Fundraising Update

Wow!  Thank you Friends and Family we are getting closer to our $7000.00 goal for the American Lung Association.  They say climbing Mt. Rainier takes about 80% heart and head, and only 20% physical.  With all the generous support we are getting its going to be pretty easy to have the right head and heart on this adventure. 
Ryan and I sent out an email on February 18th to all of our friends and family; prior to the email we had raised $2015.00.  In the past 10 days we have had our amazing friends and family double the donations!  We are currently at $4098.00, 58.5% of our goal!  We are more than halfway there!
There are 31 days left until the deadline in which we gave ourselves -March 31st.  By March 31st we hope to have reached our goal and raised $7000, that means we have to figure out how to raise $100 a day for the next 31 days.  We know that the American Lung Association is an awesome cause, there is no one else to thank as much as this organization for making living with Asthma easier, no smoking in our bars and restaurants, awesome education for kids to prevent them from smoking, and all the money raised goes to reasrch of serious lung diseases.  Just awesome! 
At our kick-off meeting a week ago, a past climber and fundraiser spoke about the experience and what we should be prepared for fundraising and climbing.  The one thing she said that really gets me excited and terrifies me at the same time is that when you are standing at the top of Mt. Rainier your breathing gets tough, the air is thin and you get a glimpse at the feeling that people feel daily because of a lung disease.  Knowing I will get to feel the thin air excites me because I am headed to the top, but also because with Ryan's asthma I do not understand at all what it feels like and how it can be so much trouble to him at times.   I look forward to being in his shoes, even if its briefly. 
Again all your support is going to make 80% of this climb so easy.

Lake Valhalla Snowshoe

Saturday we had a lazy start to the day, slept in until about 8am!  May not sound early but man work has been requiring early starts and late nights.  On our way out of town we picked up Natasha, sadly Jacob had to work, but having Natasha's company was great!  We hadn't seen Natasha in over three weeks, much too long.  We drove about 6 miles east of Steven's Pass(1hr 45 min drive), parked near the start of Smith Brook Road and headed out into the woods to try and find Lake Valhalla.  I say try to find because the directions in our book were not clear and we were not bent on having a destination so we didn't bring a map.  We did use Natasha's GPS a few times to make sure we were heading in the right direction, which we were, but never actually made it to the lake.  We snowshoed for about 3.5 hours, covered at least 6 miles, and thoroughly exhausted Lily, a perfect day!
Washington Trail Association Website, - provided the details of the hike and directions on how to get to the trailhead.

Katie, Ryan and Lily halfway up the trail

New backpacks in action!

Natasha, Katie and Ryan taking a lunch break, The snow makes some great seats.