On Friday the 25th of August, in a forest named the Wenetachee, two stout-hearted mountain tamers did start on a journey...This is their story, it ends in beer.

The Route, The Ravine, After the Ravine, More Adventures.

That's me: Blue shirt, torn shorts, really big pack and a dream.

This is my dad. He can breathe fire.

Our goal was simple. Climb an unassumingly named mountain in the Wenatchee National Forest named Mt. Maude. Sure Mt. Maude sounds like a grand motherly hill adorned with lacey stuff that offers you tea at every switchback. Turns out it's an angry, disagreeable bitter rocky slope full of crushed hopes in form of small boulders. In short, Mt. Maude was nothing at all like Bea Arthur, unless she had been a security guard at an internment camp before going to Hollywood.

The route is an odd one as you make kind of a swirl shaped path up the hill. You start going one way. Then go straight up. Then go the opposite way for a while. Then go through a ravine. Then go straight up. Then go straight up some more. Then go straight down. Then go back the first way again, but this time on the other side of the mountain. Then you go straight up. Now you are at the top. So you are supposed to go straight down. Then straight up. You get the idea. To make this swirl cone ice cream shaped trek it takes about two days. The slopes are steep and covered with loose rocks of "Talus" so that makes things easier. To fall down. Which I did.

"It's true, Mt Maude is nothing like me."

We spent a night at the campground fighting off squirrels and discussing the WSU Cougars chances this fall. If the other teams forget to show up, I think we're in good shape. The next day we set off to claim the summit and saunter back to camp with the smug air of easy victory. So off we go...into the mouth of the mayhem.

A short jaunt from the campground we came across a huge ravine. This surprised us, as he had heard it was only massive. Fire breathing dad took the first shot at crossing what I can only imagine is Gods drainage ditch. He got across, but just barely. The wall he was climbing gave way from underneath him. Leaving nothing but a great story. I made it too, but I can't breathe fire, so I am less interesting.

This is a picture of said ravine taken from space...

"Stay awhile, said the spider to the fly...."

This is a picture of me in the ravine. I am 6 ft 5 so you can see this thing is super deep.

"It's true, Kirk is 6 ft 5, you have only seen him in bad lighting."

The thing is, to get those steak knives you really have to earn it. Our guide book tells us that you descend 300ft, into a gully, then the path to the summit is obvious. This is where I learned that mountain climbers must have really advanced eye sight. All I saw was a blank sheet of dirt. Descending into the gully and back up seemed about as appealing as walking into Jabba the Hutts palace to see if they felt like donating to the Boy Scouts.

By this time was it getting late in the day, we had lost a couple of hours "route finding", had both taken at least one nasty fall and thought better about a summit push. So...like good Cougars, when the going gets really tough, we go for a beer. We had lunch and headed back down. Turns out, that is considerably faster than coming up so we packed up our packs and headed all the way down. We got back to the car around 7 or so...we had a heck of an adventure, breathed some fire and hadn't seen another person for 28 hours. Once in the car we headed straight to

Most work I have ever done for beer. Mt. Maude is a challenging scramble. Keep a watch out for cairns, and leave base camp early.