Beyond Jalpak Tash
From Karakol, we drove 40 minutes to Ichke Jergez for a night with a wonderful local family, and then surfed the back of a flat-bed truck up an already melted-out mud road to the start of an hour long tour to the yurt, known as Jalpak Tash. The location is pretty much unbeatable, all things considered, from the views of the mountains above to the lake below.
High & Abroad on my Birthday: The Petronas Twin Towers
March 22, 2013
We spent close to twenty minutes up high, looking at the hills in the distance and the city below. It was a pretty amazing experience, especially considering I had never been so high in a man-made tower, let alone the tallest building in the world from 1998 to 2004.
Tropical Metropolis
March 21, 2013
We took the bus from the AirAsia "discount" airport to KL Central Station, and then took the above-ground metro to our hostel, the Reggae Mansion. We settled in at the rooftop bar with a few beers, and, for the only time during our entire stay, some reggae music. The clouds broke and we admired the Kuala Lumpur Tower as rain splattered around and Bob Marley skipped on the speakers.
Lawu
March 15, 2013
John took a few amazing photos and added a bit of backstory to our Lawu climb back in December, but there is some debate on whether our friend's name is Feri or Very...
Don’t Prang in Your Beshbarmak
March 13, 2013
Intense warming & a few avalanches made for some of the most fun, smoothest pow skiing I've done in a long time, which is what this video features. I apologize to anyone looking for sickter-richter huck-tack-u-lar GoPro footage, but I had just as much fun with this crew on this terrain as I've had doing anything else in Central Asia, and that's all that matters.
Gunung Lawu (Mount Lawu) – Rainy Season
February 20, 2013
The time I spent in East Java was undoubtedly incredible because of the friendly people, wonderful food, and being able to see where one of my best friends has been living for almost two years now. But to be able to climb Lawu and see such an incredible sunrise next to a great friend transformed the experience into something like that first trip to Cologne n 2005; it was a trip that increased my passion for both international travel and my love of mountains further than ever before.
Jogorogo
February 17, 2013
The walk we went on was a good time to finally catch up with John, mostly because up until that point I had been high on adrenaline from arriving south of the Equator for the first time, and he had been caught up in work stuff getting ready for our trip north. We walked and sweated while debating if we might be some of the first Americans, or possibly even Westerners, to see this road and it's views of East Java. Eventually, we arrived at what appeared to be the end of the road, and I decided to see what was actually going on in the rice paddies.
March 25, 2013
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