Thoughts on the Word Stewardship

*This article was originally penned for the Pinnacle, a monthly publication of our church. The core idea comes from the final lesson in Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey entitled "The Great Misunderstanding."

Stewardship is a word that tends to pop up about this time of year. To some of us it can be negative, meaning only capital campaigns, expectations, guilt, and/or pressure toward opening our wallets. How can a word that has represented God's trust in us cause so much squirming in the pews?

Tell you what, in order to better understand Stewardship, how about taking a trip back to medieval times. Castles and lands were typically owned by Lords (and Kings in a larger region). Wealth of the Lord was largely based on the amount of land owned and the bounty of harvests. But, as you can imagine, sometimes Lords had to be away doing whatever Lords did: military service, managing another property, sailing off for adventure. So they left the responsibility of their wealth with a Steward, an administrative official who oversaw the affairs of the Lord while they were away. They didn’t own any of it, yet were in charge of seeing that everything was taken care of and managed well.

In modern terms, it would probably be best to describe the position of Steward as an Asset Manager. Picture someone owning “assets”, money is perhaps the easiest to picture, passing control of them to an Asset Manager trusting that they will manage it well. What would you look for in a good Asset Manager?

Jesus tells His followers the “Parable of the Talents” in Matthew 25:14-30. The story unfolds with a man leaving some money in the hands of his servants or, by the definition we are examining, Asset Managers. One he gave 5 talents, another he gave 2, and still another a single talent. Now these were significant sums. Some commentaries say a talent was worth 20 years of a laborer’s pay! When the man returned he commended the first two for putting the money to good use saying, “Well done.” The third Asset Manager failed to make a return on any investment because of fear and his talent was given to the first.

It is an important shift to recognize that God owns everything and we are merely His Asset Managers. Our time is God’s. Our gifts or talents are God’s. Our “hard-earned” money or treasures are His. It is through what we do with these “assets” that shows God’s character in our lives and extends God’s hand to the world around us. For me, this adds purpose to things like balancing my checkbook or how I spend my free time. Let the fact that we are Stewards of the riches of the Creator of the Universe embolden and empower you to live for God as never before.

Rock Springs Buttress

Alli and I explored a new climbing area (for us) this past Saturday: Rock Springs Buttress. The crag is just out of of the south boundary of Jackson Hole Mountain resort and features very good multi-pitch, traditional or sport climbing. Approaching the climbs is a bit of a hump, but the pre-Cambrian rock classic to the Tetons is worth the effort.

We went into the day eying several 5.8 grade climbs with the first choice being the Guide's Route. However, it was occupied by the time we arrived and we settled on Chuck's Road to Thailand, which crosses the upper reaches of the Exum Arrete. The guide book lays out the climb in 6 pitches, the first of which is a 5.6 approach to a large belay bench. The second pitch (5.8) follows the left side of a chimney with some tricky sequences to a good belay ledge with a bolted anchor. Pitch three starts off with a airy step across the chimney to 5.7 face climbing.

A couple bolts and an old piton (yes I clipped it, why not?) took us around to a crack system, past a belay station (we climbed pitch 3 and 4 together) and up a chimney with comfortable stemming moves to the upper belay station. Our perch felt like an eagles nest! I watched a cow moose and a calf frolic through the valley bottom while Alli followed up the pitch easily.

Above, pitch 5 looked like great sport climbing but we were eyeing clouds building to the south and decided to cap our climbing adventure here for the day rather than risk the "epic" on the first multi-pitch outing of the year.

A few raps later, we were reunited with our gear and got ready for the hike out. We opted to go up rather than down and just over an hour later topped out at 10,450 feet at the top of the Tram. Before our free ride down, we took advantage of a delicious waffle in Corbet's cabin.

