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From the moment I first arrived I was made to feel welcome. I remember on that first day, years ago,  I was greeted so warmly by Jim Olver the director of customer service at the Banff Centre For Arts & Creativity. You just showed up and glommed on to one of my tours,” he reminded me. “Now look at you. You’re back as a big-time speaker.” For more than a decade I’ve enjoyed the privilege of attending the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival in Alberta, Canada. Like...

Even the best laid plan can go horribly awry. On this particular occasion a day-hike to the headwaters of the Chattahoochee River was unceremoniously canceled due to a torrential rainstorm that was further exacerbated by a tornado warning. But undeterred by the inclemate weather on an otherwise lovely Sunday morning in late April our small group gathered nonetheless to drown our sorrows at a Midtown Atlanta establishment called Tacos & Tequilas. As they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going…to brunch.

At first I was afraid I’d have to say no. When the organizers of the Color The Crag Climbing Festival reached out to me to be the keynote speaker at their second annual event, I was already heavily booked. I was scheduled to make presentations at the Adventure Film Festival in Boulder and the Society for Wilderness Stewardship Workshop in Gunnison in early October. Hurricane Florence had forced the rescheduling of a photo story sharing project in South Carolina to the week before. And I had promised my...

After a long day of watching movies and a late night of drinking, I slept with a man I love. Certainly no lapse of judgement, my friend Jeremy Collins invited me to share his bed in the Boulder Adventure Lodge at 1AM rather than drive twenty miles back to Golden through a sloppy storm of rain, sleet and snow. A few weeks earlier at another one of the many film festival events that we attend together, he joked with a crowd during a Q&A that we had shared...

Fall chores had preempted my regularly scheduled Sunday morning rituals. Yoga would have to wait as I raked the first round of fallen leaves from the lawn and prepared a pile of yard waste in anticipation of a Thursday pick-up. Sasha came bounding into the garden like a black scud missile on target to obliterate my efforts in a flurry of paws and her wagging tail. Our puppy loves the displacement of splashing puddles and swirling leaves as she turns every moment of our lives into a happy...

Conrad Anker’s team of athletes enjoyed a leisurely week of rest in Advanced Base Camp, at just over 14,200 feet above sea level. Along with many other climbers on the mountain at the time they were also waiting for an appropriate window of opportunity to open so that they could make the final ascent to the summit of Denali. When the day at last arrived, rather than spend the night at the High Camp at 17,200 feet, the team decided instead to make the climb up from 14...