The Reckoning

While not much to look at, the provincial mountain town of Index was, in our unconstrained imagination, a stripped-down version of Chamonix, the famous French commune, a mecca for alpine climbers. Located on the North Fork of The Skykomish River in the western foothills of the Cascades, the little town was not even visible from Highway 2.

There was only a sign. But once you drove into town, you could see the dramatic and easily accessible sheer rock cliffs of the Upper and Lower Town Walls. Those granite destinations hosted over forty vertical rock routes like City Park, Snow White, Japanese Gardens, and Breakfast of Champions.

Across Highway 2, the three peaks of Mt. Index - Main, Middle, and North-jutted prominently skyward. A dramatic rock palisade, clearly visible to the south of Index, their profiles were so classically alpine and visually stunning that they could make a climber’s heart flutter. The desire they created was palpable. Who among us wouldn’t want to ascend those peaks? And the loftiest of goals was the traverse, to climb not only the North Peak but to complete a series of ascents across the summits of the other two peaks, all in one push.

The plan was to climb the North Face of the North Peak, bivy at the top, and complete the traverse of the other two peaks the next day. It was a decent plan, as plans go, but the condition of the route up the North Peak was far from what we had expected. We were naive. We expected a straightforward ascent of clean solid granite with most pitches to be crack climbs. Instead, early on, we encountered long sections with significant exposure that I would later describe as a vertical bushwhack.

Scary pitches of dirty, loose rock and insubstantial vegetation offered no opportunity for roped protection. So, we climbed simultaneously and very carefully. It was both physically and mentally exhausting, as appalling conditions often are. While good rock can inspire confidence and augment your physical enjoyment, crappy pitches suck away at you, both physically and psychically.

It was only near the top, the last three pitches before the summit, that we encountered any decent rock and opportunities to place protection with confidence. We climbed those fine pitches roped, and they were a joy. Would that the balance of the climb had been so satisfying. But no, it was not. It was regrettably a Jekyll and Hyde route.

Mt. Stuart and Dragontail Peak had ruined me. Those north face routes themselves were pretty darn clean, mostly clear of vegetation and soil, and the quality of granite was superb. They were immaculate by comparison. Although there were always loose blocks in the couloirs, most of the rock was solid, and you could depend on it. That was not the case on Mt. Index. The dismal quality of the route led me to despise the climb, and by extension, the peak, even before our summit bivouac.

Beckey’s climbing guide had pointed out the dirty, loose brushy conditions but had minimized them. We did not know that, and even if we had been told about it in advance, we probably would have ignored it since we had a predetermined vision of what this climb should be, and that drove us forward. It had looked so pristine from the little town of Index. We would have been in complete denial.

And we also revered Fred Beckey. He was a legend even then. No, he hadn’t yet achieved national name recognition, but everyone who climbed in the Pacific Northwest either knew him or knew of him. He had climbed this route and so, like other acolytes, we followed in his footsteps. If Beckey had climbed it, we should climb it. Of course, that completely ignored the reality that it might be a scary and unsatisfying event. I didn’t even consider that possibility. Denny probably didn’t either.

Arriving at the top, we unroped and found the summit register, a short section of galvanized pipe with two threaded end caps. Inside was an old curled paper book and a stub of a pencil. We entered our names and smiled at each other. After the momentary thrill of the successful ascent and taking a couple of summit photos, my thoughts shifted to the traverse. I climbed down a few steps from the top to further examine the section that we’d need to downclimb to continue our traverse to the Middle Peak. I didn’t like what I saw.

I gazed at a ragged jumble of granite blocks that appeared to have been angrily tossed down into the saddle by the forces of gravity that continually erode mountains. The whole daunting mess down to and across the deeply knifed Middle-North Peak notch looked highly unstable. I wasn’t a big fan of steep loose rock this size, especially with the kind of exposure we had at that elevation. It was one thing to plunge step down a scree field near a run-out, but this looked treacherous. I couldn’t see riding one of these fractured blocks to the bottom.

