My name is Douglas, I'm an accountant for a large tech company in Seattle.

My climbing group consisted of Lenny, a high school friend of mine, Brandon, a painter,

and Kelly, a botanist that does research at the State University.

There's a mountain in Washington State that my climbing group and I have wanted to climb

for a while.

I won't say the mountain, so you guys won't go to test my story.

But if you figure it out, please don't do what we did.

A bunch of us conveniently had our vacation time line up and we were all itching to climb

this mountain together.

We usually go climbing at least twice a year, recently climbing Kilimanjaro as one of

our biggest expeditions to date.

We haven't been able to climb together for a while, so we looked up if the mountain

was open.

It was closed for another three weeks, which was odd, considering the weather was perfect.

Lights no fall, dry switchbacks, and not too much wind at the peak.

Since this mountain was so close to where we all lived, and we know as someone did it together

as a group, we decided to risk it.

If we drove out and got turned around, it wouldn't be a big deal.

We'd probably have dinners together at a local oikini buffet or find a smaller peak

to hike up.

We all climbed this mountain before by ourselves, so we were all very familiar with the terrain

and trails.

...