As I sit here in Dulles Airport waiting for my connection to Pittsburgh I thought I would give all of you an update on the trip to Seattle. The meet was very, very, very fast, Seattle is a beautiful city and former Duquesne Swimmer, Kathy Smucler 04' is doing very well.
I arrived in Seattle on Wednesday evening after a long day of connections in St. Louis and Denver. Fortunately I was able to take in finals Wednesday night, which in turn, helped me to adjust to the three hour time change. I caught prelims and finals the next two days where I was able to witness a lot of fast swimming. I would consider the trip a great success. I was fortunate enough to speak with all of the swimmers (after the completion of their last event, of course) I went out to watch as well as their parent's. I feel very confident in the type of student-athlete we are recruiting at Duquesne. Of course, all of them were great swimmers but upon speaking with them face-to-face, I believe they are all people of great character that will help our program from many aspects. There is always a lot of down time between sessions so I was able to connect with Kathy Smucler on Thursday and Saturday.
Kathy is doing very well for herself. She is a "traveling" nurse that works when she is needed. This gives her a great opportunity to travel (she just finished up a contract in San Diego) and is now working in Seattle. On Thursday between prelims and finals Kathy took me to downtown Seattle where we toured the city; walking along Elliott Bay, Space Needle Park and toured the famous Pike Market Place. We did not get to see them throw any fish but Kathy and I enjoyed ourselves, throwing down free samples of anything that was available. On Saturday, Kathy and I undertook an adventure that I will remember for a very long time. We both decided to travel 1 hour south to Mt. Rainier National Park to "hike" a trail with the possibility of seeing the mountain. For those of you that know Kathy, when your with her, you always get a little more then what you were prepared for.
The day was very overcast so visibility was not very good. Kathy had the great idea to travel up to Paradise, one of the visitor centers in the park closest to Mt. Rainier. We decided to take a 2 mile round trip hike towards the mountain. We departed Paradise with one bottle of water and a 1 oz bag of cheddar rabbits each. I did not know that Kathy was planning to take me on a "death march" towards Camp Muir, the base camp used for individuals attempting to climb the entire mountain. When we reached our 1 mile destination, it was still cloudy so Kathy suggested we keep going.......we did. It did not take long and the rabbits and water were gone. Thankfully part of the glacier was melting so we did have our own water source (Kathy and I both partook in eating a little snow....thankfully it was not yellow). As we continued to climb, me in my New Balance sneakers and t-shirt and Kathy in her hiking boots and tank top, continued to see people with wind burned faces, large backpacks, and snow axes working their way down the mountain. I thought to myself "maybe we are not equipped appropriately to make this climb?" One hiker even warned us of the snow and crevasses we were headed for. Regardless, we pushed on. As we continued to hike the clouds lessened and the mountain became very visible. At one point we turned around and saw we had actually climbed above the clouds and saw nothing but beautiful blue sky and Mt. Rainier. We pushed on until we could not climb any more because the snow had gotten too deep to walk through and the common sense of the dangers that loomed won out. All-in-all we ascended about 8,500 ft up the mountain and were only 1500 feet shy of Camp Muir. It was a great experience and the beauty of our surroundings astonished me. Thanks, Kathy.
See you around the pool,
Dave
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