Getting from the North Peak to the Middle Peak had all the appearances of a delicate and significantly risky undertaking. Maybe I was an elitist, but I already had mixed feelings about the route we had just completed and found myself rapidly losing interest in the traverse. Even though we had just bagged the North Peak, I felt no enthusiasm to continue.

“So be it,” I said to myself. “There’s nothing more to see here folks, move along.” There were other, much better climbs to spend my time on.

As the sun departed, we slipped into down jackets and half bags over thin foam pads amongst the tumble of boulders at the summit and pulled our nylon bivy sacks over us. We prepared for a sleep that would not come. It was another one of those nights on a mountain bivouac. If it were not for my anxiety about the conditions of the climbing ahead, I might have lay in wonderment looking up at the star-filled universe above us, merging with the infinite, before drifting away.

Instead, I lay awake, silently awfulizing about what could go wrong on the traverse, a continuous disaster loop playing in my overactive mind. I finally made a decision. “Fuck it!” My fun meter indicator had been dropping rapidly and was near pegging zero. I was definitely done. My new game plan was to feign sleeping in and hope that my climbing partner Denny had an interminably rough sleepless night and would agree to abandon the traverse until sometime in the indeterminant future.

“Hey, we can always come back again,” I would say. Well, I lucked out as that did happen.

This is a brief excerpt from ‘The Choices We Make,’ a mountaineering adventure story about our ascent of the North Face of the North Peak of Mt. Index. The story is told in my mountain memoir, Banquet of the Infinite, available as an eBook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

The Dragon's Tail

A children’s coloring book of cliffs and crags? Uh, no. Just a quick pen and wash study from a summit photo I took back in 1975. Unfortunately, the smooth Stillman & Bird sketchbook paper doesn’t allow the wash to flow seamlessly like cold press, but even so, I like it. A good experiment, nonetheless. I shall return to this subject again, and see if I can improve. Any guesses where this is? Hint: Gerber and Sink completed the first ascent only four years before we climbed it.

At the summit, we held in our view that wonderful panorama of the Enchantment Lakes Basin, the spiky Prusik Peak, Little Annapurna, and the other peaks of the Stuart Range and the distant forms of the volcanos, Mt. Rainier standing assertively above the rest. Breathtaking! Ebullient, we stood and took photos of each other at the top. Dragontail Peak was no doubt named for the jagged serpentine ridge that dominates its skyline. Not nearly as evident from below, it was prominent and dramatically striking to behold from the summit. The spires were both mythic and medieval in their physical manifestation, like weathered and broken crenellations of an ancient stone castle.

Unfortunately, we could not linger to savor our accomplishments. The original plan was to bivy at or shortly after the summit, not partway up the face. Running against the clock, we cautiously descended the steep snowfields on the backside and hiked down the tedious steep slopes of loose rock from Aasgard Pass to the lakeside boulder field. Moving as fast as was reasonable, we hopped from boulder to boulder, careful not to slip and fall into any void between them and thus suffer a potentially debilitating injury. Accessing the trail on the south side of the lake, we continued out as the sun dropped below the horizon. Dark now, we used our headlamps hiking down the sometimes steep and twisting trail back across the heavy log bridge and the final two miles out to the trailhead.

We were spent, thrashed. Grateful that I was not driving, I gave my fate over to Denny. We clambered into his old VW Beetle and bounced down the potholed forest road, and headed towards home. As we drove through the tiny hamlet of Gold Bar, my head slumped to my chest. It was after 4:00 am on Monday when Denny finally dropped me off. I was not looking forward to the day ahead. And as far as our mountaineering victory, no one at the architectural office would care one bit. Not a whit. And the recognition of that did not cheer me.

