We made it out alive! Ok, so it wasn't Everest, but still.

Having recently read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, which was sad, beautiful, eloquent, and an example of how the Earth surely has the power to kill us long before we kill it, climbing Mount Washington seemed like an appropriate activity. Yes, it's summit is only about 1/5 that of Mount Everest but that s*** was serious. Casualties of our group of nine included several pairs of wet ladies sneakers, size 6 1/2, two skinned knees, four skinned palms, three cases of shallow breathing, one extreme hydration with double-barfing included, one abandoned t-shirt, and two endurance braggarts. Overall it was a challenging and at times painful test of endurance, indicative of how out of shape I have become. Mount Washington is also a sort of meteorological anomaly. It is the apex of three different jet streams which causes... weird stuff to happen in the sky up there somewhere. Or something. All I know is that when we started the climb it was 84 degrees and once we got to the top it was 40 degrees with a visibility of about ten feet and the day's wind record was 88 mph. Bitchin'.
Now I'm reading Into the Wild, also by Jon Krakauer, which catalogues the adventures of Alexander Supertramp, nee Chris McCandless, a bratty trust fund kid from DC who gives up his family and money to traipse around North America hitchhiking and "living off the earth" as he says. Long story short he ends up dead in an old bus in Alaska (trust me, this is not ruining the story). Since I'm only halfway through the book, the verdict is still up in the air, but so far my thoughts are mixed. The kid was either a spoiled idealist that never understood how to respect the earth, or an effing crazy lunatic. I'll let you know.