In late 2002 I agreed to join Robin Blume-Kohout's expedition to Denali, which at the time was tentatively planned for this coming June. During the course of our training we came to terms with the fact that we wouldn't be ready by June, 2004, so we put it off a year.

Now Robin has accepted a post-doc position in California that is starting in January of 2005. We've been rather slack on our training, and the rest of the team already lives in California. My guess is that Robin's moving away is going to lead to either the slipping of the time schedule another year (or more) or to my being politely excused from the team.

With the entire team in California except me, it will be exceedingly difficult to do any group training. My guess is that I'll have to form my own expedition some time down the road. Denali is most-likely going to the back burner for awhile. But I still intend to summit its 20,320' peak.