Commuting: May 2016

After best intentions of commuting on studded tires through the winter, we're back on the bike this spring commuting to work and running errands. Alli and I are very fortunate to live where a bike path connects us all the way into town. Jackson has one of the best pathway programs around, particularly for a small western-Wyoming town. But then again, we wind up having a lot of amenities that western towns of our size don't, so not all that surprising.

Anyway that brings me to the reason for this post: a monthly record of bike commuting miles! During the month of May I rode my bike 111.8 miles running errands in town, riding to work, to church, and else where. I haven't take the time to sit down to make a mileage goal for this year, but I do want to keep riding throughout the calendar year. I don't think 100 miles a month is reasonable, but ending the year with close to 600 miles total sounds pretty good. At the gas mileage of our van (about 16 mpg), that equates to roughly 38 gallons of fuel saved!

We'll see if we can keep this thing going for the rest of the year...and beyond. Half the fun will be kitting out the bike to make it more and more pleasurable. The other half of the adventure will be figuring out the best clothing system for all kinds of weather. We had some weeks of good rain in May and I was pleased with my clothing system staying relatively dry.

Stay tuned for more monthly updates!

Memorial Day Weekend "Trail Mix"

The T-shirt that my sister recently gave me recently effectively sums up Memorial Day weekend for the Teton Lanes: "Trail Mix." Some friends' wedding and uncertain weather kept us close to Jackson, but we made the most of it! 

When summer comes along, life gets hard. For instance, what are you going to do after work? Go fishing or climbing? What are you going to do this weekend? Go running, backpacking, mountain biking, or camping? Tough decisions to be made, for sure.* 

So what do you do when the weather turns out nice and you have a 3 day weekend to get out and enjoy it all? You do it all of course! A proverbial Trail Mix, as I am going to call it from now on. Here's a rundown of the weekend along with pictures to prove it.

After work Friday we enjoyed a nice leisurely hike up Adam's Canyon, a very steep trail system that rises up the hills just to the east of our house. Takes us about 5 minutes to pile in the car with the dog and arrive at the trailhead. This hike's bonus: spotting a chocolate lily near the bottom!

Saturday morning we rode our bikes into town for the Memorial Day Parade. After enjoying the usual allotment of firetrucks, sled dogs, old-timey cars, and Shriners clowns we moseyed down the street for our "once in a blue moon" downtown Jackson shopping trip. We found ourselves in the Browse n'Buy Thrift store where we scored a gem: an unopened package containing a door-frame pull-bar for $5! With some modifications, it will find new life as an indoor hang-board (for climbing training). Trucking it home was an adventure! 

To keep the activity levels up, we got out for a run at a local trail system not far from our house.  Back in time to clean up for the wedding...

I love weddings and the one on Saturday night was a real treat. A great ceremony, great food, awesome friends, and exciting dancing all to celebrate a pretty awesome couple. Wait, I hope you knew I meant our friends who got married, not us…

The weather on Sunday was glorious and we took advantage of the sunshine to ride our bikes north of town into Grand Teton National Park. My watch said our out-and-back adventure was 31 miles: more than either of us have ridden in a really long time. Needless to say, we needed some DQ nourishment post-ride.**

We packed up the camper van (a work in progress that I shall write about in the future) and headed for the hills on Sunday night. We had mountain bikes, climbing gear, and guns. Yes, we might have gotten a little red-neck on Monday morning… 

Mountain biking at the Munger trail system was pristine and the trails are in really great shape now. Later in the year we've found the grasses get over grown enough that it is difficult to see the trail. We rode a quick loop up Poison Creek and down Squaw Creek (Alli thought the descent down Tusky Ridge was a great alternative, though there are plenty of roots to avoid). 

And we polished off the day with some climbs at the Rodeo: Rodeo Queen (5.8) and Louise (5.9+), both on Snake River Canyon limestone formations above Highway 89.

All in all an awesome weekend that brought rest and recharged us for the work week to come. And the best thing about 3 day weekends: 4 day work weeks to follow!

