| Hiking & Ski Touring |
| GPS Mapping |
| 4WD miniRV Camping |
| Foreign Travel |
| Mountaineering forces travel and I spread my journeys from the US to the Canadian Rockies, then Mexico and beyond... Volcanoes to jungles and the gorges of the Barrancas; eventually Mexico led to Guatemala and Columbia. In the old world I've driven extensively in Ireland and Wales, hitched from northern Italy and Austria through Germany to the family's French Alsace side of the Rhine. India, Nepal, Tibet are big enough that I've only seen parts. Two flights over the southern tip of Greenland and an invitation to trek on the northernmost tip, make me wonder "what's next ?". |
| Rocky Mtn. Rescue |
| Cliff rescue was a vessel my adolescent idealism poured into. It was a civic service alternative to killing in Viet Nam or shilling for the CIA in Nepal.(I washed myself out of Peace Corps training when I found out about the secret 'debriefings'.) Mountain searches too often were fruitless, or ended up in backbreaking carryouts of human garbage. But on the cliffs where I regularly suffered, my motivation to help climbers in trouble was strong. This 50 person group of heroes got my allegience for 11 years, and repaid with lots of communal beer drinking. When I started leading students into harm's way through the CU Mountain Recreation program my time and energy for rescue petered out. I was too busy teaching personal safety in hostile environments. |
| Mountain Climbing |
| In the dry Colorado and Wyoming mountains I usually got up my objectives. On Ranier and among the interior ranges of British Columbia weather got in the way more often than not. Technical climbing on 4,000 meter peaks was limited to Rocky Mtn. Nat'l Park and the Tetons. The Diamond on Long's Peak, 2nd Buttress of Hallett's, North Face of the Grand Teton - that sort of thing. The really grand tours on mixed ice and rock terraine eluded me. Faces in Yosemite were not mountaineering - just very extended rock routes. Then in Columbia I discovered altitude sickness ! Straining big loads quickly over 16,000 foot passes gave me simultaneous cerebral and pulmonary edema. In Mexico the volcanoes had been one day pushes, DOWN at night. This back country expeditionary stuff was different. I ate Diamox, purified lots of lake water and purged it through my system. Fortunately I came back in one piece, but thinking maybe I had limits. In Nepal logistics several times kept me from even getting on terrain that needed an ice ax. Probably my aging joints couldn't take the pounding anyway. And so I wound down. Found other interests. Can still enjoy a moderate ramble in the foothills, to a solitary peak; but now I would have to acclimatize for some days even to sleep easily above 10,000'. |
| Ham Radio |
| Public Speaking |
| Ventriloquism |
| Conjuring |