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Mountain Climbing Entries

A Weekend in the Northeast Kingdom, Part Three: Hiking Wheeler Mountain

Saturday, August 15th, 2015

This afternoon, we pile into our pickup with George, Jodi and Oscar for a hike up Wheeler Mountain. Along the way, we talk more about their bike trip and our bike trip, sharing memories and chatting about what it was like to navigate the choppy wat...

Hiking Glacier National Park's "Skyline Experience"

Wednesday, February 6th, 2013

Last summer, my good friend Alex asked if I'd like to join him on his annual adventure in Montana's Glacier National Park. I immediately agreed, and happily consented to hike any trail in the park. He picked something called The Skyline Experienc...

Downhill All the Way

Monday, February 14th, 2011

Tyler: As we exuberantly freewheel down the mountain we've spent the last two days climbing, we spot a cyclist on the other side of the road, huffing and puffing his way up in the opposite direction. As always, we stop to chat, sharing informat...

The Big Climb: Part Three

Friday, February 11th, 2011

7:30 PM / Tara » 73km ridden » 1955m climbed » 1325m elevation The velvet black sky above us is strewn liberally with stars, all twinkling and dancing like diamonds around a brilliant crescent moon. The cool darkness of night is the ultimate com...

The Big Climb: Part Two

Friday, February 11th, 2011

3:00 PM / Tara » 60km ridden » 1230m climbed » 600m elevation Every second of this climb is full and rich with experience. My emotions swing wildly from pure joy at the slightest breeze, to complete hopelessness and despair at the screams coming...

The Big Climb: Part One

Friday, February 11th, 2011

4:30 AM / Tyler » 0km ridden » 0m climbed » 300m elevation The alarm sounds, it's shrill, infernal beeps rending my cocoon of sleep asunder. As the pitch black of early morning seeps into my consciousness, I am disoriented and confused. I only ...

Climbing Prep

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

A few days ago, we rode motorcycles north from Phou Khoun to Luang Prabang. The mountainous north/south highway we took is also on our cycling route. Tomorrow, we'll be retracing some of our steps, as we head south on the same road towards Vienti...

It's All Downhill From Here

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

We're mentally prepared for an easy day of coasting, excited to reap the rewards of our labor. But as we cycle out of town, a freakishly steep hill looms before us, and I am caught off guard. I thought we were leaving the mountains—why are we sti...

Climbing to Da Lat

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

Stepping out of our guest-house, the chill bite of an early morning wind blows in our faces, sending up an army of goosebumps. Our exhaled breath is white like cigarette smoke, and this means one thing: we've finally left early enough so to have s...

Climbing to New Year's Eve

Friday, December 31st, 2010

Figuring out what the problem is, and making a plan to do something about it helps a lot, but at the moment, there's not much we can do to execute our solution. For the time being, we'll just muscle on, grinning and bearing it, even as we're passe...

Pedaling Upstream

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

With everything we needed to thrive at our hard-to-reach Romanian forest free-camp, we almost decided to stay another day. Instead, we packed up, said hello to some horses grazing in a nearby pasture, and set off on our 30 minute trek back to the ...

Macro Love

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Flowers make me happy. I don't care if it is cliché, they just do! When we got our first camera I was thrilled when I realized I could finally capture the beauty I see in them. When we get home I'm going to grow a massive garden so Tyler and I c...

Donkey Day

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Leaving cities is always hard. There is inevitably some navigation difficulty, as well as a handful of surprises like one-way streets, delivery trucks taking entire lanes, people double-parked haphazardly, and often steep, narrow, cobbled roads. ...

Celebrating Sunday

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

I would never have imagined this to be true, but many of our favorite days involve slowly climbing mountains. As long as we bring copious amounts of food, start the day with a positive attitude, and make sure to take our time, it almost always mak...

Wet and Cold

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

A sickly drizzle of freezing rain patiently waited to receive us this morning. As we stuffed ourselves during our last continental breakfast at the Grand Hotel in Potenza, we were blissfully unaware of this fact. Another detail pleasantly among t...

Rags to Riches

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

Waking up in the bitter cold at our olive grove free-camp, we ate our last few slices of bread with butter and the final spoonfuls from our jam jar. It wasn't the best breakfast for the mountainous climbs that lay ahead, but it would have to do, s...

