On your marks...

And so begins another season of Rainier and North Cascades climbing. Our Denali Preparation course was a mixture of terrible and perfect weather - great for preparing for the big hill. Thirty-one degrees and raining to bluebird skies and 80 degrees... you never know what you're going to get up there.

But we did get to summit of Mt Rainier, the first Denali Prep course of the season to do so, thanks to strong climbers, perfect weather, and a snowpack that was solid enough not to avalanche in the first warming cycle of the year.

Even better, with the sleds required to pull heavy loads on Denali, we were able to slide down the 4500 feet elevation back to the parking lot, a normally obnoxious descent in soft snow. Sweet!

A couple Rainier summit climbs and a 6-day glacier course will keep me busy for the next month while summer tries to arrive in Seattle...