The Quixotic Jedi

Well, I did it:  I climbed Friday, Balsam Cap, Rocky and Lone in one day.  In the snow.  It was a long day.  I hit the trail around 10:30 and got back to the car around 9:30.  Yes, in the Post Meridian.  That’s 11 hours of hiking, dear reader:  pretty much all of which [...]

In the past couple of weeks, at least two people have told me directly that they’re “living vicariously through” me – specifically with respect to the photos posted on facebook of my winter peakbagging extravaganza.  I can’t tell you how cool that is; how good that makes me feel.
Well, I’m considering dialing that vicarious experience [...]

Today I’ll be hiking Cornell and Wittenberg mountains.  They’ll be numbers 18 and 19 of my 35 Catskill winter peaks.  I have 10 trips left and 10 weekends before March 22d.

I’m off on Monday for MLK Day, so I’ll be able to get a bit ahead of schedule, I hope.
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This will hopefully be short.  I just finished Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds.  It was pretty excellent.  I’m glad I’m done, because now I can get back to regular life sans story-obsession.  I’ll probably bring Hemingway’s short stories to work tomorrow for lunchtime reading – I doubt I’ll get too swept away with that.
Big [...]

Today I’ll be hiking North Dome and Mount Sherrill.  Both are bushwacks (no trail to the summit) and the trip should be about 5 miles or so.  I’m thinking I’ll probably follow a similar route to what my buddy over at CatskillHiker.com followed, which basically involves hiking down from the summit of Sherrill to Spruceton [...]

Today I climbed Twin and Indian Head Mountains.  Below are the videos I uploaded to YouTube.  I keep splitting Twin Mountain into “west” and “east” peaks, but they’re really north and south of each other.  And now that I think about it, I’m not even sure that I didn’t mix the two up.  I have [...]

Today I’ll be hiking Indian Head and Twin mountains.  Overall, they’ll be winter peak numbers 11 and 12 (of 35).  What I have left are: 25 mountains 16 trips 12 weekends View Larger Map

So I’m at the beginning of my Catskill 3500 Club winter peaks goal, right?  I mean, I’ve been talking about it for a while now, but why am I doing it (you ask yourself)?
At the end of the day, I think it’s basically ego-driven.  I enjoy hiking, but I like the sense of accomplishment I [...]

Today’s the day, dear reader:  I’m starting my winter hiking extravaganza.
27 mountains
17 trips
13 weekends
Today I’ll be hiking Thomas Cole and Black Dome mountains:

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Scott loaned me The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, saying “It’ll change your life.”  I’m pretty sure he said that because the subtitle is “A Book That Changes Lives.”  Whatever.  I’m about fifty pages in right now.  I’ll let you know what I think when I’m done.  Millman definitely writes like an [...]