From: Lloyd Sanford
Date: 28 May 2006
After a rather fast paced end week culminating with the Practical, I boarded an early morning Monday a.m. flight and was able to just sit back and let my thoughts flow. Looking out the tiny airplane window at steep mountains and rolling hills, my thoughts kept coming back to special memories of fun and challenging scrambles with Larry and how much I will miss his endearing personality, wisdom and calming nature. Larry was the first person I spoke with when I joined the Everett Mountaineers. He answered my questions with no-nonsense reasoning tinted with a smidgen of challenge. After just 4 scrambles with him in the first few months of 2001, all that he promised came true. He told me that I could have a lot of fun summiting peaks with a group of wonderful and caring people and do it a heck of a lot safer than soloing. I've since been able to use group mountaineering as a highly effective means to put balance into life, experience deeper meaning, enjoy giving back what was freely given and have some great laughs with great people. I owe a lot of this invaluable change in my life to what I learned by listening to and watching how Larry interacted with people and mountains.