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.

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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:

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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.

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West To East

The View of Mt. Washington 87 steps from my front door

I’m practicing owning up to my origins. Colorado used to just roll off my tongue. New Hampshire? It’s clunky, it’s two words, and it takes explaining.

Contrary to what many presume from my quick speech and intense personality, I am not an easterner and never have been. Until now. In January Peter and I packed up the van and headed east. I’ve flirted with living in New Hampshire for the past three years (read more in my Go East Article in Alpinist Magazine). Now we’re going steady.

Based on my recent sociological studies—mainly consisting of telling the people I meet while traveling out west that I live out east—a move to New Hampshire suggests a potentially unstable personality disorder.

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Home on the African Road

Mt. Namuli

In Conjunction with Engelhorn Sports

I feel bad for my seatmate on the plane the other day. I’d like to issue an apology but I never got their name. The woman had harmlessly asked me where I was coming from and where I was going. I tried to keep it simple at the start. I told her Malawi and Cape Town. But then she asked me why I’d been in Malawi.

I should have said I was in Malawi for work and opened my book. Instead I told her I’d been stranded in Malawi but was on a trip to Mozambique, that I’d been in Ethiopia and was en route to Cape Town, and that ultimately I was heading home to Boulder, Colorado. When her why came again, I told her about the vertical grass.

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