The Approach Mount St. Helens is 52 miles northeast of Portland, Oregon, and 98 miles south of Seattle. It’s a five-hour direct flight from Columbus to Seattle. We landed just after midnight local time. Todd Aaron Briggs (TAB) (Ashland High School Class of ’99) rented a white Ford F-150 4×4 and was waiting for my […]
Highpointing
Posted inOutdoor
Fox conquers contiguous U.S. with state highpoint #49
Walking towards the Rio Grande river on the U.S.-Mexico border, I was greeted with a war zone. There was a motley configuration of military alongside camouflaged doorless humvees with M-16s or similar assault rifles draped across their teflon chests. There was border patrol, Texas police and entities with badges and outfits I’d never seen before. […]
Posted inOutdoor
One million miles of badlands–state highpoint #48
Coyotes don’t majestically howl at the moon, they yip and high pitch bark in an annoying cadence. That’s what woke me up in the middle of the North Dakota Badlands blackness, laying completely still on my stomach inside my orange North Face sleeping bag, cocooned in my one-person ultra light tent. I was scared. Listen, […]
Posted inLife and Culture
Alone in Badlands National Park and other highpointing tales
March 18, 2018: Very rarely do my journalism assignments geographically coincide with highpoint opportunities. But the women’s Division II college basketball Final Four was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and a team I’d been covering all year was headed there as the #1 overall seed. Sioux Falls was only a little over an hour from […]
Posted inLife and Culture
Winter above the 45th parallel — climbing in the true white north
Dec. 28, 2016: “Dad is leaving on his own vacation, again. Kids, come say bye,” my wife said before I left for Montana this past summer. My cellmate was right, even though she was joking: just because you are obsessed with something doesn’t give you a green light to neglect your primary responsibilities. I vowed […]
Posted inLife and Culture
Mt. Rainier — climbing above clouds
Mt. Rainier was such a brutal climb that I was in the emergency room four days after leaving the mountain. Sacrificing acclimation for safety was something that had to be done, and thus our schedule was thrown off, resulting in much more suffering. Mitigating risk was everything on the most glaciated peak in the lower […]
Posted inLife and Culture
Winter hike in -3F to the top of Illinois
Feb. 11, 2016: The elderly man working the toll booth outside of Chicago wasn’t sure what to make of me. It was the dead of winter, just hovering around zero, and there I was, shirtless, offering my cash through the half-cracked window. The toll booth human had probably seen it all — so this wasn’t anything […]
Posted inLife and Culture
From Mansfield to the top of Mt. Mansfield
Dec. 30, 2015: Originally, I was going to solo Mt. Mansfield in Vermont. Heading into the climb, I felt generally optimistic, overconfident and borderline apathetic. Any one of many routes to the summit could be done in a day, so no base camp was needed. It was not a technical climb so no rope, helmet, harness, screws or technical […]
Posted inLife and Culture
Fox travels 1,250 miles in 2 days to nab 3 East Coast highpoints
March 8, 2014: Starting in Ashland, I drove to the East Coast and in one day, grabbed the winter highpoints of Massachusetts (Mt. Greylock), Connecticut (Mt. Frissell-South Slope) and High Point (New Jersey), respectively. Here’s the recap: Up from my smoking northeastern Massachusetts motel room at 6 a.m. I went to bed five hours earlier […]
Posted inLife and Culture
Climbing origins: Mt. Davis & Backbone Mountain
March 3, 2013: One could argue chasing peaks isn’t really going after something, but running away. I left work early and headed to my gear stash, to my atlas, to the moment right before the car-pack when you stare at everything laid out on the floor illustrating destiny. And I was off as the 3 […]