*I may enjoy winter more than summer if only for this reason: the question is not, "Do we go skiing today?" it's "Where are we going skiing today?" Life is much simpler in some respects when snow covers everything… :)
**Blizzards at DQ will forever hold a place in my heart. My best friend in college and I would stop and grab blizzards after rock climbing to bask in the glow of the day's earlier events. That's easy when you are climbing in west Texas and the definition of a town in Texas seems to be a Post Office, a Church of Christ, and a DQ! Thankfully they are prevalent enough that we get to enjoy them in Wyoming as well. 

Garage Facelift

We like our house here in Jackson. Other than being able to afford it (our monthly rent is very reasonable by Jackson standards), it's all about location, location, location: quiet neighborhood, a walking path to spend time with our dog, removed from the hustle and bustle of town*, and a bike path from our house all the way into town (about 3-4 miles). It's the second house that we have lived in since moving from Montana and we plan to stay here a long time. We feel very blessed to be here.

Again, we like our house. But we LOVE our garage! This is the crown jewel our our little unit and it's where a lot of the "magic" of our lives happens. Our garage is part-work out facility, part-ski shop, part-bike shop, part-wood shop, part-… well, you get the picture. We love spending time in our garage tinkering and building and prepping for all our outdoor adventures.

Left side "before picture". 

Right side "before picture". Alli is just starting to demo the wall.

This spring we had a mission to make overhaul it to make it even better!** The goal was to take out a wall that created a sort of large storage closet, essentially opening up the whole area. We knew that we would lose some wall space to hang stuff, but would also get rid of some awkward areas. Overall an upgrade. We finally got it done a couple weeks ago and thought we would share some pictures of the process.

Final step after the overhaul: cleaning with our
new shop-vac. 

Two thumbs way, way up for being finished! 

This is where most of the "magic" happens: the Work Bench. 

Skis and bikes and fishing gear: Oh my!

We had a ton of fun building shelves and thinking through how best to store our gear/tools. The process sort of has to happen organically since we didn't really to have the ability to map it all out in advance. We just had to get done as quick as we could make it happen. It's stressful having all of you stuff in a pile in the middle of the garage floor!  But I think we found a really good balance between having things out of the way and yet still accessible and ready to grab for the next adventure.

So, go out there and do some of your own tinkering. Here's to many more hours spent in garages!


*I know, I know. "Hustle and bustle" in small-town Jackson is nothing compared to where most people in the US live but you get comfortable with a certain norm. NYC would probably give me an anxiety attack. This might be the genesis for a future blog post about people complaining about traffic in Jackson...

**This comment is for my mom who, when hearing that we were going to reorganize/rearrange our garage, said something like, "Why? Your garage is so nice already. How could you ever change it to make it better?"

To Blog or Not to Blog, That is the Question…?

The blogging world and I have not gotten along so well in the recent past and it's now been a year since I posted anything. Blogging has been on my list of goals for 2016, but took a proverbial "back seat" while I focussed on other things, including passing the PE exam. BUT never fear, we're going to dust the cobwebs off the keyboard, roll up our sleeves, and dive back in. Why? Because I got a little kick in the pants by a recent podcast.

Michael Hyatt, the voice on platform building and intentional leadership, recently published a podcast episode entitled "10 Reasons Every Leader Needs a Blog". Although I'd encourage you to listen to the podcast or read the transcript because the list is very thorough, it doesn't directly apply to this blog as it's not really a platform that I wish to necessarily influence people or lead an industry. However, several of the list including "Improve Your Communication Skills" and "Create a Repository for your Best Ideas" do apply and got me thinking about why I blog.

