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Climbing, Adventure, Gear & Choss
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5 Climbing Towns Under 1000
Yeah, I know. Boulder (or Seattle, or Salt Lake City) is the best climbing town in the US of A. Any day of the week, I could climb classics of any grade, in any discipline of the sport. The best in the world come to climb and train there, and have for the past forty [...]
The Story of a New Bolt
There are thousands of bolts on climbs across the country, and some are in dire need of being upgraded. Pretty Hate Machine, in Rifle Mountain Park, is a local climb whose time had come to get the old, rusting bolts replaced with new ones that should last well into the future. Situated in the Arsenal, [...]
Death Grip: A Climber’s Escape from Benzo Madness
His hammer swung wildly at the bolt. It was binding up in the hole, and he demonstrated little patience for the stubborn installation in the hard rock. I had first met Matt Samet a month earlier while developing a new crag outside Carbondale. His slovenly appearance didn’t seem to match his impressive record as a [...]
Let the Adventures Begin!
It’s been a cold winter. There have been climbable days here and there, but for whatever reason, my schedule hasn’t lined up for me to take advantage of them, so I’ve been spending most of my time in the gym. It’s been great to focus on training, and getting better at climbing, but I didn’t [...]
Waiting for the Moment
In surfing, you wait for the waves. For skiing, it needs to snow. With rock climbing, the cliff is always there. But ice climbing is different. Ice climbing is all about conditions, and perhaps that’s what makes it so appealing. As climbers, it’s the one thing we do where the right conditions are essential. In [...]
So You Want to Write A Guidebook
I’ve been working on a guidebook, an update, actually, to the previous one for our area. This time around, we are splitting it into two books, as there are hundreds of new climbs, several previously unpublished areas, and some great photos of it all. The interesting thing about writing a guidebook is that it’s basically [...]
Does the Off Season Exist Anymore?
At first, I was surprised. What were so many people doing here on a Monday, during the first week of October? We were on a school trip to Indian Creek, and there were quite a few folks hanging out in the main campground. Don’t they know Creek season starts in November, when the climbing everywhere [...]
Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?
Partners are so underrated. As climbers, we often like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists, but the truth is, without a partner, climbing isn’t a whole lot of fun. Sure, you can go out and chuck solo laps on a micro traxion, but that’s like going to the movies by yourself. Sort of fun, [...]
The Sport Climbers’ Guide to Trad Climbing
The second part of our attempt to further peace, love and understanding between rivaling groups in the climbing community, you need not look any further if you are a sport climber who just doesn’t get trad climbing. Have you always wondered why it’s fun to slog up some less than vertical choss pile with twenty [...]
The Trad Climber’s Guide to Sport Climbing
There’s an unspoken tension in the climbing world, lurking just below the surface. Sometimes it explodes forth in a string of vociferous comments, usually in an online forum, but much of the time it sits, slowly smoldering in the back of our collective minds. Trad versus sport climbing. Specifically, there’s a faction of trad climbers [...]
How to Not Win Friends and Influence People
As my friend Chris likes to point out, the climbing world is so small that most of us are connected to each other by various acquaintances, and those strangers at the cliff are really just friends we haven’t met yet. But every now and then, you might just feel like pissing some people off. Maybe [...]
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 [...]
A Week in the Desert
Red Rocks holds a special place in our hearts, with its soaring walls of featured stone and incredibly beautiful canyons filled with secrets waiting for the intrepid explorer to find. It was also a place where Tracy and I, early in our dating, had some incredible experiences which formed bonds that led to us getting married. It feels like a second home, and we’ve been fortunate to spend a week each spring on the sunny sandstone ever since we tied the knot.
Cerro Torre For Dummies (& Non-Alpinists)
Like many of my fellow online denizens, I’ve watched with interest as the Cerro Torre drama unfolded over the last couple of weeks. I’m not an alpinist, and I’ll probably never go to climb in Patagonia, as I prefer trips to places where the weather is good for more than three days out of thirty. [...]
The Journey is the Destination
Here we are again, the end of another year. A time of relaxing with friends and family, a time of thankfulness and gratitude, for all we experienced over the previous twelve months. Many fond memories, shared with special people, in the most incredible places in the world. The life of a rock climber is a [...]
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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