Brrrrrrr

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

In an odd change of perspective, every climb was cause for celebration today (and there were plenty of them: 800 meters, or over 2,500 feet in all). In lieu of hopping around madly trying to keep warm as we did while packing up camp, we slowly and...

Climbing in the Cold

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

The day didn't start out very cold. In fact, the first twenty five kilometers of our trek east were just beautiful; much flatter than I expected they would be too! We cruised through non-stop civilization with huge grins plastered on our faces fo...

Field Recording

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

During yesterday's ride, we enjoyed the Amalfi scenery on our second trip through it's unforgettable coastline. Though it provided spectacular views once more, we'd forgotten how mountainous the area is. Today, we were hoping for something a litt...

Amalfi Again

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

When Tyler expressed his desire to return what I call "the tunnel from hell" to do some recording, I was torn. On one hand, I was excited that he'd finally be able to capture the bizarrely intense drone noises he was so enamored with, but on the o...

Autumn in the Mountains

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Our frosty free-camp at 1,400m (4,500ft) was so cold we blew off our 5:30am alarm this morning. Cuddled in our toasty warm tent we hoped the sun would come out sooner rather than later. It didn't. When we finally did summon the willpower to get ...

Run-Ins

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Our first run-in of the day was with a man in an ANAS van (the Italian highway maintenance service) shortly after leaving our seaside free-camp. He stopped us about 10km into a long ascent and did his best to explain that the road ahead was closed...

Feeling Capable

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

When we groggily awoke to rain pattering on our tent roof, we promptly rolled over, slept in, and let nature run its course. Thankfully by 9AM the gray sheet of clouds had drifted out to sea, taking the rain with it. We swiftly packed our camp un...

South for Winter

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

We've been contemplating several different routing possibilities to wrap up our tour of Italy for several days now. Today, as we approached the point where the roads diverged and decision-making became imperative, we realized we hadn't fully discu...

Climbing Elba

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

Elba Island is one part collapsed mountain, one part volcanic remains. The resulting landscape, while stunning, is quite a workout on a fully loaded touring bicycle. Directly out our front door the day began with a steep 350m climb to...

Volterra and the Sea

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

A brilliant golden light filtered through the trees this morning but I was far too comfy in our tent to get up and take a picture. I will just have to commit the morning splendor to memory. Quickly packing up we made our way back to the road and ...

Conquering Julierpass

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Today is the big day; our highest mountain climb ever will take us over Julierpass! For breakfast, I make us a large pot of muesli with cooked apples to keep us well fueled. Feeling full, we hit the road! 8:30 AM / 850m It is beautiful an...

Ascending & Descending

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

We said farewell to Chur under overcast skies, thankful for the gray cloud cover that would hopefully stick around and protect us from the sun. A long sweaty day of climbing is a lot more enjoyable when the sun isn't beating down on your back. ...

Unexpected Climb

Monday, August 10th, 2009

We left the campsite today cheerfully, feeling as though we'd done Zermatt justice. In just a few days we'd managed to do quite a bit: taking in a festival, riding cable cars, hiking in the mountains, and getting to know a few nice people. As we ...

Hiking in the Swiss Alps

Saturday, August 8th, 2009

We'd planned on going for a proper hike through the mountains today but when we awoke to the sound of rain on our tent, we had second thoughts. For most of the morning we hemmed and hawed through the on again off again sprinkles, vacillating betwe...

Climbing to Zermatt

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

After a long crepe-making/eating session this morning (in preparation for our mountain climb), we hit the road and headed into the town of Visp. As we left our campground the bicycle lane we enjoyed yesterday was nowhere to be found, leaving us on...

Changing Scenery

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

Today was our last day in the mountains for the next few weeks. I expected we'd have an easy ride with a short pass to climb somewhere in the middle of the day and then we'd be home-free. Boy was I wrong! Instead of easy cycling we battled fierc...

Gorgeous Climbs

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

After sleeping in rather late this morning we packed up our river-side free-camp and carried our belongings over to a steep embankment leading to the road. Once we were mostly prepared, we took the opportunity for one last frigid dip in the pond. ...

Helvellyn Ascent

Monday, April 27th, 2009

As the morning wore on, the clouds cleared a bit and it was starting to look like we might have a nice day ahead of us. Tara's cramps were subsiding so we decided the day would be much better spent hiking/climbing than sitting in out tent working ...