By David McNeill, backpacking buddy

Most of the memories I made with Jared were forged on backpacking trips in the rugged mountains of the North Cascades. We returned from each trip exhausted, scratched and dirty, but we were always planning the next adventure before our blisters had healed. Jared never complained about our misadventures on these trips, like the time we didn’t bring enough stove fuel and had to hike 18 miles back to the car in the rain. At most he would smile and say, “Well, that was less than optimal.”

12 years ago, Jared Carr, Scott Parish, George Lewis and I set out on our first backpacking trip in the North Cascades. We had all recently graduated from high school, so we had more energy and excitement than experience or proper gear. Our ancient external frame backpacks were either hand-me-downs or borrowed. The waist belts on Scott and George’s packs were hard, unpadded straps, and our cheap tents flooded when it rained.

After days of bushwhacking along the south fork of the Cascade River, we emerged above the tree line to stare in wonder at the massive South Cascade Glacier tumbling down between jagged peaks, which looked like enormous knives of rock pointing into the sky. We were all instantly hooked, and those mountains have called to each one of us ever since. Most summers since that trip one or another of us will contact the others, wondering, is this a good summer to reunite in the mountains?

Jared came on all these subsequent trips, and although he never took the role of group leader, we naturally deferred to his judgment, since he was always better informed and usually better equipped than the rest of us.

For the summer of 2011 only Jared and I could make it. We decided that for this reincarnation of that original trip we would do the Ptarmigan Traverse, a weeklong alpine trek up glaciers and between jagged rocky peaks. Whenever we stopped, we found ourselves staring in wonder at the wild landscape that surrounded us. One time it was a hummingbird, another it was mountain goats. One night we awoke to the clattering sound of Jared’s ice axe. When we turned on our headlamps, a deer stared back at us. It had tried to carry off Jared’s ice axe so it could lick the salt from the handle. Another night we saw a meteor streak across the sky and explode.

These mountains are where Jared loved to be, and he was willing to pay the price of admission, which usually involved bushwhacking through six-foot-tall stinging nettles, devil’s club, berry brambles and swarms of black flies. Jared faced this misery with a calm resignation. He was never one to freak out about anything, no matter how tired he got. I also trusted every decision he made in the backcountry – his reasoning was never clouded by ego, personal ambition, or the desire to prove something. I know this because we bit off more than we could chew on every trip we took together, and he was always willing to hike out 18 miles in the rain rather than push beyond our limits.

When Jared died, we were in the middle of planning a return to the site of that first trip in the North Cascades. He had already laid the groundwork of planning for the trip, and we will be taking some of his ashes to sprinkle on the land he loved so dearly.