My planning for Signal Peak began with, “Where is this?” I had never heard of Signal Peak before. It’s to the southwest of Black Lassic, sort of behind it as you approach from the northwest. There are several routes, all of them challenging. I didn’t want to go alone, but wasn’t sure who else might […]
Hollie Ernest
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Sea to Summit: Trinidad
Sara and I are very different. The first time I met this gorgeous woman was at 2 a.m. in a wide pasture after a birthday party that was quite a celebration. She was almost silent and I didn’t think much about it. More time went by and Sara came to Costa Rica with three other […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Sea to Summit Part 2: Barry Ridge
Preparing for the next leg of the 10 Sea to Summit challenges, a series of human-powered Humboldt adventures starting at the ocean (“Sea to Summit Part 1: Bald Mountain,” April 22), I had to research the location of Barry Ridge, only to realize it was a short jaunt off my regular cycling route up Kneeland […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Mad River Scramble
Despite being 10 years apart in age and opposites in many ways, my sister and I are very close. On past vacations, my pile of rusty, muddy camping gear would sit in one corner, smelling questionable, while her pile was in the other corner, her pink sunglasses and pink bathing suit smelling like perfume from […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Sea to Summit Part 1: Bald Mountain
We couldn’t all cycle together in April of 2020, obviously. Cycling with a peloton of racers breathing heavily and sprinting uphill was not going to happen. Snot would fly as thighs burned, a dynamic that suddenly carried a novel, dangerous threat that was constantly evolving. We all wondered what the future held in this new […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Lagoon Challenge
It was a cotton cloak type of fog, reducing visibility to 30 or 40 feet. Donna and I swam this stretch in bathing suits, “skinning it,” without the protection of wetsuits. Ariana looked at us skeptically as she pulled her well-worn neoprene over her long limbs and we eyed each other warily from 10 feet […]