Who's Who: The Cast of Characters

To help you understand who (or what) I'm talking about on this blog, here's a brief introduction to the main people in my climbing crew. This will periodically get updated.

Candymouse: I'm the author. I'm frequently sarcastic, I like to think of myself as witty, and I got my nickname because, being significantly smaller than most of my (mostly male) climbing partners, when they're all sinking into snow past the knee I'm "running up on top like a little field mouse". Also I love candy.

Sketchy Tony: Sketchy for short, he probably has the most impressive climbing resume of all of us, including a self-guided summit on Denali in June 2018. Currently in training to be a guide, his nickname was given to him by his classmates because of a series of unfortunate accidents last season (most mostly not his fault but it's still funny).

Stucker: Other than Sketchy, Stucker is my primary climbing partner. Stucker, I'm pretty sure, is part mountain goat and the remainder cat; he's quick, strong, and nimble, and we do a lot of cool stuff together (by which I mean, he lets me follow him around while *he* does badass stuff and helps me do some of it too). He's working on knocking out peaks on the Bulger list. Stucker is responsible for giving me my nickname.

Suki: Suki is my dog, a 5-year-old lab mix. She is dopey, friendly, and 200% heart on the trail. She rides the struggle bus hard in snow (she's heavy, with dainty little feet, relatively low clearance and a super short coat, so... she sinks a lot and gets cold easily), but her enthusiasm never flags. She excels at long distance, multi-day summer hiking and is defiantly unafraid of thunderstorms. To make up for it, she has a truly irrational fear of vacuum cleaners, brooms, and cans of compressed air.

Mochi: Also known as the Conservative Decision Cat, Mochi (or MoMo), doesn't ever leave the house. She is the foil for Sketchy in terms of decision-making - for any risky call he makes, MoMo will sit primly in her cat tree and level merciless judgment upon us all.