I’m currently reading Greg Crouch’s fascinating book “Enduring Patagonia”. I’ve always had this thought in the back of my mind that when the kids are grown up I’ll go climb Cerro Torre for “fun”. After reading Crouch’s book I now realize the folly of that idea. Crouch spent 68 days trying and failing to climb…
We recently spent a few days in Wyoming to take advantage of the last week of Kate’s maternity leave. Sinks and Wild Iris are among our favorite crags. I can’t ever recall having a bad day at Wild Iris. Even when I get bouted by a project there (which happens often enough), the warmup climbs…
Almost like clockwork, every year I find myself struggling to hangboard through the month of August, seemingly the hottest month of the year. In order to be fit in time for prime Fall sending conditions, most of us will need to do some form of training in late summer, when conditions are far from ideal. …
I’m heading out to Smith Rock in a few days for a two-week trip. The climbing at Smith is extremely thin and technical — and difficult to prepare for. I believe strongly in taining and I generally feel that using indoor tools is superior to “just climbing” outside (for building strength, power, and endurance). That…
In late 2009, my friend Ben Schmitt bolted a typical-looking Shelf Road face climb at Cactus Cliff. The line climbs a beautiful white wall of limestone, featuring a brutally hard 5-or-so-move crux right in the middle of the wall. When Ben put the hardware in, I was just finishing off the last of Shelf’s (existing)…
I spent the latter half of October working a route in Clear Creek Canyon called “Primetime to Shine”. This is a linkup of two popular Peter Beal 14a’s, “Primeval” and “Shine”. I’m usually not a big fan of linkups but this one is a rare example of a linkup that actually improves on the piece…
Tom brought up a couple of questions which I will start to address here: tom on July 25, 2012 at 2:35 pm said: “you brought up two very interesting areas i hope you will discuss in detail: a) being aggressive in climbing – what’s the mindset, how do you turn it on? how do you…
I received some great questions on my “Goal Setting for Climbing” posts, so I will attempt to answer some of them here. Look for another post in the near future that will address technique drills & other ways to train technique in the gym. Q: I have set a “big hairy goal” this year (Virgin…
The Rock Climber's Training Manual 