Gig Harbor Fire/Medic One and Olympic Mountain Rescue leader Alison Monda penned the number one release on Amazon, Fearless: Hilarious and Horrible Stories From an Absurd Life Spent in the Woods. Monda doesn’t just talk about pushing limits, she lives it. She discusses and signs Fearless from 5-8 p.m. Monday, Dec. 23 at Peaks & Pints in Tacoma’s Proctor District. Since Monda wrote some of the book from her bar stool at Peaks & Pints, we present an all-day flight in her honor, Peaks and Pints Monday Adventure Flight: Alison Monda.
Her captivating memoir takes readers on an exhilarating journey, blending near-death experiences with moments of humor and resilience. Monda shares her extraordinary adventures backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail and Te Araroa, confronting grizzlies and sharks, and surviving a cyclone alone in the wilderness. Through it all, her storytelling brims with self-deprecating humor, candid reflections, and a raw, empowering message about facing fear and embracing freedom.
Peaks and Pints Monday Adventure Flight: Alison Monda
Incline Cider Basecamp Proctor
6.9% ABV
Alison Monda has seen a basecamp or two during her years hiking mountain ranges. Tonight, she can drink a Basecamp as she signs her book at peaks & Pints from 5-8 p.m. Introducing Basecamp Proctor — the new Peaks & Pints house cider crafted by local cidery, Incline Cider. We tapped Basecamp Proctor at our 8th Anniversary Party Nov. 1, and it will remain on Tap #7 for a full year. Made with an iconic blend of their favorite Pacific Northwest-grown apples — Fuji, Gala, Honeycrisp, Red Delicious, and Braeburn — Basecamp Proctor packs layers of bold, juicy apple flavor into every pint. It’s dry, bright, and refreshing.
Loowit Brewing Silent Trees
6.6% ABV
Speaking of house drafts and outdoor adventures, Peaks & Pints has a new house beer, Loowit Brewing Silent Trees IPA. On the morning of May 18, 1980, after a century and a quarter of quiescence, a magnitude 5.2 earthquake triggered the explosive eruption of Mount St. Helens. The volcano’s northern face collapsed, burying Spirit Lake and the headwaters of the Toutle River beneath hundreds of feet of avalanche debris. The accompanying blast sent winds of 600 mph and 400 to 600 degrees Fahrenheit sweeping across the landscape, leveling forests, vaporizing foliage, and searing soils. When the smoke and ash cleared, more than 240 square miles of forest north of the peak became silent. A fringe of standing, dead, ash-covered trees formed a “ghost forest” around the blow down, and the ground was blanketed with tephra and ash. Mount St. Helens is also known as “Loowit,” which is a Native American name for the mountain, specifically from the Klickitat tribe, and is often associated with a legend where Loowit was a beautiful maiden transformed into the mountain. In 2010, longtime friends Devon Bray and Thomas Poffenroth opened Loowit Brewing in downtown Vancouver, Washington, helping revive the city and quickly became a force in the Southwest Washington beer scene. Loowit Head Brewer Landon Smith joined the ownership team during the pandemic and continues his tradition of brewing excellence. Loowit Brewing collaborated with Peaks & Pines on the Tacoma craft beer lodge’s house beer, Silent Trees IPA. Paying homage to the trees around Mount St. Helens and the outdoor enthusiasts who join Peaks daily in Tacoma’s Proctor District, Silent Trees IPA is the perfect beer to toast the Loowit Trail, the challenging loop that circumnavigates Mount Saint Helens through the trees. Silent Trees IPA continues Peaks & Pints’ love affair with old school piney IPAs, this time brewed with Simcoe, Columbus and Chinook for all the pine and citrus.
Outer Range In The Steep
6.7% ABV
Outer Range Brewing founders Lee and Emily Cleghorn opened the brewery in late December of 2016, but it wasn’t their first rodeo — the two met at a home brewing party in Colorado Springs where they were both serving in the Army. After many homebrew batches of Belgian-style beers and hazy IPAs, Lee and Emily marry, have a daughter, and after Lee’s third deployment overseas, decided to attend the American Brewers Guild Brewing Science and Engineering school in Vermont to pursue their dream of opening a brewery in the place they loved most — the Colorado Rockies, specifically, Frisco. Fast forward several years again, Outer Range is now brewing in France. Situated at the base of Mont Blanc in Sallanches, France, Outer Range Alps serves as a mountain brewery catering to the local community and nearby resorts such as Chamonix, Megève, and Saint-Gervais-les-Bains. It’s obvious why In The Steep is on Monda’s beer flight. This hazy IPA is a drinkable exercise in hop simplicity. This cloudy pale-yellow beauty hits the nose with apricot, resin, kiwi, honeysuckle, and tea followed by mellow stone fruit, subtle kiwi, grapefruit, and delicate malt with a mild bitterness and some earthy grass and pine.
Top Rung Escape The Darkness
6.6% ABV
Top Rung Brewing opened in April 2014 with awarding-winning homebrew recipes and two owners with full-time jobs — Thurston County firefighters, which is why Top Rung is on firefighter Monda’s flight. Their Escape The Darkness Cascadian Dark Ale’s solid malt backbone offers a revelation of mild toffee and black currants with a subtle roastiness, followed by whispers of pine and a shout of bright citrus.
Wet Coast Fixed The Newel Post
8.5% ABV
Another firefighter beer on this flight belongs to West Pierce Fire and Rescue firefighters Bryan Copeland and Aaron Johnson who are the brewers and co-owners behind Wet Coast Brewing, which they opened in Gig Harbor in 2015. Their Fixed The Newel Post imperial red ale style (sometimes called a double red ale) is medium- to full-bodied and known for strong hop bitterness, aroma, and flavor. While the hoppiness can be intense, the bitterness and underlying malty tones blend with the alcoholic strength of the beer to lend a spicy complexity to the flavor profile. Wet Coast brews this imperial red ale with Caramel and Crystal Rye malts for sticky-red-sweetness with enough hops for resinous pine and juicy citrus flavors and aromas.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
