A Step Forward

So, I have a bit of spare time on my hands here, and now seems like as good a time as any to give a bit of the story as to what I will be up to for the entire month of July.
A month or so ago, my parents offered me something of a chance of a life time. A NOLS course. I find it, I sign up for it, they pay, and I get to go. Hardly an offer to miss out on. After looking through several catalogs, online trip reports, photo albums, and talking to friends, I applied for two of the Waddington Range Mountaineering courses, and a Wind River Mountaineering course as my three top choices. Then I left for a river trip for a week, and returned to find my enrollment packet sitting on the counter. I opened it up only to find that I had been wait-listed on all three courses.
I called the NOLS office, just to try and figure out what the chances were of me actually getting on a course, any course really, and there were at least three people including myself on the wait-list for each course. And that all but one person in each course had paid their tuition in full. In short, things were looking down.
I scrambled to get my paperwork and deposit in, on the slim chance that some fellow named Eric at NOLS had given me, that if I showed motivation to get on the course, they might be able to work some things out.
I am not sure what happened yesterday morning from their prospective, but after faxing my papers in that morning, and speaking with three separate people at the office, all the while making it very clear that I was willing to commit to any of the Waddington courses, I got a call a few hours later, asking me if I was still interested in taking the July 1st through July 31st course.

Yes.

Wait, is this for real? I'm still in a bit of a daze, a mix of gracious surprise and a strange lack of information. The last 24 hours have been a mad blur of plane flights, hotel reservations, airport shuttles, and gear lists. Dates and times and places, its all very exciting and somewhat overwhelming. But at the same time, for all the things that I do know about what hotel I'll be staying the night of June 30th, in Mt. Vernon, Washington, there are a hundred times more things I have no idea about.
The course itself is very much a mystery, I have heard that the instructors don't even know what the route will be at this point. I have heard tales of near starvation and insane bushwhacking, massive glaciers, and huge mountains, but who really knows, at this point? I sure don't.

Here's a great snippet from Dan, who was actually preparing for a similar trip a little less than a year ago.

One thing I'm not necessarily prepared for though is the area of the trip itself, the Waddington Range in British Columbia. This is simply because not a ton of information on this place exists. I'm honestly not sure how were even getting there...I've heard rumors of day long van rides, float planes, trekking through ancient rainforests...who knows? What I do know is that tomorrow I fly to Seattle and make my way to NOLS Pacific Northwest HQ in Mount Vernon, so this will be my last blog entry here until sometime in mid-August. As such, I figured I'd give you a few snippets I've found about the Waddington Range.

and another from the american alpine institute

"Waddington! - Just the name quickens the heartbeat of any alpinist who has happened upon an article or even photo of this mysterious and remarkable peak. Mount Waddington? Does it really exist or is it just a tall tale? If it does exist, it's at the very least a place that very few people know much about, where very few people have been, and information about which is somewhat limited and hard to find. Climbers that have been to the range often speak of the place with an animation and excitement warranted by only a few great ranges in the world. In my mind Waddington and the remote parts of the Coast Range have always seemed like places that ordinary climbers can't go: too remote, too difficult, and too involved. Like the mountains in places that end in "ikstan" or "onia". Unattainable for the mere mortal."


Adventure is out there my friends, lets go find some.




Images courtesy of John Scurlock