About 51% of those fun trips included at least one of the kids. Henry topped the chart at 36, followed by Clara at 30, and Lilly at 25. (Treen, of course, had 69 days of adventure, but that's not really fair.) Even Amy got out 11 times!

In addition to being asked back for a third year as a Tubbs Snowshoes Ambassador I began working with TurboPup. They make a meal bar for dogs. I love that I don't have to carry a big pack of kibble for Treen on trips. She loves the bacon and peanut butter flavors.

I've moved from reviewing gear for WTA to writing sporadic trail guides there and reviewing cool gear (including a few giveaways) on moosefish.com itself. This has meant at times the garage/gear closet has overflowed with backpacks, shoes, and other gear. (It also means that when you see a link to a product on the site or links to REI or Backcountry on the front page you can click through before you buy to benefit the moosefish.com operating budget.)

Throughout it all, we've been adventuring, of course. This year was focused in Washington (duh), Montana, Arizona, and Nevada. Somehow, don't ask how, we completely missed Oregon. Not that we weren't there visiting, but the closest we came to an adventure there was visiting Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. (But that's on the Washington side!)

Ah, but the adventures themselves.

January started with an Avalanche! Well, make that a climb up Avalanche Mountain. It's one of those trips that you really can't do unless there's snow because there's no actual trail. The views, though, were well worth the route finding and lung busting. In spite of a good start to January, the snow was pretty anemic. In fact, a trip up Putrid Pete's Peak was in fact putrid from the snow perspective. There just wasn't any. (It should have been completely covered.)

Instead of chasing adventure away from home we made it happen in the backyard by installing a zip line. I'll admit I didn't complain about the good weather the last week in January while we were hanging the 150' cable across the backyard, but still I dreamt of snow.

February gave us at least enough snow that I could find it on Mailbox for one of those classic "Oh, right, this is why I climb here," trips and at the Romp to Stomp at Steven's Pass Clara won the Lil' Romper Dash and got a medal. Next year I think she'll have to compete with the adults or maybe do it en pointe.

Even though it wasn't terribly cold at home we fled south to Arizona. The trip was packed with all sorts of craziness including suggestive cacti, rain storms, and waterfalls in the desert. People kept saying how wonderful the rain was, but we kept muttering to ourselves that we could have had rain at home. The weather didn't really get good until we headed north through Sedona to the Grand Canyon. Needless to say, it was impossible to describe other than to say it's not just a big hole in the ground. I later bailed on the family and climbed Humphrey's Peak, the high point in Arizona. There, I was treated to blue skies and snow at 12,000 feet and I met two people I knew only from Twitter. (It turns out not everyone online is a homicidal maniac!) I was even the guest on a mountaineering podcast to talk about the climb. That makes me almost Internet famous!

The rest of March was spent trying to restore some semblance of normalcy to our lives. We found snow and rain and I took the Girl Scouts snowshoeing with the help of the Tubbs Demo Fleet of snowshoes.

In April, we adventured in the big city! It was crazy to think we could drive downtown and find things to do, but a great reminder that we country bumpkins don't have a monopoly on adventure. (Just the best adventures.) Otherwise, I slipped back into the Mailbox routine.

May was a great month. Spring finally started to pop and adventure was everywhere. Plus, I found balance in an aborted hike up Mt. Teneriffe. Too often I've ruined hikes or weeks or months stressing about the results. Teneriffe reminded me to focus on the experience and let go of the summit.

Add to that personal breakthrough Star Wars Day, National Wildflower Week, an ad hoc camping trip to the amazing Palouse Falls, zombie letterboxing, and Memorial Day Weekend in the Methow with Grandpa Jack and it's no surprise it was such a winner.

June found us with Tubbs again, but just hiking this time for National Trails Day. We fished, too, but the big deal was celebrating the official start of Summer in the snow at Mount Rainier. Sure, it sounds weird, but until you've been snowshoeing at Sunrise in a t-shirt or glissaded at Paradise in shorts you haven't really lived.