The list below is a brief brainstorm on the reasons this blog exists in ascending order of importance:

1. Provide a place to share photos and stories of our life in Jackson Hole with family and friends
2. Synthesize my thoughts and reactions to the "inputs" of life (podcasts, books, movies, etc.) into coherent "output"
3. Improve my communication skills (thanks Michael)
4. Publish creative thoughts and ideas for building things or "life hacks"
5. Discuss "life philosophy" on topics such as faith, money, politics, and science

Certainly not an exhaustive list, but enough to get this thing started. Perhaps the biggest reason for throwing this out on the web is for motivational purposes, to remind me why typing up trip reports and writing down ideas is worth the time and effort it takes to put them from my head down on "paper."

Broken Thumb (Couloir)

After my mom's maladies this past year, we decided to go out and get a "Broken Thumb". Okay, that's not really fair to my wonderful mother, but I thought it would be a fun play on words. the Broken Thumb we sought out is a couloir (steep, narrow gully) on the north side of a peak call 25-Short in Grand Teton National Park, so named because it is 25-ft short of 10,000 feet in elevation (9975-ft above sea level). I've had my eye on this line since the first time I heard about it: relatively easy access, not extremely committing (I suppose this is relative, but you have to admit that it is in the shadow of the South, Middle, and Grand Tetons...), and not extremely high in elevation. I saw it as a great warm-up to Teton ski mountaineering and since the snow isn't great anywhere and avalanche concerns are low, President's Day weekend was the time to give it a shot.


Alli and I, along with our friend Tom, struck out Monday morning from the Bradley-Taggart trailhead. After a short stint of loosing the skin track at the beginning, we reached the top in a little over 3 hours. It was beautiful outside. The sun was shining, it was warm, we were in high spirits. We geared up and set off for the couloir. I have to stop and admit here that it gives me a feeling of studly-ness when you put on a harness with gear on the top of a snowy mountain, amid many taller peaks, about to put skies on your feet. Go out and try it sometime!



The descent to the "squeeze" of the gully was really wonderful snow. The three of us leap-frogged down through the trees and into the throat of the gully. The section immediately above the "choke" or crux of the route, is a no-fall zone above a cliff, so our skiing slowed as we descended to the rappel anchor. We set up our rope (70 meters) and one by one walked back over into the unknown. Okay, it wasn't that dramatic, but it sure sounds good, eh?

Snow at the bottom of the rappel was steep and stiff, keeping us on our toes for another 500 feet or so until it opened up to an apron of softer snow. Then we rode the icy luge track out of the draw, across Taggart Lake and back to the car. What a fun line to grab under blue skies and sunshine in the middle of February. Happy Valentine's Day and Presidents Day all wrapped into one. Click on any of the pictures to see them larger.

January/February Check-In

Hello all! Thought we would give you a life update on the past couple of weeks since the Jackson Skimo Races. Life is so good; God is so good! Our jobs are going well and we are excited about some upcoming trips. Cue the foreshadowing music...

Since the beginning of January, we have been skiing a bunch on the weekends, though the snow this season has been dismal since December. I wish those folks in Boston would share some of their wealth. It sure doesn't appear on the news as if they want it. Teton Pass just west of Jackson has afforded plenty of adventure with Kyler and various ski buddies. There still seems as though there are unlimited new places to explore, and lots of quickly-becoming-favorites. It's fun to start to know the area enough to pick where we want to go based on conditions. 

Alli competed in a women's hockey tournament at the end of the month. She practices weekly with a team and then plays on some weekends through the season. Guess what! Their team won their class and Alli scored a goal! She seems to pick up a new technique (or 3) every week and we expect great things out of her in the next tournament in March. 

We both traveled to Bozeman the next weekend and competed in the Skimo race at Bridger Bowl. I competed in the race division among the other lycra wearers and did pretty well. Initially, I had big visions of podium finishes but settled for a battle with another racer for 6th place. There are a lot of things to learn, particularly about race strategy and skin choice, but my fitness can improve as well. It's fun to look ahead to the next season and how I can grow as a racer. The conditions were horrendous: icy, no new snow, slick skin tracks... And Alli completed the Recreation division in top form. Bless her heart, she has done this race twice and pushed through after being sick for both. I can't wait to do this again and see what she can do fully healthy.

