Travel Blog | Nick Hoernle - A blog about fun travel stories and things<br/> that I find interesting.

Israel: Ali Visits the Holy Land

17 April 2019

What a treat to see Ali again. Mount Olives was the first stop for our tour of Jerusalem.

The Kautz Glacier up Mt Rainier

15 August 2018

It is 11am and the glacier is hot. Rocks are crashing down from across the valley. We hear the Nisqually valley rumbling thousands of feet below and we are stuck. It is terrifying not being able to find a way up: the crevasses blocking our way seem impassable. Back below us is the 60° Kautz glacier that would be suicide to try and descend at this time of day, especially with the heavy packs that we had strapped on. We have to find our way to the Wapowety bivvy and we have to do this urgently.

The Bay Area

27 July 2018

I finally made it down to the San Francisco Bay Area to see the sights and catch up with some of my friends from my Master’s program. So this will be quite a quick one as I only had a rushed weekend to see as much as I could before returning to Seattle for the work week at Microsoft.

Mt Adams - South Climb 2018/07/21

22 July 2018

I met Rex a few weeks ago. Either I managed to frame a 2am start and 10 hour climb in an appealing light or he is cut from the same crazy cloth that thrives off type 2 fun. It didn’t really matter; the result was that I had my climbing partner. I was not too sure what to expect from this mountain as the reviews are fairly varied in terms of difficulty ratings and route suggestions. Nevertheless, we decided that a one day push was a good idea and we moved forward with those plans.

Niagara Falls - Buffalo City?

15 July 2018

This is a mixed review of my tour to Buffalo for the Educational Data Mining 2018 (EDM) conference and of my brief but impressive visit to Niagara Falls. I submitted a short paper to EDM and I was invited to give a talk to present the work. I thought that my talk went well and I had some good feedback from some of the participants who attended it. The talk was also good experience for me and I learnt some lessons about what audience I can expect and how I might engage them more actively in the future.

Canyon Hunting

24 June 2018

Seeing the Grand Canyon has been on my agenda since I landed in the USA. What I wasn’t prepared for was how spectacular the rest of the area is. It is stark. It is hot. It is dry. Yet, it is unbelievably beautiful.

Graduating from Harvard, Road trippin' and so much more!

05 June 2018

This is a hard post to write. Firstly, a lot happened in this really short period of time. I graduated from Harvard University with my Masters degree, my parents and brother traveled halfway across the world to witness it and we also did some spectacular traveling together. It was very special for me to have them come to visit me in the US as it has been isolating living so far from home. I’ll try bring out the most interesting parts of this trip, but feel free to skip to the relevant parts (if any): The Big Apple, NYC -...

Nick Hoernle