Being snarky is bad karma. Climb happy. Be happy.

Original Post Date 7/30/2021

Mt Reynolds.  Finally, time for some climbing.  You’ll recall I was doing some reconnoitering on Mt Reynolds a couple of weeks back (a fancy French word for being more than a little lost in a place you should be more than a little familiar with).  I was back, and this time it was awesome.

The early AM shit show at the parking lot is fun as always.  This time all of the tourists tripped over each other to get photos of the mountain sheep on the pavement. They didn’t understand it was just going from parking stall to stall, licking the exact spot where antifreeze spilled from a leaking coolant system.  Which is a sweet poison to most living creatures, naturally. 

The sunrise was fiery and the high mountain tarns provided great opportunities for reflection (ahhhhh).  There are many boot routes on this side of the mtn, none of which I remembered from my youth.  But I found the one that best fits my personality.  

The 1000’ of talus was two steps up and one back.  Then the upper cliffs were a matter of finding cairns (also called ducks – at least three stones stacked on top of each other in a way that looks like a human did it), hoping the person who placed them didn’t take the wrong route. Kind of like an Easter egg hunt with very serious consequences. 

Once I started getting used to the rotten crumbling cliffs of GNP, I started feeling more comfortable again.  From this central peak everything at Logan Pass and beyond just opens to you. 

Enjoy my quick videos and you’ll see for yourself.  Here is just a summit panoramic.

Then, I got a little cocky because I was feeling so good.  Which lead me to be a little snarky with my video.  When hiking down, I was thinking it may have been a bit over the top and I don’t really edit anything.  After all, this is quite a summer for me and such.  But maybe tone it down a little next time. 

Then about 700’ off the summit, I reached down to put on my prescription sunglasses.   Gone.  Fallen out of my side pack pocket where nothing has come loose in the last 250 miles over the last month. 

So I take the next hour to backtrack the miserable climb up the talus slope, looking left and right, for a gray/white soft case that a) is not only the same color and SIZE as every rock on this talus field but b) I can’t see w/out my glasses.  I weave thru the summit cliffs again, back on top, and nothing.  

So I carefully came down again, checking/hoping they just fell out and didn’t bounce somewhere.  Nothing.  Time to get back to the car and start my afternoon shift.  But I assumed it was just bad luck.  If people don’t like my snarkiness, that’s their problem.  Live your own life.  Go big or go home. 

This is the Summer of Dave so buckle-up butter-cup and enjoy the ride.  Then I saw a really cool ram on the perfect cliff backdrop for a photo.  Reached for my phone.  Gone.  Yeah, the OTHER pocket on my pack nothing has EVER fallen out of for 200+ miles.  Really? Time to climb back up again?

I look back up at a mountain I had climbed twice this morning and now must do a third time. Sigh.  I get it.  The mountain gods are right and I’m a dick.  No, worse yet, I am a bag of dicks.  I start up again.  Zig-zagging all over it x3. I just had to find a little black phone that I needed more than it needed me. 

But this time, I examine my life.  Looking for some clarity.  Asking questions not to find answers, but to find the source of the stream of consciousness from which is flowing all this negative energy.   About three hundred feet up, on a slab of red limestone, lying face up and unbroken about eight inches from a 200’ drop off, there is my phone.  

Yes, I finally understand.  I learned to stop putting stuff I don’t want to lose in my pack pockets.  Oh, and to be a better person.