And the big highlight recently is finally becoming fully-fledged ski patrollers at Snow King Ski Area. Look it up: the ski area is really cool, rising directly from the edge of town. And the runs are steep and north facing, so if the snow is good, skiing can be great. We volunteer to cover a lot of races for local junior racers and Olympic hopefuls alike. It was a lot of work to gain the medical training and learn the on-hill skills necessary to respond to injured skiers. To be honest, there was a little bit of selfishness in this whole thing: we wanted to gain the skills to help each other if misfortune crosses our trail or if we came upon someone injured. 

I will leave you with these final pictures of skiing in the Teton Pass backcountry. Get out there and get yourself some adventure! 

Wyo Rando Roundup 2015

I'm told that I am crazy by those who don't understand. You see, Alli and I like to ski up mountains...for fun. Yup, crazy. But the best part is coming back down...

In our first year here in stunningly beautiful Jackson, Wyoming, I decided to pick up my Skimo game. Skimo is the cool way to refer to ski mountaineering racing. Definitely use the shortened term if you want to impress your friends. I've done a few races in the past, some which may even be mentioned on this blog, but I've been so out of touch with this site recently that I can't remember.

Anyway, elevating my Skimo pursuits meant purchasing some specialized equipment, which is heavily discussed elsewhere in the blog-o-sphere. Who doesn't like upgrading their gear? In general, my new equipment is designed to be light (small, skinny skis and light boots), fast (stylish lycra racing suit), and efficient (skimo pack). You'll see them in the pics below.

My first race as a lycra-suit-wearing individual was a weekend series located in the Teton area dubbed the Wyoming Randonee Roundup on January 10-11, 2015. This event has three events at each of the local ski areas: Grand Targhee, Snow King, and Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The GT race was held on Saturday morning followed by a "sprint style" race at Snow King that night. Then the burly JHMR race began early Sunday morning. I had a fairly good performance for my first race. I found out that my training has gone really well this season and identified some good areas to focus on for the next race. Fueling was a particular struggle and will need to be fine-tuned in the future. GUs are just really hard to choke down at the transition stations.

Hope you enjoy the pictures! I was really lucky to have a support/fan club/photographer follow me around that weekend (I love you Alli!).

Halfway through the first climb up Grand Targhee.

Ripping skins at the top. 

Skinning above the beautiful Snake River Valley on the second climb of the JHMR race. Smiles!

Ripping skins at the top of Rendezvous Peak (aka the top of the JHMR Tram) the highest point of the race right before an amazing ski down.

At the finish line. 3 hours and 33 minutes

Tired boy hanging out in the events tent after it was all over. 

Village of Tadapani

Ghorepani acts as a hub for several different trekking routes, so leaving the city was the most crowded we experienced. It was really impressive to see some of the Nepali porters carrying loads for trekkers. Sometimes I think the packs were as big as the person underneath the load. That concept is foreign to me: to go to a place like Nepal to hike in the Himalayas and then hire someone to carry my stuff. (Well, not to mention hike from village to village staying in nice tea-houses and eating hot food every meal.) But that's not how I grew up backpacking.

Lots of people trekking on a very clear day. Notice the porters
in the bottom left.

Nice view and clear skies. You never would
have thought that we missed our view of the
mountains from Poon Hill that morning. 

Trekking through a Rhododendron forest. The
flowers were gorgeously pink! 

We trekked through a beautiful rhododendron forest, up and down along ridges and valleys, and then descended into a canyon. There was a village in the middle where we stopped for lunch just before it started to rain. Lunch was good: our guides/friends let us order ourselves. In fact, up to that point we didn't even know they had menus at the tea-houses. I immediately ordered a tuna pizza because it looked so good. Plus they weren't serving chicken because they didn't have refrigeration. I'm thankful, but I needed my protein and tuna stepped up to the plate. For the rest of the trek we were allowed to order for ourselves and we tried an assortment of different cultural foods. It was fun to notice though that every single place we stopped essentially had the same menu, right down to the pictures decorating the borders.

