Weeping Winds with @bbrianandersonn today! Burlier than expected, but so much fun!
‘iOS 26 CarPlay confusing UI/UX - Apple Community’
In iOS 26, Apple CarPlay Maps, the currently focused button is grey, while other buttons (not focused/hovered/selected) are blue. Read this again: it is grey for active, blue for inactive.
Every time I try to select a route, I end up missing the right button.
It’s truly infuriating.
(Via Dr. Drang, whose post exposes other diabolical interaction designs.)
Sometimes, I just like looking at the big numbers. 😆 I didn’t quite make the length of the Appalachian Trail, but working out every ~2/3 days and for almost 1000 hours feels good! And the biggest effort day totally tracks with my memory of hiking the Santanoni Range on Jan 24. 😅
So glad this last-minute booking came together! Helping expand @maxwellmortillaro and @phil_dworzanski’s backcountry ski touring repertoire was a total joy! And we saw some real progress as they mastered heading up and down the steep and tight terrain.
We made our way up Wright Peak from the Loj via the Old Marcy Dam trail and Wright Ski Trail. The rocky hiking trail and bottom section of the ski trail made for some exciting dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodging. But mega fun up top! Great temps too — way nicer on Wright than yesterday! 😁
#MykeWasRight Athlytic is awesome. Thanks @imyke@myke.social!
Don’t let the fun music fool you, Wright, Algonquin and Iroquois Peaks were butt-kickers yesterday! Huge gusts, -30°F wind chill, and major drifting made us really earn those summits. Make sure you’ve got good traction — lots o’ ice on those rocky peaks! But Todd crushed it, as usual.
All the kudos go to Hao and Junlin for taking on the challenge of spending two winter nights backcountry camping in the High Peaks for their first experience in the Adirondacks. Even when the going got tough, their tenacity brought them success on their goal of climbing the Gothics cable route. Hard core! 💪
Started reading: Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe 📚
It’s debuting as a show on Apple TV soon and it looks great!
Farewell 2025
Some personal highlights from the year!
Jan - Ski instructing at Whiteface Mountain and many uphill skinning adventures with early morning exercise buddies. 🎿
Feb - Saranac Lake’s Winter Carnival is always a blast and ice palace spectacular! This year we got to share it with my mother-in-law. ❄️
Mar - Multi-sport weekend with Mike — climbing in the Gunks and skiing at Whiteface. 🧗
Apr - A trip down to Florida, with a visit to Bok Tower with Aunt Sally and Grandma Beck — a cherished memory as we would lose Grandma later in the year. ❤️
May - Backpacking with Jo and Phin. We hadn’t done one together in a while, and it was wonderful to hit the trail as a family again. 🏕️
June - Rock climbing season kicked into high gear with many trips up the slab, including this memorable one with friends from @adkclimb.club in which Taka did a few barefoot pitches. 🤣
July - Perhaps the highlight of the year, a trip to Wyoming to climb Gannett Peak for Matt’s 48th state high point and my personal tallest climb. The stunning cirque rekindled my desire for bigger objectives. 🏔️
Aug - Heartbreak as we said goodbye to our beloved Ollivander after 10 years in our little family. I can finally start looking back at photos of him with fondness instead of sadness. He was the greatest furry friend. ❤️🩹
Sept - The month for love for us, as Jo and I celebrated the wedding of dear friends, Tyler and Lauren, and attended the balloon festival. And then celebrated our own (7th!) anniversary the next weekend. 💍
Oct - Or Rocktober! The fall is my favorite time of year in the ADK, and I got to tick off a bunch of spectacular climbs among the beautiful fall foliage, including a few here on the Upper Washbowl with Brian. 🍁
Nov - Snow and ice season arrived blessedly early and in full force! Got in some great pitches of climbing and backcountry skiing in deep snow before Thanksgiving — take that, west coast! 😉
Dec - I couldn’t choose between family time at the holidays and our current adventure with Dan and Sarah in Las Vegas for New Year’s, so I didn’t! Both have been wonderful. 🎉
I’m so lucky to live in a place I love, have a career sharing my favorite activities, and be surrounded by wonderful friends, family, and community.