This is a brief excerpt from ‘Rolling with the Punches,’ a mountaineering adventure story about our ascent of the North Face of Dragontail Peak. The story is told in my mountain memoir, Banquet of the Infinite, now available as an eBook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

Photos and mountain art are by the author.

The Magic Mountain

Not long after our incident with the errant careening rock, we got our first view of the West Arête of Eldorado. Sharply silhouetted against the sky, it flowed jaggedly upward from left to right towards Eldorado’s dramatic knifepoint summit. Both the size and shape of the steep dark ridge appeared ominously forbidding. The impact upon my reptilian brain was immediate.

I was afraid. It struck me as the most fearsome-looking ridge climb that I had ever seen. Was I ready for this? Doubt swept over me like a heavy chain mail shroud, forcibly weighing me down, and I became even surer that no, I was not ready to be any part of this climb. Sure, I had climbed the North Ridge of Mount Stuart and other challenging routes, but this was different, enormous in scale, more jagged, steeper, more dangerous, and more damn scary. My mind shifted into overdrive. Excuses, excuses, what plausible reason could I possibly manufacture to avoid this climb? I felt a desperation to bail out from the ridge climb.

“You know, I’m just not feeling very up to snuff today, a bit off my game. I think I’ll sit this one out and enjoy the scenery. I like it out here. It’s quite beautiful. The three of you can rope up together and climb the ridge. That will work out nicely. A threesome. A nice rope. Yes, and I’ll stay here and meet up with you on the way out. I don’t need to climb this ridge. I’ll be fine. Go ahead and have fun. I’ll wait here.”

I blurted this out as casually as I could manage and waited for a response. I hoped for a quick agreement from the group. I didn’t have to wait long. And I didn’t get it. No one took me seriously, and they were having none of my excuses, no traction on my attempt to weenie out. The group mandate was that I was climbing the ridge with Nicolai. He would be my partner, and that was the end of my nonsense suggestion. Darn. I gulped and started trying to convince myself that it would probably be okay. I was still working on that as we crawled into our sleeping bags for the night.

We awoke early, knowing that today was the big day. We’d be climbing a lot of jagged vertical on the fearsome buttress to reach the summit. I tried to assure myself: just another day at the office, rope up, go to work, get moving up, doing what you know you can do. For some reason, I did not bring my trusty little Rollei 35 camera, which I usually carried in a zippered nylon packcloth pocket on a chest sling, so I have no photos of this climb. The images exist only in my mind. I vividly remember the very photo-worthy route, from the expansive view of the fearsome silhouette to the airy pitches along the ridge.  

Looking back, I must have left the camera behind to avoid any distraction from the task at hand. Climbing the lower sections was a work-like affair from a technical and enjoyment standpoint, and I remember little of those pitches. But the climbing around the granite gendarmes in the middle section was nothing short of spectacular. The 5.8 crux chimney traverse on thin face holds required a bit of attention, but we were all on our game. Everything flowed seamlessly as we swung leads rhythmically up.

You can’t say that about every climb, and you feel the gift of the gods when it happens. I paused during one belay, feeding out the rope to Nicolai, and gazed in awe across the magnificent terrain defined by the jagged surrounding peaks of the North Cascades.

As I sat on the warm granite, anchored to the rock by slings and the force of gravity, the shimmering peaks in the distance appeared to float weightlessly before me. In those moments, I had mentally slipped into a form of sitting meditation. My conscious insight was that my reason for doing these climbs, with all of the dirty, strenuous, and dangerous work, was not to rack up a list of summits with progressively harder difficulty ratings to make myself feel good or to tell my friends.

The real reason for the climb, the extraordinary gift of it, was to see the world from a different vantage point, a vantage point that would be gained only by hard work, requisite skill, and the ability to take risks and overcome fear. And to trust and rely on the help from my fellow climbing partners, who were in those moments my very best friends. The stunning views of and from the sharp ridge were the everlasting rewards.