I wanted to mention we passed a hydroelectric facility constructed by several villages pooling their resources. While in Tadapani, we had power and lights 24/7 unlike anywhere else in Nepal and really hot water for showering. It is impressive the communities that people have knit here. People not only shared their money but their time and efforts to improve the lives of everyone. I remember back to Ulleri and the thousands of steps we climbed. We hiked along at a similar pace as a young man carrying a 12 ft electrical pole. We were told that each family had to send one representative to the valley bottom to carry up a pole to set up electrical lines to bring power to the village.

I ordered tuna pizza for lunch because it sounded so good.
This was the first lunch or dinner we had in 3-4 days that wasn't
dal-baht.

The trek wound up being our longest day, particularly because we climbed to the top of Poon Hill before sunrise that morning. If I remember correctly we hiked close to 6 hours total by the end of the day.

Playing the saber devices and showing the flip book for an evening
program in the village square.

Once in Tadapani, we set up a program in the center of the village and went around inviting people to come and listen to the Saber players. Though we didn't have as large an audience as we had the previous day in Ghorepani I feel as though we were more successful here. It was more intimate, if that makes any sense. We had a wide range of people too: some came running and some were reluctant to stay and listen and still some didn't understand at first the connection between the pictures and the recording. But we went through the entire program and left those interested with a CD and more flip books. 

The view from our hotel/tea-house in Tadapani. Annapurna
south on the left, Hiunchulli in the middle, and Fish-tail on the right.

The lady in the pink sweater was the owner of the hotel and was
drying a kind of leafy green to serve with meals (and to eat themselves).

We woke up the following morning to clear skies and beautiful views of the surrounding mountains. After breakfast we did a little souvenir shopping and headed out on our way to Gandruk. It was another gorgeous day of hiking, mostly descending. By that time we've settling into a regime of hiking and resting for everyone to stay together. Some of our friends were having a hard time by then, having never hiked that far before. But everyone continued in high spirits!

Flip Book Contents

I've mentioned the Saber recorders and the flipbooks that we carried with us on our trek quite a bit in recent posts. I thought I would take the time and dig up what we were actually sharing with people. The company Global Recordings Network (which I mentioned in a post before we left) developed the material to be translated into languages around the world. The series we presented can be seen here: http://globalrecordings.net/en/script/en/395. It's entitled the Good News and summarizes the story of the Bible, pointing the way to Jesus through the whole thing. I'd encourage you to read it; easy to do in one sitting and I think one of the best summaries I've ever read of how the awesome creator of the universe loves us and wants us to be with him.. The text in the left column was the audio people listened to and the pictures on the right made up the pages of the flipbook.

On to Ghorepani

Our first view of Himalayan Mountains during the first evening in Ulleri. The sky had cleared after the fury of the rainstorm, but then hid among the clouds again by the next morning. 

We awoke the next morning, some of us in the group still bleeding from the leech attack the previous evening, to a very western-style breakfast of toast, eggs, coffee, and juice. The relatively clear view of the sky from the previous evening was now gone but the view of the valley and villages down below was just as stunning in the rays of the early morning sun. After we were all packed, we returned to the village square in hopes that we might be able to play our audio presentation to some locals before their work day started. It seemed as if everyone was busy and couldn't spare the time to listen to a program, which was understandable, so we passed out some tracts to people and then went on our merry way.

A very nice breakfast out on the patio. 

We had met some Christians along the way and while we were passing out tracts. Our Nepali friends found out that there was a church just outside of the town in the direction we were traveling. Being Saturday morning, they were preparing to have a morning service but we couldn't stay long enough to worship with them. We met the pastor and prayed with him over our efforts and the Christians that were gathering there that morning. Some of the kids we had met at the Children's Home the night before were there. Fun to make that connection.

