The Alpine Ice Climbing in the Northwest is in excellent shape right now and it is a good time to be climbing the big North Faces.  If you haven't heard already, this winter was a big one in the Northwest which gave us some incredible ski conditions but it also means an extended north face season.

Well, it's that time of year.  The high alpine rock climbs are starting to get in shape and so are the climbers.  Time to trade in the ski legs for some climbing arms.  Time to switch from going with gravity to fighting against it - the ying and yang of the mountain lifestyle. 

For those of you looking for some motivation to get in shape for climbing, here's a little video of Mike climbing "Leap of Faith" last week.  Turn up the volume and put it in full screen for the full effect.  

Mike and Larry had been planning this trip for over a year.  Plane tickets were purchased, food was organized, reservations made to fly in to the Alaska range, in short, everything was in order - except the weather.  In one of the worst seasons in Alaskan memory, our group got hammered by wet weather which ultimately shut down any chances of rock climbing and allowed us one brief respite in which we escaped the range before the next big system moved in.  Fortunately, we had a cush basecamp which allowed us to still really enjoy ourselves, though it was not the trip either of