I was walking up one of the Cascade peaks one day, and happened across three folks, two men and a woman, hiking up also. They had fairly large, but light, packs, including rope, crampons, ice axes and jackets.

As I watched them I rather marvelled at how wrong they got the conditions for this hike, and how much equipment they had which was completely unnecessary, even for emergencies in this place at this time of year.

As we got closer to the summit they let it drop they were from "Outside" magazine, on an assignment to write about this particular mountain. They regarded me as a "local", and succumbed to the temptation to talk at me instead of to me.

We got to the top, I sat down, watered the dog, ate my lunch and took pictures. Didn't pay a lot of attention to my fellow travellers, until one of them yelled at me.

I looked over, and, so help me God, they had put on the down jackets, draped the coiled ropes over their shoulders, and had their ice axes out. They had their glacier glasses hanging from their necks, though there was no snow nearby, and the crampons were obvious but they had the grace to not put them on.

They wanted me to take a picture of them. They looked rugged, as if that summit was hard won and they were cheating death even while posing for the camera. And feeling rather cheap and sordid, I did. A bunch of them, really. Often wished I hadn't, as they would have had a hell of a time getting all three into a picture as there was no place to put a tripod.

Never did look inside that magazine again. Don't know if the article was published, or the pictures used.

Arf