The church building in Ulleri. 

We continued our trek on a well-maintained path, growing tired of stone steps only after the second day of Trekking. The day unfolded very much like the previous (and the days to follow even): hiking, stopped for lunch of dal-baht, more hiking, passing out our tracts, and visiting with people. We arrived at Ghorepani relatively early in the day and had a chance to play some basketball and volleyball with some local teenagers of the village. They let us play one match of friendly volleyball and then kind of ushered us out when they wanted to start playing for money! It wasn't a lot of money either, but threw us off enough that we declined.

A mother and child along the trekking path. The girl repeatedly said the one word she knew of English: "Chocolate?" expecting a treat like she had received in the past from Western travelers. Many young children we met asked for chocolate or candy.

Another group shot, waterfall in the lower right. 

We saw a number of domestic water buffalo along our trip. Since they revere cows so much in the Hindu religion, water buffalo becomes the "beef" in a sense: used to plow fields and other labor as well as provide meat. Shemiah here is quite literally "taking the bull by the horns."

Welcome to Ghorepani!

The basketball court where we played the afternoon we arrived. The long slender blue-roofed building alongside it is the school.

We played basketball until we wheezed from the altitude; it's difficult to wrap your head around being near 10 thousand feet in elevation with a village and large trees everywhere. The idea sprang up to do a program with the teenagers down at the basketball court. So we hustled up to the hotel and got the materials necessary. Our Nepali friend told us we needed to hurry as the basketball players might finish up and leave, getting our supplies and meeting back up in about 5 minutes.  While we were all ready on time and ready to do the program, our Nepali friends were getting in the shower, changing clothes, and otherwise getting "freshened up." Our group loved to give our friends a hard time because they used this phrase over and over: "We'll just freshen up and then meet back for dinner."

This was a healthy dose of "Nepali Time." Everything is a little slower it seemed in Nepal. And if you had a meeting with a Nepali you could expect that they might be a half an hour late and they would think nothing of it. If you wanted it to be on time (at least in our group), you had to clarify whether or not a time was "American", meaning solid and on-time, or "Nepali:" flexible, loose, and usually late.

When we finally met down at the square, some of us started playing music from the Saber player while the rest of us went around and told people about the program. I was blown away by how eager people were to come and listen to the recording. It seemed as though they were excited about Saturday night entertainment, the last day of the week being a day of rest and relaxation. We are really spoiled with our 2 day weekend! The program is about an hour, which I may have mentioned before, and might have been its downfall since the temperature of the evening fell steadily. Some people left for their hotels or homes but many people toughed it out and listened to the whole thing. One of our friends spoke to them at the end and addressed where they could follow up on the story and if anyone had any questions. We had CDs of the recorded material and passed some of them out to interested people.

Then we went back to the tea-house and had dinner. Our friends showed us some card tricks for our evening entertainment and then we ascended the stairs to our beds.

The next morning, we woke up at 4 am to hike to the top of Poon Hill for a sunrise view of the surrounding Himalayas. Our group was the first to reach the top of the hill, evening beating the local Nepali who was carrying thermoses of hot water to sell coffee and hot chocolate. Unfortunately, the clouds had other ideas about our lovely view and it never materialized. But we had fun with some pictures and enjoyed being at an iconic high point.

The lookout tower built at the top of Poon Hill. 

Happy crew despite the lack of mountainous view. 

I have proof that I really was there! 3210 meters or 10,531 feet in elevation. Ghorepani is 2874 m or 9429 ft. 

As we descended we could finally see one of the giant mountains of the Himalayas: Dhaulagiri, the world's seventh highest peak.  

Our attempt at getting a picture in front of the amazing view. Yeah! It was gorgeous! If only I could remove the peak labels from the sky...

We descended down to the tea-house for breakfast and then packed up, hitting the trail relatively early. Our destination was Tadapani and the hike that day turned out to be our longest...