Mom's Brain...on Migraines

You know how it feels when something in the wiring

goes terribly wrong and you don't get to land on the moon

after all?

We don't. But mom not feeling good.

She feels how this looks.

We'll be back soon, that's a promise!

(After all, Houston got Apollo 13 back!)

Just got kinda dicey for awhile there...you know?

We have news, though, BIG NEWS...so, later!

OOPSIE!

HAPPY 28th ANNIVERSARY, MOUNTAIN DEMONSTRATORS!

First, for the sake of her family, BFF Susan is the paragon of virtue.

However, things rapidly deteriorate once she getZ her BuZZ ON!
(Not to mention the family! OMG! Just look at them!)

Finally, the Real Deal: when preparing for the High Country:
THIS IS HOW SHE DO IT!
If you are a mountaineering piggie,
you know that much is made of learning survival skillswhen out in the backcountry.

Things such as avalanches, falling into tree-wells, getting lost in a white-out, getting lost because you're with a guy who refuses to ask for directions,
getting lost because although he brought a compass...he never learned to use it,
beyond saying: "Well, it works! Look, everytime I move it, the red thing points in the same direction." Getting lost because the same guy raced up the mountain ahead of you in his crampons,
with no ice axe to arrest a fall, you don't have a clue where he is, dusk is rapidly falling as the pinkish alpenglow fades,
and he was too damn cheap to buy walkie-talkies, so you are already planning to return those
crampons to the store and never, ever
letting him have another pair!
And he's real lucky nobody 
got an ice axe!

Not that any of those things have
EVER HAPPENED
TO MOM.
Although she now lives alone, with us...hmmm?


The snows have come early, our ski lodge is open, and this post is about mountain preparedness.

EDITOR: "LESSON #1: ditch the guy!"

Mom, not always about you...
(mom: yes, it is.)

MT. BAKER IS NOW OPEN FOR BIZNESS!

MOUNTAIN PREPAREDNESS 101:
IT'S ABOUT THE COFFEE!
THANKS TO BFF Susan, David, and Ami
for their Backcountry-Demonstration-Preparedness
demonstration-demonstration skills! (slu*&&^rp)
David, in real life, was a climbing instructor
up in Alaska and one of the original
founders of Marmot Mountain Works.
Susan met him at a mountaineering class.
(Actually, they met twice in their lives,
on two separate occasions in two different
places with entirely different people
around them, it's quite the
"Meant To Be" love story!)

But Lesson #1 is LESSON #1:
YOU ARE ONLY AS SAFE AS
YOU ARE CAFFEINATED!
Otherwise, you are simply a blob, like you see below,
in your stylish ski togs...
a blob.