When I moved from rolling hills of New England to the Wasatch Mountains of Utah 10 years ago, one primary objective was easy access to the vast riches that the Rockies offered an outdoor addict. Of course, it didn’t hurt to have a weekday job to help support my addiction. Another important benefit of my day job was revealed the moment I entered my office cubicle for the first time and saw a poster mosaic of Colorado’s 14’ers that belonged to my cube-mate, Ken Meyer: I had scored a built-in, personal adventure guide that saw the mountains as the same gigantic playground that I did!
Immediately, we generated a tick-list of adventures to knock off together, some small after-work forays and others long-weekend destinations. In the past ten years, most of our original projects have been accomplished, but countless others have been added.
Here a few memorable experiences that we have had together in the backcountry:
- Sharing an impromptu snow cave on the summit of Mt Rainier to escape icy, 80mph wind gusts;
- Spooning in various cramped sleep quarters, including the back of Ken’s Forerunner, cheap motels, soggy tents, and under a surreal canopy of scintillating stars.
- Chasing mountain goats on, yet, another knife-edge ridge at 11,000 feet in the Wasatch
- Hucking cornices into chest-deep champagne powder in the Cottonwoods backcountry
- Re-defining each other's mt biking limits in Little Creek, Gooseberry, Porcupine, The Octal.
- Suffering in epic 120F heat with our AR teammates Peter and Julie at PQ06-Utah
- Semi-assisted self-arrest on the Black Dike glacier on Grand Teton (I can never repay you for saving my bacon that day !)
- Heaps Canyon, a very emotional day with our canyoneering buds, Jared and Brent, for so many reasons
- In the Grenadiers with Jared, desperately searching for a fallen comrade that lived and loved the same way as we aspire to …
Then came the day that Ken delivered the blow to our perfect partnership: he had accepted a job back East, accepting an offer to pursue an adventure of a different kind. My initial self-serving feelings of betrayal have subsided, and we have since pledged to continue racing and planning future epic adventures together. I am sure Ken will milk the Adirondacks for all they are worth. And, as for me, I have a pretty deep support group of like-minded co-workers and friends to help fill the void left by my perfect backcountry partner.
Its all good.
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