It wasn't easy.

Of course, as we all know: extraordinary achievements are rarely easy.


I’ll skip the sordid details that all expeditions have in common. Selecting our team, logistical preparations, and the long & challenging trip to Base Camp, are mere footnotes to our real adventure.

After an arduous journey, Heidi & I arrived at Base Camp late at night, found our bivy site, organized our gear and slept blissfully, with dreams of looming adventures.

Fortuitously, our base camp was located two-thirds of the way up the volcano, so we only had another 10,023 Ft. to climb.

The next morning, we visited a quaint island bazaar and stocked up on food for the expedition.

Things got nasty our first afternoon in Base Camp!

It cooled way down, and the wind picked up! Clouds quickly covered the sun and the weather was going to get ugly. We retreated to our bivy site, and opened some wine (Cline Ancient Vines Zinfandel) to raise our spirits.
Things were looking better by sunset.

We gave ourselves 6 days to acclimate to the hostile tropical conditions. There was little time for rest or reflection, as we maintained a hard-core pace of training for the tremendous challenges of our climb.


Swimming, beach-walks, snorkeling, body-surfing, & Boogie-boarding: all helped prepare us for the lack of oxygen and unstable volcanic terrain we would soon need to deal with.

Unfortunately, while I was experimenting with a variation of “Big-Wave Boogie-Boarding” that I named “underwater sand-tumbling,” I pulled a muscle in my back. I was forced to slow my training somewhat, and take medication on occasion.

We started concentrating on strength & balance exercises on the beaches, knowing we would encounter similar problems on volcanic ash at high altitude.

There was little discussion of what methods we would use to climb our mountain. Heidi & I are traditionalists, and we would succeed or fail on our climb in traditional style. We would not resort to a mode of ascent that would lower the worth of our achievement.

Suddenly it was the day to start our climb. Our gear was packed up, and the journey up the formidable volcano that had loomed over us, began.

The die was cast, and our fate was now to be decided. Would we succeed or fail?
We had to climb 10,023 ft. in only a few miles, but our training paid off.

We rapidly ascended the surprisingly good trail that switch-backed towards the far away and impossibly high summit.


Much More to follow!