True Northwesterners know that Summer starts on July 5. For me it was July 6 with my somewhat annual tour of the Ramparts. This "secret" area is one of my all time favorites. In the Winter it's locked in deep snow, protected by long approaches and avalanche slopes. In summer it's full of meadows, bugs, and hikers. In Spring, though, it's empty save the occasional crazy fools like us. The meadows are still covered in snow and the lakes are frozen with rings of electric blue around the edges where they are just starting to thaw. I can't wait for the kids to be strong enough to visit with me.

Of course, that was just the first amazing trip of Summer. We had great weather for Poo Poo Point, Mt. Defiance (twice), Guye Peak and Cave Ridge, and Dungeon Peak. Plus, we spent a ton of time on the river in the backyard where Lilly caught her first fish on a dry fly!

Phew. While July was full of short trips August was all about multi-day trips. It started with a spur-of-the-moment trip to the Olympics for me and Henry while the girls were at Girl Scout Camp. We saw our first up-close goat in the wild on Hurricane Hill and "camped" in a Walmart parking lot for the first time. Don't worry, we made up for that transgression later in the week when Henry, Treen, and I headed off for a three day epic trip into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Seven is a transformative age, as Lilly showed me at Summerland back in 2012. Speaking of the girls, once they were back from camp we headed back to the Olympics for their three-day trip. As epic as Henry's trip was, the High Divide was EPIC. 23.5 miles with 5,100 feet of gain over three days including two days of hiking literally all day long.

September found us back in the Ramparts area yet again, making the most of a beautiful summer. With TNAB I went to Rampart Ridge (technically in August, but Clara was with me so definitely worth a mention), Mt. Margaret and the Twin Lakes, and then a few days later I went back to Southeast Rampart for a slightly different view.

September's also when I indulge for a few days to go fishing with Grandpa Jack. Although when it's just me and him he's just, "Dad." We returned to the Missouri River and Rock Creek in Montana again and caught all the fish. Back home, it only seemed right to wrap up Summer the way we started it: At Mount Rainier. The kids and I climbed to Second Burroughs on a perfect, albeit windy, day.

October is when the snow should start falling in the mountains, but it didn't. Instead, it was just dark and cold and rainy. The one bright and warm spot was a trip to Las Vegas for work where I went canyoneering for the first time. Only 45 minutes off the Strip and it was magical.

November delivered a few tantalizing bouts with snow, but not enough to snowshoe. Each was followed quickly with a warming trend that melted whatever had fallen. I took advantage of whatever was there, though. We welcomed Winter at Lake Lillian, on Granite Mountain, and the Crystal Lakes in Mount Rainier.

Finally, December. We should have great snow, but in fact didn't. The ski areas remain mostly closed. It was raining in the lowlands and as high as 9,000 feet. Easton Ridge should have been buried in snow, but it was only dusted. Mailbox should have a deep trench established, but there was almost nothing. It wasn't until the day after Christmas that I got the kids out on their first snowshoe nightshoe glowshoe adventure. I went skiing for the first time in 10 years (ouch) and had to contend with thin snow coverage. It all wrapped up with a nightshoe up Kendall Knob that included a bunch of slide alder that should have been buried by snow, but instead insisted on grabbing our snowshoes and making life hard until we got much higher.

Twelve solid months of adventure all wrapped up in one really long post. And if you wonder why some of the pictures show me (or Treen, or Henry, or anyone else in the family) in a Mountain Tutu, it's all part of our commitment to fight breast cancer in any way we can. It's a definite conversation starter on the trail and it's led to more than a few donations to help fund early detection.

The best adventures were those with the kids and other great companions. I had a chance to meet and hike with a lot of my usual friends and new ones. Whether they were from TNAB or Twitter or Facebook they were all fun to be around. Probably because they shared my love of the outdoors.

If I didn't run into you in 2014 look for me and the Moosefish adventure team in 2015. We'll be the ones with a mountain tutu, three kids, a dog, and big smiles.