We love helping dreams come to life! @haojjiang and Junlin had backpacked together before, but never in the winter and never in Adirondacks. Their goal was to test their skills in a winter mountaineering excursion. Gothics Mountain provided sub-zero temps and waist-deep snow for the challenge, and they crushed it! We ate, slept, laughed, and awed in nature’s stunning beauty. In short, we thrived. Can’t wait to get out with these two again!
Book your dream adventure today!
I quite like MG Siegler’s theory that Pluribus is commentary on AI (spoilers!):
To wit: All of humanity’s knowledge is involuntarily uploaded to the collective “cloud”, as it were. With this, any of the beings on Earth – aside from a handful that the virus couldn’t infect for unknown reasons – have access to all of this information in real time. And any of the “unenlightened”, when they ask any question of these connected beings, they get back a seemingly factually true, but often bland response in real time.
The consensus view, quite literally.
Artemis, the calm web reader, is thoughtfully designed to be both efficient and privacy-preserving. For instance, it logs only the last month you used it:
This is why “approximately” is something of a feature: I don’t know what day a user opened their feed last on. I don’t need to in order to fulfill my goal of not retrieving feeds for users who haven’t been active for a while. Not only that, I don’t want to know the last day a user logged in to Artemis, for that would mean I would have the necessary telemetry to easily calculate “daily active users” and such.
— James G, Designing for inactive users
Part of the fun is making the most of what Mother Nature hands us. If that’s -15°F wind chill, we bundle up, fill the thermos with hot chocolate, and keep climbing! Thanks, Liz and Nate, for bringing extra warmth with your smiles and stoke today!
North Face of Pitchoff was in excellent shape today! The hard freeze overnight (and continuing today) made for great climbing. Liz and Nate excelled despite the frigid wind chill and climbed all over Harlot. Can’t wait to get out with them again!
A mega fine day spent in the mountains guiding Todd’s 27th and 28th winter 46er high peaks! Clear skies and warm temps kept smiles on our faces! 😁
Had to kick things into gear this month (114 miles in December), but through sickness and health, before and after work, on treadmills and through bitter cold, I got it done! 😁
It’s happened again. I went searching for an obscure web editor for Blot that I used to use, but couldn’t remember the name. Guess what. My own blog post about it was the top link. 😅
Watched: Pluribus 📺
As Robb Knight put it, it’s “the most boring show I can’t stop watching.” I love the mystery and “what ifs” but wish there was more happening. A promising first two episodes turned into a slow burn that I’m nonetheless looking forward to coming back. 👍
Finished reading: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer 📚
A harrowing tale… that nonetheless stoked my passion for the mountains — despite their inherent dangers. 👍
Rama Duwaji is a talented artist who is set to become the youngest First Lady of NYC when her husband, Zohran Mamdani, becomes mayor on Jan 1. You’ve gotta check out her website! I love how you can interact with the animated GIFs on the animation page.
Amazing.
Good morning! Just wanted to let you all know that Rian Johnson subtly rickrolled us with a scene in Wake Up Dead Man.
I’m incredibly proud of Hao and Junlin for taking on a new challenge in a little Christmas Eve ice climbing! It was Hao’s first time on ice, and Junlin’s first time climbing ever. They crushed it on Pitchoff Right, dialing in technique quickly and having a grand time despite the cold and wind.
Hope they’re resting up tonight as we are venturing into Adirondack wilderness tomorrow for another new adventure for them: winter camping and mountaineering. 🏔️
Started reading: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer 📚
Finished reading: Apple in China by Patrick McGee 📚
This book makes Apple’s acquiescence to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism make even more sense. It’s not their first game. They know the playbook well.
It’s an enlightening tomb. A little dry, but the second half really picks up. 👍