Guest on the blog today: my wife, Rebecca.

I hit the summit of Denali, aka Mt. McKinley (though all climbers and most of the rest of the world outside the borders of the USA call it Denali) on June 12th, 2007. It was warmer up there than I expected; one of the warmest summit days on record actually: 0 °F (-20 C). In fact, I'd experienced much colder already on lower parts of the mountains. This was my second attempt: in 2003, I had attempted to climb Denali and failed. Thoughts of how I could have made it, how I should have made it, how I would have to try again haunted me from the time I returned to Seattle in June 2003 until the time I made my next attempt in May 2007. It's a terrible thing to have an enormous mountain lurking over your shoulder, so when the chance came to make another attempt, I took it.












