Andrea and Josh's Story
Andrea and Josh met on an MIT outing club trip to Mount Adams and Mount Madison in New Hampshire’s presidential mountain range. Josh was the community volunteer leader on the trip, and Andrea was a participant.
Andrea and Josh hit it off while traversing between summits on an unusually beautiful winter day. Here’s a summit photo from that trip:
Josh had gone skiing with a different group of friends the day before, so he had driven his car to the trailhead alone. Josh wanted to spend more time with Andrea after the hike, but he worried that asking her to join him for dinner, plus the three-hour drive home would be too intense for a first date. Josh craftily worked around this problem by asking the entire group whether anyone would like to keep him company on the drive home. Andrea took him up on the offer. A few other people did too, but Josh told them that his car was too full of skis and that the available seat had already been spoken for.
From that point onwards, Andrea and Josh spent every weekend together. Their blossoming relationship revolved around outdoor adventures, and their shared community service projects. Josh took charge of fixing up and reopening the outing club’s remote cabin in New Hampshire. Andrea took charge of organizing and improving the club’s gear library.
Once they got the cabin up and running nicely, they spent every weekend there. From this home base they went on dozens of hikes and volunteered as leaders for beginner hikers and climbers.
On Andrea’s spring break from MIT Josh and Andrea went on their first long distance trip as a couple. They went desert tower climbing in Arizona.
Towards the end of the trip they swung by the Grand Canyon and hiked to the bottom.
Since then Andrea and Josh have been fortunate to go on several larger adventures beyond New England with friends from the MIT outing club. One of their more notable adventures involved climbing minor summits on France’s Mont Blanc Massif with a few close friends.
For Andrea’s birthday in 2022 Josh and Andrea travelled to Acadia National Park and scaled several cliffs in the park with their close friends Janey, Yunting, Noah and Dana.
In the year that followed they spent a lot of time going on more beautiful hiking and climbing adventures with the MIT outing club, to New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine and they continued to volunteer as leaders and organizers.
Josh got to know Andrea’s family
And Andrea got to know Josh’s family:
In September they returned to Acadia National park, which had become one of their favorite places. They got engaged in the company of close friends while climbing at the Otter cliffs.
