Last Moments Of Sunlight

Well,

I've been training for the Cascade Mountains all Summer, and the last moments of sunlight have finally arrived. My Summer window is ending, rapidly, so I'll be leaving for Washington state within a few hours.

Juggling my training with a collaboration between two web designers was lame, and has made me late, throwing off my itinerary, but I'll be dipped in boiling nuclear waste before I wait another year for this. (Ouch. umm... maybe not.) Luckily I'm in the best shape of my life, so climbing all 6 volcanoes before the Summer completely ends might still be doable.

They are:

Mt. Hood

Mt. Rainier

Mt. Adams

Mt. St. Helens

Mt. Olympus

Mt. Shasta

Still, I'm late enough that the thought of any kind of tight schedule has now been cast to the wind. I will do whatever I have to do to climb these things. Even been watching the Weather and Discovery channel to get more in the zone. ;)

I do have some other killer news though:

Last Sunday I trained by putting some extra weight in my pack and climbing a well-known CA mountain. At the top I made ambient music with a laptop and a guitar. (Sounds so American.) Check out the clip below to find out which mountain it was:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZcQlxzHQIk

I may have Lisa send photos of this to the Times. There were some other dudes up there (partying) as well, and they got footage, but have been having problems sending it online. They seemed to like what they heard.

I was hoping, over this last month, to fill in some journal entries and videos from the last Southwest trip so I could keep a record of what happened, but I lost time. Luckily, I don't think I'll be forgetting what happened any time soon, even if I was in a daze through most of it. ;) I will finish the Southwest post on here later (hopefully before the Southwest again in Fall), along with a great session I did earlier in the year at Mono Lake. Anyone who loves Mono Lake will dig that.

For now, I'm going to concentrate on Washington and Oregon, which is a far more involving and important venture. This will be a monumental accomplishment in my life, if I can pull it off.

I will post up short entries and at least a few photos for every mountain I climb. Going to attempt Mt. Hood first, this Monday. Already alerted musical friends in Portland. On the 17th, the day after Mt. Hood, I will join the team for Rainier and we'll start training for the summit on the 20th.

So, it looks as though I will not be posting another entry, or contacting anyone, before I reach the top of Rainier as well. This is it. If all goes well, my next post will be to show-and-tell the experience of those two summits--which is kind of my life's conquest, thus far.

And believe you, I shall "flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye."

Wish me luck, and I'll see you at the top.

Dean

P.S. And yeah, I promise to have plenty of fun with this also.