Climbing Candidate On His Way To Washington

udall
If you were to guess which of the 50 states in the Union would elect a new senator who has a number of big climbs under his belt, which state would you choose? I’ll give you tree guesses, and the first two don’t count. Yesterday Colorado voters sent Mark Udall to Washington to represent them in the new government that will form early next year. Udall has quite the climbing resume, with a solo summit on Kanchenjunga, successful bids on Aconcagua (via the Messner Route!), Denali, and more. He’s also been on Everest, but was turned back due to a bad storm above 25,000 feet. Today, you’ll find Backpacker, the GoBlog, and Men’s Journal all singing his praise, and rightly so. Congrats Mark!

I count politics amongst my interests, but don’t tend to let it creep into this blog too much. I will say though that yesterday was a pretty amazing day for democracy, as the United States showed once again that it can make a peaceful transition of power to a new leader. President-Elect Obama has some big challenges ahead of him, to say the least, but I think he’ll repair the tattered relations with other countries and help the country assume a leadership role in the International Community once again. I’m also incredibly proud of this country that we’ve matured enough to elect an African-American man to the White House. After all, this is the 21st Century. It’s about time!

I’ll step off my soap box now and resume our regularly scheduled broadcasts…

Kraig Becker

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