#summits

NEW DELHI: Kami Rita Sherpa, a 54-year-old Nepalese climber and guide, has once again made history by scaling Mount Everest for the 29th time on Sunday morning. Known as the ‘Everest Man’, Kami Rita broke his own record, which he had set last spring season by reaching the summit of the world’s highest peak twice within a week, marking his 28th successful ascent.Prior to his latest climb, Kami…

Because I'm me, even after school starts back up in September I'm always keeping an eye on road/trail conditions until enough snow falls that there's no practicable way to do long mountain hikes anymore. In 2020, this led to one of my favorite dayhikes ever, when I climbed South Sister (just the basic southern approach, not the cool eastern one) on November 1st, and descended partly in the dark. In addition to this just being fun because South Sister is one of my favorite mountains to climb, doing it so late in the year felt crazy in the way staying up past bedtime or being in the school building at night felt when you were younger. It was great.

Well, on Wednesday I took a day off from working to climb McLoughlin on November 1st, literally hours before the first of a few forecasted big snowfalls hit the mountain. It was a little touch-and-go in places (I had to do most of the hike, including the scramble portion in microspikes), but didn't need crampons or an ax.

It was overcast the whole way up, and I carried on fully expecting to not really have a summit view. But then, literally right as I reached the top of the mountain the clouds broke up, I walked around for a few minutes taking photos and absorbing the view, and then the clouds settled back down on the mountain and never lifted again for the rest of the climb. It was wild.