" Fueled by disappointment at my flakey friends, and determined to have a good time (if only to prove a point), I caught the last town-bus of the day, persuading the driver to make a special drop off at the trailhead. I climbed the damn mountain alone: it was awesome."
The word 'alone' often comes with negative connotations; for many, to be alone is to be lonely. But alone is not a feeling or a consequence, it is simply a reality. You can tramp with Tami and Jerry and Lee, or you can tramp alone. For me, tramping alone didn't come as a natural evolution in my outdoor experience; it was born of necessity.
On a post high-school OE in 2018, I wound up working at a café in the Canadian Rockies. Quite the backyard for outdoor adventure, where learning to snowboard kept me entertained (and in pain) while I settled into mountain life. As the snow melted though, I learned that tramping wasn't a
