I'd spent months staring at maps, obsessaing over ridges, valleys, cut-blocks and logging roads.

I was certain I could succeed but in hindsight I see that I was banking on my ability to memorize the landscape and repeat all the bulls**t fairytales I'd concocted about how it would all play out in the sky.

Though only six weeks have passed since this photo was taken, I am somehow embarrassed for the man it captures. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as he may be, he is but blissfully ignorant of what a Vol-biv adventure of this scale means to take on.

B