And in those moments, I was infinite. The climbing that day was long and technical, challenging and immensely gratifying, and surprisingly, at the end of the day, over way too soon. The physical touch of the solid granite beneath my feet and fingertips was so reassuring, and that day we savored the rock as if we had attended a banquet. It was sublime.

What I remember most from that day was not the athleticism and challenge of the climbing, but the place and my perceptions of it. The being there was the gift. After entering the perceptual mystic and achieving what had been some of the most satisfying climbing I had yet done in the Cascades, we reached the summit. We stood at the top of the snow and ice that cascaded down the other side. We basked in the epic moment. As I surveyed the scene, I was delirious with joy. With clear skies and unlimited visibility, the views from the summit were expansive and dramatic, Wagnerian in their visual intensity!

What had I been thinking, trying to get out of this? This climb was one of the most magnificent mountain routes that I had completed to date. I was profoundly grateful that my friends had not listened to my nonsense from yesterday. Thank God. There is a unique type of closeness that you feel with your climbing partners. It’s a marriage where you trust your partner with your life. Sure, that partnership can vacillate between love, gratification, aggravation, and hate, depending on the circumstances. But there is nothing like the feeling of celebrating the completion of a successful, great athletic climb together.

It was to be my only climb with Mark Fielding, who was previously Nicolai’s mountain mentor. And I also never climbed again with the young woman who partnered with Mark on Eldorado Peak. Looking back, I do regret that I did not remember her name. I can testify that she was strong, skilled, and confident and moved with a swift gracefulness, dancing upward towards the summit.

I suppose that I was too self-involved with my anxiety around my ability and readiness to tackle the climb to be paying much attention to Mark and his climbing partner. Mark was incredibly skilled, having made many first ascents with the already mythic Fred Beckey, and any partner of Mark’s would have an unspoken, yet irrefutable, endorsement of competence. Nicolai, soon after summiting, exclaimed that the West Ridge of Eldorado Peak was the ultimate alpine climb of his mountaineering career.

At the time, I withheld that appraisal for myself since it wasn’t the beatdown I had experienced on the North Ridge of Stuart or the sensational experience of the vertical ice world of the Black Ice Couloir on the Grand Teton. But looking back, I agree with Nicolai that this climb was among the great ones for myself as well, and perhaps the highlight of my all too brief technical climbing career.

This is a brief excerpt from 'I’ll Wait Here,’ a mountaineering adventure story about our ascent of the West Arête of Eldorado Peak. The story is told in my mountain memoir, Banquet of the Infinite, now available as an eBook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

Mountain artworks are by the author.

The Sport of Watercolor

It seems to me that the sport of watercolor is much like fly fishing in that there is a rich heritage, with many superb talents to inspire us all. And, in contemporary times the assortment of materials has exploded in both breadth and depth, and technical advances that make for a most confusing array of choices. And the demanding ‘how of it’ is like learning to fly fish, from reading the water (an apt comparison), identifying where trout are holding, and what they’re eating, selecting the pattern, and making a deft presentation. Each requires attention, patience, and willingness to take risks. And both are water-based sports, a fluid ephemeral medium, always changing. And as we change with it, in those moments, we may experience the possibility of transcendence.

A Way of Seeing

Gestalt or nuance? When we look at a photograph, I sense that we focus more on the gestalt, but when we sketch and paint, we are inevitably drawn towards more considered scrutiny of form, texture, color, light and shadow, and the relationship of objects. It’s my experience (of course, echoed by others), that painting becomes a way of seeing that deepens the perceptions and experiences of the artist. This quick pen and wash study is my first in my new Stillman & Birn Zeta notebook. And through the process, I saw the lookout scene with new eyes. I like the way the paper takes the pigments.

