Step 1. Move out of your house entirely. It’ll be cheaper in the long run and it adds that extra challenge to finding important items.

Step 2. Purchase mounds of freeze dried gold, preferably the spaghetti with meat sauce variety (and say goodbye to any vegetarian aspirations for the foreseeable future) for anticipated meals in the backcountry.

Step 3. Spend hours researching the variety of technological tools that could make your trip easier/safer/faster/more social-media-friendly and then decide none of them will actually do those things – they will simply make your backpack heavier and more complicated. Pack them anyway.

Step 4. Pack all material possessions you may need for all possible activities you may do (car camping, hiking, backpacking, rock climbing, alpine climbing, ice climbing, or a combination of any of the above) into a compact Prius so you can still manage 50 MPG as you drive across the continent. Realize it simply won’t fit. Unpack and repack the car. Drive a day and realize you can’t reach a single thing you need. Unpack and repack the car. Camp for the night and take this opportunity to unpack and repack the car a completely different way. Drop at least one item you don’t actually need with every friend or family member you see. Repeat daily until satisfied.

Step 5. Spend days looking at guidebooks, blogs, websites and random day-hikers’ photos of cool mountains behind them looking for beta (information) that fits into something exciting, unusual, adventurous, preferably that hasn’t been done before, but also isn’t life threatening… or too hard. Come up with a plan. Then change it. Now change it again. Hope that’ll work, but keep a couple back up options in mind.

Step 6. Arrive in the general area you plan to climb. Fit everything you need in life into a 70 liter backpack you can carry. Strap extra stuff on the outside. Pack this at least a day ahead of time so you have a chance to remember all the stuff you forgot.

Step 7. Do a final, last minute check of the weather. Scrap the plan, unpack everything and violently curse the skies because every sunny day in the next five days is now forecasted to be rain. Silver lining: you only have to go back to step 5.

The Final Step. Go do something cool that is drastically different than your original plan because of Step 7.

Two days ago, we were finally able to do our first climb during a half-day weather window: a harder-than-anticipated ice climb up a steep glacier to the summits of Mt. Aberdeen and Haddo Peak near Lake Louise, Alberta. The climb involved several steep ice pitches and roughly 5,000 feet of elevation gain to a superlative summit view of the neighboring mountains. Weather rolled in during our descent, which involved no less than 9 v-thread anchors to rappel down the steep ice. Not the expedition we had originally planned, but a challenge nonetheless, and a great first climb of our trip!

Thankfully, after waiting out a few more days in thunder and lightning, our weather forecast looks like this:

So… The Next Step: A 5-6 day traverse in Bugaboo Provincial Park that will hopefully involve a bunch of summits and some spectacular views!!!