I tried left, then right, but kept striking rock. The frost feathers holding me up, it became apparent, were maybe five inches thick and had the structural integrity of stale corn bread. Below was thirty-seven hundred feet of air, and I was balanced on a house of cards. – Jon Krakauer, Into The Wild

 

The Year of Exploration

2017 is to be a year of exploration. Not so much inward and personal, that was the past 6 years, but a physical and outward exploration. Less than half a year ago, after much debating, Jackie and I decided that we make the Twin Cities our home. We thought about moving south to warmer climates, or maybe back out west where our relationship had started, or maybe to the southwest. But we realized in the end that we had made some amazing friends in Minnesota and the state was a hotbed of outdoor enthusiasts and home to a variety of landscapes to explore. In order to make the most of our decision, we have decided that we will make 2017 all about searching for something interesting to do outdoors every single weekend. That’s 52 weeks to explore the upper midwest. On top of that, to feed my passion of creating videos and photos, we will make a video of each weekend’s adventure to remember it by.

So that brings us to this weekend. Leading up to the weekend I still didn’t have a concrete plan of where we were going to go or what we were going to do. Then our friend Lauren reached out to us and asked if we wanted to check out the Sandstone Ice Festival. What is that I wondered? After a quick interweb search, I came across images of a playground of rock and ice with climbers scaling the faces vertically. After just finishing the book Into the Wild and reading the chapter that is quoted at the beginning of this post about the author Jon Krakauer’s experience ice climbing the Stikine Ice Cap, I was intrigued. Jackie and I love rock climbing and with the long cold winter of Minnesota upon us, why not explore what ice climbing is all about? Read more