Edification... WHAT??

E d i f i c a t i o n... you should not need Websters or Google for this! If you do... without being negative, please take note!


I wish to use a recent experience in my life to illustrate edification in it's proper sense. I spent a great amount of time and sincere effort into the application process for an amazing career opportunity in Chile. The owners of this first rate company were professional, diligent and sincere through  the entire process. I believe that, although I may not have been the first choice, I was offered the position I applied for in all sincerity. I accepted, humbled and overjoyed.


I was presented with the opportunity to be a part of a 42 day mountain school on the Northern Patagonian Ice Cap. I accepted with great enthusiasm! I was given the opportunity to learn, to record and to interact on this amazing adventure. I participated in an amazing arena where eight people had nowhere to go, nothing to hide behind and were not able to just up and walk away without serious consequence to their lives. For me, this was one experience. For my employers, who were also the guides, the teachers, the mentors, the counselors, this was but one of three such journeys, back-to-back, that season!

I have the utmost respect, admiration and love for these two people. They give everything they have in the most extreme of situations, in one of the most hostile/beautiful and unforgiving environs on this planet. They have an intense understanding of risk management and the discipline to pull it off over and over again in the most threatening situations! What they offer their students is an experience that changes lives, alters destinies, and lives on for all time. These two amazing people have devoted their lives to enriching the lives of those who dare to seek out that elusive opportunity to truly become who you are!


I would do anything for these two beautiful souls. Unfortunately events in my own life offered up the most difficult decisions I have ever had to make... I am no longer there, no longer a part of their adventure! I would like to believe that I am still a part of their experience, like countless others they have mentored and given the opportunity to truly find themselves. For that experience I am eternally grateful. It changed my life in so many ways. Thank you Jaya and Ben, for everything, even for those things that none of us understand... may we one day share a bowl of Mate and embrace it all! You are truly the best of people, and the most worthy friends in any arena of life. I edify you both in the truest sense of the word... I love you both and thank you for a gift that has more worth than price could be set. Keep doing what you do best!

Love of the MOMENT...

Climbing, relationships, pets, family, friends... it occurred to me just recently that all of these can be enjoyed moment by moment! Each moment to be relished for exactly what it is!

What does this mean?? To me it simplifies everything. A past moment has already been enjoyed. It will never, ever happen again exactly the same... it is unique! The emotions that evolved from this moment are a memory, anything we learned from this moment has been posted somewhere to the brain in memory... leave it in the past as you have gained everything from this moment that was offered. A moment in the present is giving you all of this right now. SOAK IT UP! Moments in the future are yours for the experience and will happen with or without you.

What is important?? Live each moment as it occurs, while it occurs and for it's duration! then, look forward only to the next moment in time and what it has to offer. Many of us spend so much time trying to recover past moments or attempting to manifest future moments that present moments are just ignored. How often have you walked past a flower and absently thought, "I wonder what that flower smells like?"and kept walking with that thought lingering on... instead of stopping and living that moment to commit to memory! How many times have we left a friend, a family member or a spouse and not said, "I love you?" instead of taking that moment to create a sweet memory??

What to do??? Choosing to live in the moment, moment by moment, allows you to live, experience and love your life. It also aligns your spirit, your soul with the present world and sharpens your senses, your intuition, your ability to be! Make a choice and live. Too many of us are simply put, "Walking Dead!".
Moment by moment, may your life be your choice!

Love ya.

Route Finding!

In the climbers world, "route finding" is an important skill to master. Getting "off-route" could be dangerous, and may lead one into the relative unknown. That is not entirely a 'bad' thing, as some of us gather a 'high' from entering the realm of the 'unknown'. Epics are derived of such deviations, and who knows how those will end... have to play them out and be as smart as you can! Great fuel for writing captivating bits and pieces though... after the fact! Route finding implies both the approach, the climb, and the exit! Always have to remember that once you have reached the goal you are only half way... still have to make an exit that leaves you walking & talking so that you can do it again!