Having recently resumed sketching and watercolor art after a long, long hiatus I was, at first, cautious, afraid actually, of using the bush and water-based pigments to do anything beyond wash exercises. So, I thought, it was better to get my hand back in through sketching. Yes, that would be a way to wade into the waters of a spontaneous medium that celebrates boldness, a medium intolerant of fools. What to sketch? Why not cairns. Yes, cairns. They are everywhere in the Cascades and while some disdain their presence as they violate to ethics of ‘leave no trace,’ I often find them stunningly beautiful.

The cairn at the ridgeline at Maple Pass points north towards the jagged peaks of the North Cascades. Even though secured to the earth through force of gravity, they are, nonetheless, ephemeral as they do get knocked over, and added to.

The big cairn on the summit of Alta Mountain anchors a high point in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, a place to pause and gaze. And we did, resting, snacking, and telling mountain stories as our eyes looked north.

Other favorite mountain destinations are the summits that host the historic fire lookouts. I have only hiked to 13 of Washington State’s over 90 fire lookouts. But they have all been spectacular. Of course, I have my favorites. I have been to Granite Mountain Lookout 11 times. As a subject, there is a lot to recommend for both photography and sketching. I have posted numerous spherical panoramas of it at my gallery at 360Cities.net.   And now, one of this recent pair in pen and ink. It’s a little study and I had fun with it. However, I find the boulder fields difficult. It’s not yet easy to make a fast and loose rendition. Perhaps those with fewer boulders, like Alpine Lookout, Shriner Peak, and Kelly Butte will be more accommodating.

It soon became evident that I would have no lack of subject material, even in the dead of winter, as my deep library of mountain images would provide inspiration for interpretation. And, instead of feeling that I have to render each scene accurately, I know I will feel much freer if I adapt the attitude, that as much as I need to deeply see my subject, my job is to simply use it as a reference to create a sketch or painting that stands alone as its own unique statement.

           

Don't Do It!

If there was ever any universal advice offered to first-time authors who wanted to self-publish their new book, it would be, “Don’t even think of designing your own cover. Hire a professional.” Did I listen? No, of course not. Last February, after my first draft was complete, I turned my attention to covers. That would be fun, would it not? Fortunately, I was a decent photographer and had a background in design. So, this should be easy, right?

My early working title was “Beers in the Stream,” but as time went on, I realized that it said nothing about the scope of the book and the story arc, except in a most peripheral way, that would surely confuse everyone, except me. So, that title simply landed on the chapter about our adventure to Lake Ingalls and the subsequent classic ascent of the North Ridge of Mt. Stuart. Unfortunately, the photo of the beers in the stream doesn’t even show up in the book.

So, I scanned my library of photographic images, both vintage and contemporary, and selected over forty that I thought showed cover potential. I cropped them and assembled them in a photo gallery to mull over. After paring it down to a dozen, I mocked them up, with half a dozen potential titles, more subtitles, and with an array of fonts. The permutations counted well over a hundred mock-ups. And even then, I wasn’t happy with the fonts.

At first, I loved the look of Charlemagne Standard, a font designed in 1989 by Carol Twombly, with basic forms modeled after those used in classical Roman engravings. But after further examination, it seemed that fancy serif fonts in color weren’t going to provide the requisite visual impact when the cover was reduced to thumbnail size on a bookseller’s website. And, it turns out that the choice of serif versus sans serif has a lot to do with the genre of your subject. No, I am not joking.

So, I went to phase two, mocking up the best contenders to pick a final font. It turns out that a bold sans serif white font has the most visual impact for book covers, at least in my chosen book genre. After trying many, I settled not on Helvetica, which I had known since my days in college as an architecture student, but on one I had never heard of before. Its name is Mesmerize. And it mesmerized me. From the moment I composed it as text over my cover photos in Photoshop, I knew it was the one. I breathed a sign of relief. Another hurdle crossed.

And from those new cover candidates, I finally picked my title, Banquet of the Infinite. The final decision on the subtitle would take even longer. While I fell in love with my night sky Milky Way photo with Granite Mountain Lookout in the foreground, I wondered if potential readers might equate the title with an exploration of the universe. No, not quite right. Next.

