Cascades

Six-day courses, a backpacking catch-up trip, and a climb for fun - time flies when you're running around like the proverbial headless chicken.

Nice to come back from Denali to some nice days - the first weather-cooperative glacier course of my season was a great distraction from Alaska.

Then to the Enchantments with Lin. Neither of us had been to this limited-access, quota-governed, much-talked-about area, so off we went, no climbing due to my wrenched shoulder from a bike mishap. It's beautiful, it's true, but there are a lot of beautiful places in the world, and I've been to many of them. It is amazing for its access and proximity to I-90, but similar to other high alpine zones. We spent a valuable couple of days catching up from winters spent elsewhere, enjoying the lake and quiet.

On to Rainier with Rob and Erin and her friend Wolf. Despite working on the mountain quite often, it was nice to climb with friends, people who I'd trained with before and looked forward to hanging out with. Erin's friend's knee took him down early, but we had a beautiful summit day with few others around - nice to have the mountain largely to ourselves.

Now off for a little more work before some play time...