Climbing has so many metaphors for the realities in life. 'Route finding' may just as well be ones day to day experience of life itself. There is always a dead wrong route, then it's a crap shoot, and something different works for different people. Who's to say what's right and what's wrong at this point? As long as your route is not obviously injurious to self or others by principal intent (holy grey area) and it is ethical and morally sound (yet another debatable can of worms)... sigh.


Have you ever been hopelessly LOST? ...either out in nature, or in life in general?? What do we do in situations like that? What is the deciding factor for those who survive and pull out of it to go on and 'live' another day, another adventure, another epic? IS there a definitive factor at all, or is it just 'chance' that enables such results... I, for one, don't count on 'chance'. 

Do you believe in yourself? ...in your abilities to survive the unexpected, to be strong and able to make good decisions under the most extreme forms of duress? Can you do something so simple as to honestly look at yourself in a mirror and say out loud, "I love you". Lets explore this a bit... take it a bit further then. How about still gazing lovingly at your reflection and adding to that, "I believe in you, I know you have what it takes to overcome, to persevere and to go the distance to survive!" The most incredible aspect of this is that you have to be brutally honest with yourself in the first place. Do it when nobody is around... this is between you and you!! Let me know what the outcome is. I know what mine is, and I also know that I am a solid survivor against all odds. I believe that I have a handle on what differentiates these people from others. I'm not saying I am invincible, for I know that one day I too will bite the big one. Until then, I also know that I am pretty damn good at route finding... in more than the Websters definition of the term... and we have not even touched on the concept of half empty vs half full! 


That's for another rant in another blog! Stay alive, stay 'high' and keep loving you!

Moments from a blue hole...

Choosing between sustained winds that can tear the skin off your face and the relative sanctity of a snow cave... many hours of slicing icy snow with shovels powered by aching muscles and steel wills! On the flank of Cerro San Valentin, as the ferocity of the storm reveals itself, the icy blue hollow of the snow cave proves to be a rhetorical choice. In the blue-white belly of this hundred meter high snow drift, life for eight adventurous mountaineers takes on a fresh perspective. The adventure of a lifetime, an arena of learning through the "Mountain Guide Training School - Extremely Patagonia Ltd", an experience that will linger on with you for the rest of your life! Its day thirty-something of a forty-two day "mountaineering school" adventure on the southern Patagonian Ice Cap and patience amongst other things has become a thin, tipsy act of  balance.

Breathing is one of the things that many of us take for granted, without intent! The air that we must breathe in order to sustain our lives is usually all around us and in ample supply. Those of us who choose to enter a realm where that very same air may become excruciatingly short in supply begin to understand it's vital role in our very existence!  Wind driven snow drifts into the tiniest openings and packs into a solid mass which does not allow the exchange of gases in or out! In the snow cave, we breathe the life giving air, and exhale poisonous carbon dioxide... over time, if there is no exchange with fresh air, the end result is suffocation. That usually happens while one is asleep, dreaming blissfully of loved ones and more hospitable places on this planet. Death in this scenario, were one to leave the situation unchecked, becomes an eminent reality! Our goal was to live, and so breathing becomes yet another choice!

The choice becomes waking on an hourly, or as necessary rotation, to dig out the entrance to the snow cave and the advancing drift outside. From a semi-warm, semi-dry sleeping bag into wet socks, wet boot liners, wet base layers, wet shell layer and out into the raging world of yet another infamous Patagonian ice cap storm! Time to reflect on ones most inner self, ones most primal senses of survival and then later to stumble upon the fact that only a very few people ever manifest the opportunity to get to know themselves that well! Back in your wet sleeping bag, covered in spindrift which endlessly blows into the opening that you have just cleared with an urgency to transform it yet again into a smooth, perfect impervious wall of snow.
And so, you shiver yourself to sleep, knowing that your watch is not for another period of time, time in which you can salvage every tiny essence of warmth and sense of shelter from the raging wind and snow beyond these eerie blue/white walls... your castle, your prison, your shelter, your virtual oasis in a desert of ice, snow and howling wind! Yesterday is past, today has been yet another test, and tomorrow will come whether you choose to prepare for it or not!