This early self-portrait was shot with the self-timer with my Nikon F film camera looking out at the Sierra peaks from inside Omnipotent #13, back in 1973. And while I like it, I knew it wasn’t the cover shot. It’s a crop from a horizontal image, so somewhat compromised, and I was concerned that it might be confusing, and perhaps a little busy visually. Next.

This image of me hiking up a creek bed in the Sierra appealed to me but then again, most of the memoir stories take place in the Pacific Northwest. Again, I was concerned that potential readers might be too 'concrete literal' in their expectations based on their perception of the image. Next.

I love this vintage image that I took in 1977. And, it appears in the book chapter titled “Warbonnet and Wolf’s Head.” Diane standing on the boulder, looking into the distance, under the prominent feathered crest of Warbonnet Peak, has that Maxfield Parrish ‘girls on rocks’ thing going on, and I think it’s incredibly romantic. It is, however, a bit visually busy with the graphics and it might not make sense to a potential reader when seen in an online thumbnail image on a bookseller’s site. Let’s see if I can do better. Next.

I took this shot of Dragontail Peak while pausing during the trudge up Aasgard Pass with David Stevenson in 2019. I love the drama with the fractured granite and golden larches. And we’re back in Washington. But again, is it too busy? Next.

Later, that same day, as the temperature plummeted and the gray rolled in, the image seems even more ethereal, and dare I say, infinite. Not bad, but is it the one, the one that will draw in a potential reader? And again, is it too busy? Next.

And now, simpler with more diffused light and more contrast and clarity with the title font. But is it both intriguing and welcoming? Or is it too gothic and dour? Next.

Finally. It’s a clear, crisp, simple image of Lake Ingalls with Mt. Stuart both on the horizon and in reflection. A simple grab shot from a solo hike during the 2020 pandemic turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I think it speaks to the title and is both intriguing and welcoming. Done!

My engaging mountain memoir, Banquet of the Infinite, is now available as an eBook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

 

Every Step I Take

I suppose it’s like a little romance, a long-term infatuation, my interest in mountain footwear, but it didn’t start well. I moved from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest in 1972 and started hiking. I thought I’d better get the right footwear and soon settled on a pair of lug-soled hiking boots from REI. I tried them on at their big flagship store on Capitol Hill, actually their only store. It was my first piece of purpose-built outdoor gear, and I felt it a serious purchase, arguably the single most important piece of equipment in your outdoor gear portfolio, the foundation upon which each journey rests. I had expected great things, thinking that I could rely on my new European leather Raichle boots. I thought it would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship with joyous shared mountain adventures. Sadly, it was not to be.

The whole relationship between those boots and my feet went south in a hurry. Although they seemed to fit fine in the store, the unyielding leather uppers gave no quarter to the needs of my feet on the trail. They hurt. The pain of hiking in them, along with the attendant blisters, took all of the joy out of my hike. And the pain commanded most of my attention. After just one outing, I had come to loath them, those miserable little fuckers. Yes, it was that bad, and consequently, I threw them into the back of my closet and would never use them again. I eventually gave them away.

Just a couple of years ago, as Peter Hickner and I hiked the Kendall Katwalk Trail, we talked about gear. I happened to mention my experience with those horrid Raichle boots. Peter stopped me right there and told me his story. It was the same story. Yes, the same boots, the same miserable experience. He, as I, used them only once and then tossed them aside. We both laughed at the hilarity of it, and only because it was so long ago.

Galibier Super Guides. The name was just pure magic. Sensational! The Super Guide was inspired by and named for Gaston Rébuffat, the renowned French alpinist. Famous for being the first man to climb all six of the great north faces of the Alps, Gaston was also a member of the first expedition to summit Annapurna in 1950. He lyrically recounts his climbs of the six north faces in his 1956 book, Starlight and Storm. He was a serious and romantic man whose passion for the mountains came alive in his writing.

