Trip Dates: April 4 – 7, 2019  Author: Tyler Curran (instant gram = @realtylercurran) Where: Havasupai Falls, Supai, Arizona (Grand Canyon) Trip Name: North American …

The ultimate goal of this expedition was to reach the summit of Mt. Manaslu (8,163m = 26,780ft) without supplemental oxygen. However, as always, life typically decides to act upon itself and chose different paths for us to make the experience even more interesting.

I got back into climbing the fall of 2015. The goal then was to get outside, on the rock, as much as possible. We had a Saturday open on an unseasonably warm day in October. My climbing partner, Jan, suggested we go do some sport climbing west of Milwaukee.

This is it, my intro into big wall, multi-pitch, traditional climbing. Jan was getting married a few weeks later, so this was considered his 'informal bachelor party.' We flew out to Vegas on Thursday night, picked up our rental car, and headed west into the desert.

The Big Sky trip started with me taking a rental from Jackson Hole to Idaho Falls, ID. From there, I was picked up by some friends driving from Boise, and we headed north to Montana. I hadn’t been to Big Sky since I took a Lifestyles trip there back in school during my sophomore year.

We were living abroad in Seoul, South Korea when we went on this adventure in middle October to hike Seoraksan. Our trip began just before midnight in Seoul where we boarded a bus with dozens of other excited hikers. Our trip consisted mostly of foreign teachers living and working in the city and was arranged for non-native folks.