I am getting married on Tuesday. In the weeks before highly stressful moments like finals, international trips and marriage, I find myself leaning into risky and arguably self-destructive behaviours. It doesn’t manifest as long lonely nights on the piss or reckless driving but instead an overwhelming urge to head towards the mountains with scraps of information, an inane goal and buckets full of will.

But perhaps the biggest driver is that I’ve been frothing at the bit to do a trip worthy of a report again.

My hiking trips come at only inopportune times. We were looking at doing some canyoning on Saturday but the threat of lots of rain and thunder had me thinking about a bit of exploratory walking instead. The only real parameters I had for the trip were that it should involve a bit of rough walking somewhere new and that it should incur a bit of suffering. In the end, this offering was only taken up by one of my dear friends after every other interested person pulled out. So on Friday night I drove out to Mt. Banks and slept in the car. By 8:30AM Will and I were smashing it up Mt. Banks with an eye towards a traverse of the Western Explorer’s Range.