About the Suburban Mountaineer and Contact Info
The Suburban Mountaineer is passionate about alpine mountaineering, as well as general climbing, hiking and skiing. It discusses exploration, wilderness and human achievement in the mountains by pulling on the history of climbing, current events, climbers and their style, as well as guidebooks and mountain literature. It’s author, Andrew Szalay, researches and comments regularly on the sport of mountaineering as well as how he struggles to keep the hills part of his everyday life, even while living in flat, suburban Peaklessburg.
About the Author
A dozen or so years ago, I was a carefree high schooler and college student hiking and climbing as often as I could. I hiked 20 miles a day on hiking trips, often solo. I bouldered whenever, toproped occasionally, and I climbed ice – but never nearly enough. I’ve covered ground in the Adirondack Mountains, White Mountains of New Hampshire, Green Mountains of Vermont, the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, south central Alaska, and a small portion of the Coast Range in southwestern British Colombia. Then my other passion of government and politics brought me to my nation’s capital, but that move also took me further away from the mountains longer than I ever anticipated.
Today, I live a nice life in the Washington, DC area with my wife, “Edelweiss,” and my child, “Wunderkind” – it’s nice even without having set a new route on some remote Alaskan peak. When I’m not tending to my favorite people in the world or advocating in Washington, I am reading mountaineering literature, guidebooks and magazines (and over a good cup of coffee or craft beer as often as possible). My climbing library has grown significantly over the years and has enabled me to become a modest authority on mountaineering without intentionally setting out to be. Which is why creating this blog was a natural outlet for me.
In addition to this site, my writing on climbing and the wilderness experience has appeared on Inclined, the blog of the American Alpine Club, and on the website of Trapp Family Lodge, an Austrian-style mountain resort in Stowe, Vermont.
Andrew Szalay
a.k.a. The Suburban Mountaineer
Feel free to contact me at andrew.szalay@yahoo.com and follow me on Facebook or Twitter.
Because it is there… Even though we work nine-to-five
American Alpine Club Member
