…By 11:40am the sky had turned dark and I felt the first drop of rain on my head. Contrary to the weather report, my instincts told me to turn around and get lower, so I headed back to the lake where I thought I’d wait it out for a while. When the first thunder came, it was close and powerful, followed by more of the same. Now my instincts told me to run, so I did. As I did, nickel-size hail rained down in almost biblical fashion…

I started CrossFit about three years ago and I set up this gym in a spare bedroom we have because I always seemed to miss a CrossFit session. I wanted to be able to do at least 95% of what I did at the gym at home. Six months into this, it’s proven to be a great setup, and I think it would really benefit anyone who is just trying to stay fit at home. I attend Centric Athletics, and at the moment, because of the Coronavirus, we are closed. Like all of us, I needed a solid way of staying fit at home right now.

…soon the class 2 ridge turned to class 3/4 so we roped up alpine style and continued walking. There were a few sections of the ridge Neil climbed ahead and gave us a hip belay, but we never needed to set up any belay anchors along the ridge. This place was so beautiful it was hard to take it all in. And I got to do this with my son – who gets to do that?

A few years ago, we took the Grand Circle road trip, hitting all of the big national parks in Utah, plus a few more. This year, we decided to take another road trip that would take us north, all the way to Glacier National Park, hitting the Tetons and Yellowstone on the way up, and Sawtooth National Forest on the return.

…the route turned into bigger and bigger talus until it finally ended on a ridge that overlooked the Palisade Glacier. And as I expected, it was truly awe-inspiring and huge. A ridgeline of 14ers – Mount Sill, Polemonium Peak, North Palisade, Starlight Peak, and Thunderbolt Peak – towers over the glacier bowl.

After nine miles of hiking I could finally see Mount Julius Caesar. I was relieved to find it, but troubled about my energy level. I ate a Cliffbar, hoping to fill the tank with a little extra gas to get me to the summit. I had 600 feet of scrambling left to reach the summit. I’m glad a pushed myself. The view from the summit was incredible.

I had been to Buckskin Gulch 10 days before with my friend Manny and hurt my back a few miles from the trailhead. I saw just enough of this amazing slot canyon to know I HAD to come back and see all 23 miles of it. When I showed my family some of the pictures, they all signed up and we planned a trip for the following week. Cold, muddy, waist high pools of water made it tougher than most of us had planned on, but no one was disappointed.

There was a study done on men in Ireland over a span of 20 years, involving 3,400 men. The study had two significant findings. First, the men who were active in middle age were three times more likely to be active in their senior years. Second, men who had played a sport for 25 years+ were five times more likely to be active in their senior years than their counterparts who didn’t play a sport.