Chapter 2

Three days and my summer begins. While it will not be without work, I will be traveling to the Cascades this coming week. I though it might be worth taking a moment to share the excitement of glacier mountaineering. Over the course of the next month, I will be climbing mountains that are well known, and other that some may never hear of.



Mountaineering, in many regards, can be boiled down to calculated risks. Objective hazards such as rock fall, seracs, avalanches, crevasse, and more, pose a serious risk to those of us who choose to travel in this terrain. However, the understanding of these risks and the natural beauty of such remote place provides numerous rewards. In the end, you find your true self and the truth in others.

"It's not the mountains we conquer, but ourselves"
-Sir Edmund Hillary

Goal Setting

In our lives and in experiential education, it is important to set goals. In facilitating an experience, goal setting gives the participant ownership and aids in effectively setting the tone. Check out the video for a creative, albeit contrived, idea for using a climbing wall in goal setting.

Do I have to write?

In a previous post, I discussed the importance of reflection. Not limited to the importance in experiential education, but as a valuable life skill. I asked if reflecting is a processes in which you ask questions or discover value. The real value is in discovering the valuable meaning within the experience. Now I ask what the process looks like. Does a participant have to write a journal? Do they need to discuss questions in a group? Or can a participant reflect on the experience, and discover new meaning through drawing a picture?

The reality of it is, reflection and processing are an organic process. They do not need to take place within a specific context. Rather, other forms of processing are just as effective. Not limiting ourselves to written and verbal forms, and approaching the process as another initiative can allow for a greater depth of understanding.