicer at home.

If you are not a real South Tyrol Italian, but you are visiting one, it is possible to over-speck yourself, at home.

Click to read more ...

Global Dialog Via the Culture of Coffee

Coffee in Addis Ababa, Photo by Travis HornCoffee can erase a famine.

Agree? Disagree? Wonder just how literally I mean for that statement to be? How about this one:

Coffee can create greater global understanding.

If you’re reading this, you’re involved with coffee. If more than one billion cups of coffee are consumed every day in our world, then it is virtually impossible to avoid an association with the beverage. I’d wager we’d all like to see that association go even deeper. I’d like it to change the world. Let’s do it together, and let’s start with Ethiopia.

(Read Majka's call to action to the coffee community in the Specitaly Coffee Association of America's Chronicle below, or via the PDF)

If you ask 10 people who walk into a café for three words to describe Ethiopia, drought famine and poverty will inevitably come up immediately.  Inside the coffee world we know a different side of Ethiopia. So how do we better share it? 

Six years ago, I went to Ethiopia on a lark due to a free latte. I never meant for coffee to be anything profound in my life. But Ethiopia had other plans. What I have discovered in researching, writing, and speaking about my recent book, Coffee Story Ethiopia (Ninety Plus Press/Shama Books) is Ethiopia’s incredible hold on global imagination—and the power of coffee to enrich that perception. 

It was an eight-year-old girl who started me on the path to understanding this power.

Click to read more ...

I Can’t Go to Ethiopia This Year, Can You Instead?

This October, a powerful, engaged, and curious team is heading to Ethiopia to both change the world, and change how they interact in that world. Usually, I’d be joining them. But this year I need you to take my place.

 Imagine Ethiopia 2012 is the third iteration of a dream I helped create in 2009 with imagine1day. Our goal was simple: enable others to have their lives profoundly affected by Ethiopia by enabling them to profoundly experience Ethiopia.  For the past two years I have co-led trip with Sapna Dayal and a select team of other leaders. Together we have created an experience blending culture, adventure, and connection along with an initiative to raise $100,000 to build schools in Ethiopia. This year’s school is in the Alose Community in Oromiya.

I can’t go on Imagine Ethiopia 2012--I will be in Mozambique for my Lost Mountain Project. But you can. Here is how:

Click to read more ...

Alaskan Lessons of Honest Skiing

Peter Doucette heads up to get a down. Photo by Majka BurhardtFourteen years is thirteen too many to go between visits to Alaska. I sensed that every year that passed during my recent Alaska pause, but I knew it when I saw the landscape of mountains, pure mountains, and more mountains on the clear, still day I made it back this April. 

How did you know you wanted to be a climber? When did you know the mountains had to be part of your life?  People ask me these questions all the time. Bottle Alaska and you will have the answer.

This April I was there backcountry skiing on the Kenai Peninsula between tides on the Turnagain Arm. The last time I’d skied in Alaska it was on nicked-over Mountain Noodles with my plastic Scarpa Invernos heading down the NE fork of the Kahiltna from an aborted climbing attempt on Mt. Hunter’s Moonflower Buttress. This time I had two pairs of powder skis and no objective other than turns. Or rather that, and holding my own with my in-laws-to-be.

Click to read more ...

Post Post

Kate Rutherford and Majka Burhardt, Red Rocks 2012It’s always hard to write about rock climbing when you are ripping powder in a new bowl, or to write about skiing when you are latticing hand jams up granite. This year, I put myself on spring break to do both activities, type about neither, and then come home to the poodle and the computer.

I’ve spent countless season shifts in Red Rocks. For the past fifteen years it’s been the place to either jump-start or wrap up the year’s era of rock climbing. Spring has always been my favorite time. It’s when the green grass pokes through the sandy soil and softens the desert for the moment before you The Osprey Packs Intro Rock Climbing Course at the Red Rock Rendezvousstep on a barrel cactus. Spring is when the edges hurt your fingers because you’ve let them grow soft in your ice climbing gloves, when last year’s warm up is the biggest send of the current day, and when the sun feels exactly like thing you’ve been pining for all winter long.

Click to read more ...