It has been a great summer for my mountain pursuits. So far I have been fortunate to bag a number of training climbs, plus Wy’East… Tahoma… Olympus… Loowit… backpacking in the Alpine Lakes…. What more could I ask for?

Kaleetan, that’s what.

Tom proposed a group outing to the North Cascades, but only I was able to join… and the weather really did not look like it would cooperate, with thunderstorms predicted for Saturday afternoon… these are very unusual here in Western Washington. But… perhaps we could thread the needle and get up and down Kaleetan before things turned ugly. I had climbed the “Little Matterhorn” years earlier with Doug, so I knew the route and we could be efficient. We decided to give it a go.

And so we did.

Just perfect conditions, and almost no one else up there. On the way down, below Melakwa, a sea of humanity… but, up high, only a handful. Beautiful cap to a really special summer climbing season for me. That night we were amazed to watch scores, in fact hundreds, of major lightning strikes land all around us. Better to watch this from the comfort of home than atop a mountain.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/weather/2019/09/08/seattle-washington-lightning-strikes-vo-vpx.cnn