Back in 2022, Kelly Selzler, a personal trainer from Tacoma, was fairly new to peak bagging (a type of hiking where you climb mountain summits and collect them in a list) when she and a friend decided to “bag” Snowfield Peak, a 8,351 foot summit in the North Cascades.
But Selzler, a mother of two young kids who also works a full-time job, and her climbing partner got a late start. It was dark when they arrived, and everyone at their campground was asleep. They attempted to set up their tent in silence, but it was a comedy of errors.
Their headlamps were too bright, and they kept waking everyone up (a faux pas anywhere). Then they were so cold they couldn’t properly set their tents up…