Northeast Capitols/Highpoints

While I was in New York to compete in Ironman Lake Placid, I took a little bit of time to tick off a few northeastern points of interest from my list. I only had so much time around the race itself, and staying in Lake Placid made it hard to get to everything still to be seen. If I had had five days just to drive around New York and New England, I could have toured 7 or 8 State Capitols and visited 3 or 4 new State Highpoints. With the time I did have, I only managed to tour the New York and Rhode Island Capitols and go to the Massachusetts and Rhode Island highpoints. I would have liked to hit the Vermont highpoint and Capitol as well, but ran out of time before my flight home. I got as high as a sub-peak of Mount Mansfield, but did not get to a point where I could claim to have completed it. Even still, I'm pleased to have knocked off highpoints numbers 44 and 45.

Couples Triathlon

Third time is not always the charm. My third time doing Couples Triathlon was my worst. Not my slowest (I was a little slower in 2013 right after Denali), but my worst. My overall time was only two minutes slower than last year, but the swim was cut down to 500m this year from previously being 800m. But really it wasn't just that I had a terrible run that made it the worst, it was that I got such a bad calf cramp in T2 I was actually limping later in the week.

Climbing Denali with RMI Expeditions

[ed note: this is old and unfinished, I'm just finally posting it now as is, on the two-year anniversary of summiting Denali July 5 2013]
On June 18 2013, I flew to Alaska for an expedition to North America's highest peak, 20,320 foot (6,194 meter) Denali (officially Mt. McKinley). In total, we spent 20 days on the mountain, and about 5 minutes at the actual summit. It was filled with challenges, both mental and physical; I lost both my big toenails; it took a while to get over the cough I acquired at 17,000 feet; I am quite psyched to tick this one off of my list.
After great previous trips with RMI Expeditions on Rainier (a summit climb in 2009, and a winter seminar in February), I didn't even consider climbing with anyone else, even though I had never met the guides. The lead guide for my trip was Pete Van Deventer, along with Geoff Schellens and Robby Young. Along with them and six other clients, none of whom I had ever met in person (I connected with the guides and one other climber via Facebook), we had a great trip; we got along pretty well as a team.
I already posted some articles on specific aspects of this climb, starting with the training and gear, also about the weather. I had ideas for several more articles, but I lost momentum on this whole project; I just had too many adventures the following summer, most notably climbing Granite Peak in Montana and a return trip to Mt. Rainier. What follows is the day-to-day of the trip, notes taken during evenings and rest days on the mountain, some fleshed out after returning home.