It’s Off-Season, Where Are Your Guides?

Time out from work, guides are busy get­ting after it on per­son­al trips across the globe. Check out some of the sto­ries of your favorite guides below!

Dave Ahrens checked in from Hawaii with the fol­low­ing note; ​“Greet­ings from Kauai where it’s 80 degrees, sun­ny and I’m still ter­ri­ble at surf­ing. I did man­age to crawl up the Salathe Wall on El Cap­i­tan and had a blast, noth­ing fast and light about it. Hap­py and heavy with beer, speak­ers and great food. We did man­age to free a fair amount though. Oh and I passed my AMGA rock aspi­rant exam and hop­ing to take the final exam in the spring!

Dave hang­ing out on a ledge high on El Cap. Dave Ahrens photo

Dave on the Salathe route of El Capitan

“The pic­ture was tak­en by the guy who runs the El Cap­i­tan report web­site and just hangs out in the val­ley tak­ing pci­tures. It was tak­en after a lazy morn­ing of cof­fee mak­ing for a late start which gave per­fect light onto the El Cap spire where I was stand­ing, try­ing to get a view of the next pitch. He said it was his best pic­ture of the year and was very dis­ap­point­ed when I took my yel­low shirt off after that. Appar­ent­ly gray is not a hot col­or for photography!”

~ MM Guide Dave Ahrens

Jumar­ing high on the route. Dave Ahrens photo

Dave air­ing out his feet near the top of Yosemite’s El Cap­i­tan. Dave Ahrens photo

MM guides Tino Vil­lanue­va, Alan Rousseau and Matt Barela are head­ing out of civ­i­liza­tion and get­ting into a jeep for a 12 hour dri­ve deep into a remote region of the Himalayas. They will be climb­ing in the Rol­wal­ing Himalaya, a moun­tain­ous region that is 5 more days trekking to get to from the end of a ter­ri­ble road. In their sights are first ascents on water­fall ice and a peak of almost 7000 meters. Stay tuned for updates on the trip. Good luck to them all! 

Alan stock­ing up on qual­i­ty food for the trip — can’t have too much choco­late pie! 

Matt get­ting ready to take off

After near­ly 5 years of effort, the Super Topo Wash­ing­ton Pass guide book, writ­ten by MM Guide Ian Nichol­son, is now com­plete and ready for pur­chase. Wash­ing­ton Pass Climb­ing is the most detailed climber’s guide to what is arguably the best alpine rock climb­ing area in the North­west. Ian includ­ed 59 of the best routes and climbed every sin­gle one to ensure accu­ra­cy of the infor­ma­tion. Near­ly 20 of the routes have nev­er before been cov­ered with a pub­lished topo. Con­grats to Ian for a job well done! Get your own copy and come have Ian sign it at Seat­tle Boul­der­ing Project on Decem­ber 6^th at 8pm. 

Join Ian next sum­mer with our Wash­ing­ton Pass program!

Ossy reached the sum­mit of 8,000-meter peak Man­aslu. He for­tu­nate­ly kept out of har­m’s way from an avalanche that swept over high camp and left more than ten climbers dead. We were sad­dened by the oth­ers’ loss, but hap­py for Ossy who per­se­vered and reached the sum­mit safe­ly! He’s off to Ever­est in 2013! Until then he will be lead­ing the Novem­ber 29^th Anti­sana Expe­di­tion in Ecuador and Aconcagua on Jan­u­ary 11. We hope you can join him! 

(All pho­tos cour­tesy of Oswal­do Freire)

Route tak­en on Manaslu

Ossy at the summit!