Featured Crag

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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.

June 23rd, 2010 | BJ Sbarra | 0 comments | Continued
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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.

April 15th, 2010 | BJ Sbarra | 4 comments | Continued
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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?

March 18th, 2010 | BJ Sbarra | 0 comments | Continued
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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 [...]

November 12th, 2009 | BJ Sbarra | 1 comment | Continued
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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 [...]

September 1st, 2009 | BJ Sbarra | 1 comment | Continued
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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 [...]

April 21st, 2009 | BJ Sbarra | 4 comments | Continued
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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 in [...]

February 11th, 2009 | BJ Sbarra | 2 comments | Continued