‘Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.’ Jack Kerouac

There’s one thing I learned early on while working in a mountainous national park in the Pacific Northwest: never let a little cloud cover deter you from climbing a mountain.

I had a few days off from my job as a ranger in the summer of 1980 at North Cascades National Park and drove over to neighbouring Mt Baker National Forest to climb up to the base of Mt Baker. As I drove up the switchbacks to the trailhead I was disappointed that it was a cloudy day but I kept driving up and up. It was still cloudy when I put on my backpack at the trailhead and I was having second thoughts about the climb as I assumed I’d be camping in the cold and rain and would not have any views.

My favourite author, Jack Kerouac, who worked a generation before me as a lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascades, beckoned to me to ‘climb that goddamn mountain’. So I set off and walked through clouds but eventually much to my delight I poked my head through the top of the clouds and got a magnificent view of the summit of Mt Baker and the Coleman Glacier.

I set up camp in the alpine zone next to a creek fed by glacial meltwater and cooked dinner on my little camp stove while I watched the sun set in the west over the Puget Sound. I could see a tongue of clouds in the valley below and knew that the poor souls below were only seeing grey clouds.

But I stood alone was at the top of the world and enjoyed one of the most precious sunsets I had ever seen. Kerouac was right. There’s so much I have forgotten in 35 years but the memories of climbing that mountain and witnessing that magnificent display of nature are imprinted on my memory forever.