The Galibier Super Guide boots were the best boots of their time. Each pair assembled with the finest available materials, beginning with uppers made from a single piece of full-grain leather and sporting lugged Vibram rubber outsoles attached by two strong rows of stitching in a footwear construction named reverse welt or Norwegian Welting. Between the heavy leather of the midsoles and the rubber outsole lay a contoured metal shank that provided the necessary rigidity for climbing ice and snow with attached metal crampons. Another Frenchman, Richard Ponvert, manufactured the Galibier boots. All specifically designed for ascents in such places as the Alps, Dolomites, and Himalayas, as opposed to the hiking trails in the wilderness parks of the western United States.

Nonetheless, many Northwest hikers and would-be mountaineers bought the boots as they were the best available, and while a bit stiff on the approach, the uppers would eventually soften. You could tackle anything as you got higher, and the terrain got rougher and more technical. But the Super Guides were not for everyone. They had a very narrow fit, as the lasts they used emulated the actual feet of Gaston Rébuffat, so the story went (it was so obviously French, n'est-ce pas?).

So, you may ask, “What is a last?” The boot, or shoe, last is a solid foot-shaped form that's used to shape a boot, and the cavity within, when the boot is being constructed. While you may not have even considered it, it's actually one of the most important aspects of footwear construction, a critical part of footwear design that is vitally important for fit. Early lasts were made from hardwoods and contemporary lasts are usually carved from a hard synthetic material, and so are made to be used over and over without deformation. Bootmakers stitch the leather, or synthetic, upper together and then stretch it over the last to shape the boot. Then the sole is attached to the upper while the last form is still in place. After the last is removed from the boot, a foot-shaped cavity remains. And hopefully, your foot will fit well within that cavity.

That’s why it makes little sense to make a selection based on what brand or model someone else may like and recommend. Unless that is, your foot shape is very close to theirs. Every boot manufacturer has their proprietary last designs and not all will be a good fit for your feet. The best approach is to try on as many models of footwear as possible to zero in on your best fit. And then stay with that manufacturer and model range going forward, and hope they don’t change their last so it no longer works for you. If they change, you then start over.

While the range of customers that would achieve a good fit with their Super Guide was limited, Ponvert did make another boot that was practically the same. The significant difference was that while still somewhat narrow, the boot had a more generous last than the Super Guide. It could fit a broader range of feet. This model was named Peuterey, named after a famous peak on the Mont Blanc massif. I knew needed better equipment, that upon which on which I could rely. And so, my quest took a turn for the better after I bought my first Peutereys and EBs (the breakthrough sticky rubber rock shoe from France). My first pair of Peutereys came from the Boat Street Swallow’s Nest, and although they were formidably stiff, the uppers eventually relented and softened, and my feet liked them. They became my go-to boot for all things from trail hikes to technical ascents of rugged Cascade peaks, sometimes sporting my Salewa crampons. I used them so much that I eventually had to have them re-soled by Dave Page, the renowned Seattle cobbler who served the entire western mountaineering community.

Of course, my antenna were always on alert for the promise of the new. Yvon Chouinard’s company Great Pacific Ironworks introduced a new boot in the pages of its little 1976 catalog that sported a color cover photo of Machapuchare taken by Tom Frost. It was a stunning image, alpine porn, of a mountain in the Annapurna massif of Gandaki Pradesh of north-central Nepal. And it was unavailable, off the market, its highest peak having never been climbed and probably would not ever be.

The reason? No one could secure a permit from the government of Nepal to climb it. I imagine that many alpine climbing enthusiasts collectively sighed. Anyway, the Swiss boots were the most beautiful that I had ever seen (in the catalog photo).

The copy read: “We have acquired a limited supply of Carl Molitor’s EIS boot. The boot is handmade using only top-quality materials. The leather is Grade ‘A’ Russian heifer…”

It continued, extolling the features and attributes. It encouraged the customer to send a tracing of their foot with the order or stop by their retail shop for an exact fitting.

