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Climbing, Adventure, Gear & Choss
Featured Crag
Trips All Year – January & February
Skiers have long had “Turns All Year,” in which they attempt to ski every month of the year. Jeff Cole and his wife Samantha made a New Year’s resolution to get out of their hometown of Boise and go on at least one climbing trip every month in 2013, or “Trips All Year.” This is [...]
The Mother Lode – Route of the Month
On the east side of Independence Pass, on the flanks of the highest peak in Colorado, sits a wonderful crag of compact alpine granite. Featuring some of the finest 5.10 sport climbing in the state, Monitor Rock is known by most for its excellent bolted routes. There is, however, a hidden trad gem lurking among [...]
Independence Pass Trad IS Rad
Thanks to the funky, metamorphic geology of the area, Independence Pass offers some of the steepest trad climbing this side of the Gunks.
New Routes at the Narrows
Download a topo of the newest routes at the Narrows, including the 50 meter enduro monster Gold Brick!
Abraxas Wall – Featured Crag
If you are looking for a good crack climbing fix close to Moab, the Abraxas Wall is well worth a visit.
Top 5 Redstone Ice Climbs
The Redstone Winterfest is right around the corner, and ice climbing conditions in the Crystal River Valley are looking really good. With so many climbs to choose from, here’s our pick for the best pure ice lines in Redstone.
Featured Road Trip: Las Vegas
Featured Road Trips is a new column intended to give detailed beta on the drives to popular climbing destinations outside Colorado. Knowing the best places to get gas, good food, camp, and climb along the way can make all the difference on a long drive. We hope others will add to this info and we can create a comprehensive community resource for all the road warriors out there.
Independence Pass Bouldering
Each year, on Memorial Day, Independence Pass opens for the season and climbers are granted access to one of Colorado’s best summer playgrounds. Aside from a plethora of fun bolted and gear routes, the Pass has hands down the best bouldering in the area. There are several guidebooks that do a good job of chronicling the many established problems, but there has also been a lot of recent development, and it was hard to get good info on this stuff. Until now, that is. A new site has launched, IndependenceBouldering.com, that offers a supberb guide to the more recent problems in the area.
The Frying Pan – Featured Crag
Ah the F-Pan, where do I begin? This is easily my favorite crag in the Roaring Fork valley region. The rock is excellent (and unusually not chossy for this area). The climbing is thoughtful, technical and powerful all at the same time. The aesthetics are top notch, and the views from the upper cliffs are some of the best anywhere.
Wall Street
There is a place near Moab, Utah, where the rock is not good, the road is six inches away and the smell of urine assaults your nostrils on warm sunny days. Somehow, this is one of the most popular crags in Moab. Just goes to show, if you build it, they will come. So what is it with Wall Street, why is it so popular despite all it’s shortcomings?
Colorado National Monument
Ah November. That magical time of year when the sun is low in the sky, the day’s are short, and the weather is fickle. One day it’s 60 and sunny, the next it dumps a foot of snow. It can make road tripping a little cruxy, as it’s typical to have a weekend with one [...]
Monitor Rock
Imagine a striking cliff of bullet hard stone, with routes from 1 to 5 pitches long, both trad and sport, sitting at an elevation of 10,000′. Sounds like a popular summer spot, right? Think again. Somehow, despite all this, Monitor Rock remains a sleepy little backwater crag, but those willing to sample its delights wont [...]
Rifle Arch
There’s something noticeably lacking among the climbing options here on the Western Slope of Colorado: easy climbing. And I’m not talking about easy by the standards of the I-hang-out-at-rifle-every-weekend-and-warm-up-on-5.12 crowd, but easy as in, I just started rock climbing, I want to ease into it and I wasn’t born climbing 5.10. For whatever reason, the [...]
The Pencil Area
Welcome to the first of many new regular monthly features here on SplitterChoss.com. My recent bout with the flu gave me some time to line up an editorial calendar of sorts for the year, and one of things I have in store is a featured crag each month. Enjoy! When it comes to ice climbing [...]
New Western Slope Guidebooks in the Works
I wanted to get the word out that there are new guidebooks currently in the works for the Western Slope. Yes, that’s books, plural, because it’s going to be a two part volume. Rifle will have it’s own book (volume 1), and then the rest of the crags in the area will have their own. [...]
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9/29/12
A Festive Fall Weekend
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7/11/2012
The 2012 International Climbers’ Festival
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