Osito And A Frog Named Turtle, An Additive Adventure Entry

In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs Osito is a poodle, which may explain why he’s never been an animal person. I’ve tried to convince him otherwise over the past ten and a half years. We’ve gone through cows, hippos, squirrels, and a warthog, but these are all temporary fascinations of mine, and of little consequence to the poodle. Somehow, I thought the … Read More

Community On Ice, An Additive Adventure Entry

In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs Two weeks ago I was in Minneapolis—the city where I grew up—for a showing of Chris Alstrin’s and my movie Waypoint Namibia. Afterwards, a man from the audience asked me what I did in the winters when I was not in Africa. I told him I ice climbed. Midwest Mountaineering, the gear shop in Minneapolis, had partially … Read More

The Big Switch, An Additive Adventure Entry

In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs It’s November 26th. It’s 5 degrees in the mountains. It’s time to go ice climbing. To be fair, it’s been like this for a few weeks now. But it’s finally time for me to notice. I’m t-minus twenty-four hours from swinging into blue ice. It sounds glorious and exciting… and a bit terrifying. The question is: … Read More

Robbery Friendships, An Additive Adventure Entry

In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs This is Haile. In 2006, I put Haile, and thirteen of his closest friends, in jail. In Ethiopian jail, to be precise. I’d like to say it wasn’t my fault, but then again, I was the one climbing in Ethiopia. The story went something like this: Caroline George and I were three hundred feet up a … Read More

The End of the Beginning, An Additive Adventure Entry

In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs The bowels of the Addis Ababa airport are laced with sweet, thick exhaust. Five minutes ago–forty-five minutes before my departure back to the United States–a man in a sharp-creased navy uniform summoned me away from the fluorescent passenger holding tank with a gun holstered at each hip. He didn’t give me his name, just confirmed mine. … Read More

Running With Haile, An Additive Adventure Entry

In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com This is how it happens. One person has the idea to run 13,286 kilometers—the distance from Vancouver B.C. to Mekelle, Ethiopia—to raise money to build a school in rural Ethiopia. It’s hard for one person to run that far himself or herself. So they ask for others to join them. One of the people who signs up … Read More

The Rebirth of Slick, An Additive Adventure Entry

In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com Three weeks from today, I’ll be flying to Ethiopia. I’ve been training for trip. I’ve been aqua jogging. Actually, I just had to stop aqua jogging. I was over-training with the 12”-wide water-flotation device. In my defense, I was just trying to keep up with Astrid, the 65-year old woman with a hip and knee replacement. At … Read More

The Ballad You Forgot, An Additive Adventure Entry

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LfSxYaZojs&w=450] A blog in conjunction with Osprey Packs and Outside Television. Let’s get this out of the way. I was 8. I made bad choices like singing Don’t Fence Me In at my father’s second wedding and lying down on the carpet in the school loft; I had bad choices foisted upon me, like a two-inch buzz cut—billed as a smart fashion move with … Read More

Me, As a Dot. An Additive Adventure Entry*

I have no idea who the people are who will change my life in the next two years. I had no idea, two years ago, that a woman making a spontaneous stop in a Patagonia store in California would change mine now. Susanne Conrad caught a glimpse of a tall hardbound book called Vertical Ethiopia: Climbing Toward Possibility in the Horn … Read More