I laid awake that night with my foot throbbing in pain. When I got up in the morning my foot was so stiff and swollen that I could barely make it down the stairs. I allowed things to 'settle' for 2 or 3 days and then I climbed again. Each climb was not quite as slow as the one before and my recovery time got better. As the first few months went by, I continued to climb- continued to get stronger. ...  Read More

A normal, good pace for me coming down Bear Mountain (which is faster than going up) is about 40 minutes from the summit to my house. I was still near the top and 40 minutes were already behind me. The first hour stretched slowly and painfully into the second, and I was still a long way from home. With my damaged and swollen foot, coming down the mountain was far more difficult than climbing up. I...  Read More

By the time I reached the summit, the other climbers had long passed me by, yet I was so overwhelmed with thanksgiving that I had tears in my eyes as I  was pouring out praise to God. The others were standing around a blazing fire as I hobbled into to the circle. I didn't stay long. I was cold and knew that I was going to have a hard time of it going down. Much of the descent was near vertical, an...  Read More

The night finally came- New Year's Eve. When I walked downstairs wearing my climbing gear, Laura's first question was, "What are you doing?" I hadn't shared my plan with anyone until that moment. When I stated nonchalantly, "I'm going climbing," I was met with a chorus of, "You CAN'T do it, you're not ready!" "You're NOT doing it!" "PLEASE don't do it!" But I was determined. A group of local climb...  Read More

Many times each day I forced my swollen foot into my climbing boot. I timed how long I could stand the pain before pulling the boot off. Soon I could endure a minute and then two minutes and then five minutes. By the end of two weeks, I could leave my foot in the boot for an hour and was able to hobble around the house with both boots on. My goal was to climb Bear Mountain on New Year's Eve- exact...  Read More

I spent several days looking at my climbing boots and gathering up my nerve. My plan was to shove my foot (thick and swollen and full of stitches) into my climbing boot so that the rigid boot would force my foot to heal into the shape of the inside of the boot. That way I would be able to continue mountain climbing. I had my son, David, bring me my boots. He saw what I was thinking and said, "Don'...  Read More

I asked my spinal surgeon what kind of activity my back could withstand. He said that I could do anything that I could stand- that I would have pain but was in no danger of further injury. In fact, he said that those three fused vertebrae were now the strongest part of my spine. Now I could focus all of my 'rehab' attention on my foot. That got me thinking about climbing. I always tell people that...  Read More

In addition to my crushed foot, I also needed surgery to fuse three crushed vertebrae. So as not to leave me completely immobile and bedridden, they decided to do the spinal fusion after I got the cast off my foot. Every month I had to go in for a back x-ray to make certain that those damaged vertebrae weren't moving. The day finally came, my cast was removed. I was shocked by the length of the th...  Read More

Crushed vertebrae, a crushed foot, and over 3 1/2 months in a wheelchair. My leg was in a cast, my body was in a shell, and I was in a lot of pain. I was content to lie still from the end of August to the middle of December. I love to climb mountains, especially in the snow. According to my journal, the previous winter I had summitted 83 times. That summer I summited Mount Rainier. I mention this ...  Read More

I still needed to butcher my deer and get it in the freezer, but it was in the truck and I was pointed toward home. The moment I started my truck and put it in gear I felt an enormous sense of relief from not only half a day of grueling hard work, but also from the intense mental pressure of needing to get this deer out. Almost like flipping a light switch, everything changed in an instant. I was ...  Read More

I was drenched in sweat and my shoulders were raw from the thin rope harness I made to drag my deer, but I somehow made it up out of the coulee onto level ground. But I faced another problem. Directly between myself and my truck was an old barbed wire sheep fence with wires stretched so tight and low to the ground that I couldn't get the deer under it. It took all of my strength to cut the wire wi...  Read More

The antlers made nice handles, but I couldn't budge the mule deer even one inch up the side of the steep coulee. I decided to backtrack, climb out on my own and head back to get my truck. My hope was that I would be able to drive around the coulee and park close to the upper edge. In my truck I found a 10 foot piece of rope, cut it in half, made two loops and tied one on each of the buck's antlers...  Read More