Jim Donini in Patagonia and Alaska

From the Enduring Patagonia years, here’s a run of pictures of one of the best friends and climbing partners I’ve ever had. (Still have, on both counts, thank God, which is no small accomplishment, from several perspectives.) Damn, we’ve had some fun together, and, astonishingly, the old reprobate is still grinding, climbing hard on the eve of his 70th birthday.

That is not a misprint.

Jim always was a hell of a lot of fun to write about; check out Enduring Patagonia if you haven’t read it — Jim’s one of the main characters in it.

I’ve got dozens of slides of Jim on climbs in Alaska and Patagonia that have never been digitized. One of these days I’ll get around to doing that.

We haven’t climbed together near enough since I got swept into the China’s Wings project, but there’s hope for this spring…

[EDIT: Just added the Bourbon Bottle pic from a scan posted in the Donini appreciation thread currently going on Supertopo.com]