It finished by saying, "These Molitor boots are being distributed on a first-come, first-served basis."

I thought the catalog copy compelling. “Limited supply, top quality, Russian heifer, double-stitched by hand, U.S. rocker with a narrow heel to fit American feet, first-come, first-served.”

I was smitten and needed to step up to the plate.

“Stop by for a fitting.” It sounded so couture, didn’t it?

I couldn’t exactly stop in for a fitting since their retail shop was in Ventura, California (only 1,150 miles from Seattle). So, mail-order it was. I got lucky. The size I ordered fit perfectly, and they and I soon became fast friends, along with my German Chouinard Salewa rigid crampons. I found them the perfect tools for ice couloirs, and I used them with confidence on both the Black Ice Couloir on the Grand Teton and the Stuart Glacier Couloir back in the Cascades, as well as other ice climbing outings.

While they were, at the time, a superb combination, I look back and marvel at both the long approaches and multi-pitch technical climbs that I made in both my Galibier and Molitor boots. Because, for all their earthly virtues, they were damn heavy boots, both the Peuterey and Molitor boots weighed in at 6 pounds the pair.

Even Nike got into the act. And when they introduced their 1982 version of the classic hiking boot, with leather uppers, and lugged rubber sole, I was on board. I think they named the boot Magma, but I could be wrong. Nonetheless, I used them on several multi-day outings in the Cascades, including the fabled Enchantment Lakes basin. And while they were light and comfortable the only catch, and there’s always a catch, is that they weren’t waterproof. And not even Sno Seal could fix the exposed tongue construction, a virtual canal for water access. So, they were only fair-weather footwear.

My subsequent boots would be both lighter and waterproof without the need for Sno Seal. Tecnica’s Tecni-Dry boots promised both features. The lighter weight, a result of a thinner outsole bonded to the upper with modern adhesives. For some reason, I trusted them completely. And then, one day while hiking up the rocky trail toward the summit pyramid of McClellan Butte, I felt a loose flopping sensation. I looked down and saw that my lugged Vibram outsole was separating from my right boot. It was only a bit and I thought I could deal with it later, and continued. Soon the problem grew worse and finally, the entire outsole detached. I turned to descend, hobbling down on one good boot, carrying the detached sole, somewhat amused by the turn of events. I didn’t even get back to the trailhead before the remaining sole came off. No longer amusing, it was the death knell for my relationship with Tecnica mountain boots.

The Italian La Sportiva Pamirs seemed a good next choice. They fit well, were durable, and had a lace lock system that allowed variable adjustment for both the lower and upper parts of your foot. I loved hiking in them, but at four pounds, the leather boots were among the last of that era and I eventually moved on to the next technical iteration. My new La Sportiva Trango Cube GTX boots sported synthetic uppers, featured the lace lock system, and weighed in at only three pounds. I have heard that the US military has concluded that a pound on your feet is the equivalent of five pounds in your pack. So, the three pounds that I have saved (from my original leather mountain boots) by hiking and climbing in my newer, lighter boots are the equivalent of a whopping fifteen pounds in my pack!

I loved my Trango Cubes so much that I bought the Trango Ice Cubes that featured a built-in gaiter. While a fabulous boot for snow and ice, it had practically no rocker. That meant a less comfortable approach. And after five years, my Trango Cubes have worn to the point I asked myself if I should have Dave Page resole them. And then…the next generation caught my eye. La Sportiva had just introduced their Aequilibrium series of 3-season mountain boots. They seemed even lighter and the buzz was that they provided unparalleled comfort on the approaches as well as the technical sections. And they look pretty snazzy. Hmmm. And so…the quest continues.

Portions of this post are excerpts from “Peutereys and Piolets,” a story from my recently released mountain memoir, Banquet of the Infinite, now available as an eBook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.