Thanks for checking my site out.  It's all about hiking in the Pacific Northwest.  My name is Chris Dessert and I try to update constantly to capture the spirit of the various hikes and climbs I head out on.  Take a look around. Click here if you have an comments, suggests, or just wanted to say hi.  I hope you find something useful here.  Or if you got a suggestion don't hesitate.  See ya on the trails!

Chris

Check out what i've has been doing to my photographs lately!

I live my life in widening rings
which spread over earth and sky.
I may not ever complete the last one,
but that is what I will try.

I circle around God's primordial tower,
and I circle ten thousand years long;
And I still don't know if I'm a falcon, 
a storm, or an unfinished song.

- Rainer Maria Rilke 

"You cannot stay on the summit forever, You have to come down again...  So why bother in the first place?  Just this:  what is above knows what is above.  One climbs, one sees.  One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.  There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up."

-Rene Dumal

"It was just a snow avalanche.  Hey, Boyd!  Hey, Dave!  Hey, Vin!  I'm alive and OK; here to dig you out.  Just let me know where you are."

- Lou Reichardt, in his diary about losing seven companions on Dhaulagiri

"Men's resources in energy in the face of death are inexhaustible. When the end seems imminent, there still remain reserves, though it needs tremendous willpower to call them up."    — Maurice Herzog

"The client is trying to kill you, the client is trying to kill himself and the client is trying to kill the rest of the clients." - The 3 rules of mountain guiding.

"We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of a whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive.  If we stand still we shall be frozen to death.  If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces.  We do not certainly know whether there is any right one.  What must we do?  Be strong and of good courage.  Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes... If death ends all, we cannot meet death better" - James Fitz

"The world is a better place to live in because it contains human beings who will give up ease and security in order to do what they themselves think worth doing.  They do the useless, brave, noble, divinely foolish, and the very wisest things that are done by Man.  And what they prove to themselves and to others is that Man is no mere creature of his habits, no automation in his routine, but that in the dust of which he is made there is also fire, lighted now and then by great winds from the sky" - Walter Lippman

"One can't take a breath large enough to last a lifetime; one can't eat a meal big enough so that one never needs to eat again.  Similarly, I don't think any climb can make you content never to climb again." - Woodrow Wilson Sayre

"The mountains have rules. they are harsh rules, but they are there, and if you keep to them you are safe. A mountain is not like men. A mountain is sincere. The weapons to conquer it exist inside you, inside your soul."    - Walter Bonatti.

"Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence - the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes - all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose by the seriousness of the task at hand."

- Jon Krakauer

"The thought of approaching action aroused strange and contradictory emotions in me. I felt an immense pity for all the little men who toiled on in the prison which society has succeeded in building against the open sky, who knew nothing and felt nothing of what I knew and felt at that moment. Yesterday I was like them, and in another few days I would be like them again. But today I was a prisoner set free; and tomorrow I would be a lord and master, and commander of life and death, of the stars and the elements."

- Giusto Gervasutto

I piss on you all from a considerable height"

- Louis Ferdinand Celine

"Never measure the height of a mountain until you reach the top. Then you will see how low it was." 

- Dag Hammerskjold

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds, awake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it reality"

- T.E. Lawrence

"When you reach the summit of the mountain, keep climbing." - Tibetan saying

"The fall was like sliding down a slanting Empire State Building, six times higher than the real one."    —  Robert H. Bates, after having been stopped with 6 others falling climbers by Pete 'The Belay' Schoening on a 1953 attempt on K2.