LOWA BLOG

Sierra Mountaineering, International, Inc. founder, Kurt Wedberg, shares some thoughts on why he's so passionate about climbing mountains.

“You’re a mother!” fretted my trekking partner, sitting on my legs. Her weight kept me from tumbling off a 500-foot cliff in Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains while I focused my camera on a walia ibex. The 200-pound ibex lounged in the sun on a skinny shelf about half-way down the wall of rock. My son was 10 years old at the time.

The magic of the Grand Canyon is hard to describe. It’s a powerful, sacred space that cast its spell on me decades ago when I laid eyes on it for the first time as an eleven-year-old.

It all started with a mule ride down to Phantom Ranch when I was a kid, but soon turned into ever-longer day hikes, which eventually became long-distance trail runs and multi-day, east-west backpacks.

Today, I am blessed to live less than two hours driving distance from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon - the Big Ditch is now my local adventure backyard which I’ve been playing in for years.

Normally, when the weather forecast calls for below-zero nights and single-digits days, torpor sets in. I curl up by our fireplace, boots and pack dormant by the door, until the temperature rises to a more humane level. Yet this past October, I was outside in that kind of crazy cold, hiking in Montana’s Snowcrest Mountains in search of an elk.

My husband, Leo, loved his LOWA boots. In the moments of his life, he had two pairs of LOWA boots which took him on adventures in the wilds of Southeast Alaska. These special boots helped him bring moose and deer out of the woods, helped him as he wandered over muskegs on berry-picking gatherings, and camping/hiking adventures.

Leo often recommended LOWA boots saying, “You will never need another pair of boots after you have a pair of LOWAs!”

Leo was an adventurer and his life of adventures ended in his death in March of 2014.