Holiday Break for the Unbreakables

It has been over three years since I spend more than three days without doing something productive or additive. These days, if I climb for more than two days in a row without checking my email I start to grind my teeth. Or rather, with current technology, it is more like 6 hours without a quick run through my phone. This might come from obsessive behavior, or the need to feel important via a sense of being busy. But I think it has deeper roots in self-reliance. This weekend, driving to catch the 2 feet of fresh at Wildcat Mountain, on day four of dereliction, I realized I could just keep going....

Click to read more ...

Girls On Point

Sarah H heading into the steepnessUp until five years ago I climbed with men more than women. It wasn’t a conscious choice, it was just what I was surrounded by. These days it is almost the opposite. Maybe some of that has to do with the murkiness that surrounds cross-gender climbing. With women, it’s relatively simple. And it’s getting easier. But it is still surprising when you get to go out and dry tool with three other ladies.

Click to read more ...

Ice Up

Pitch 3, Photo by Peter DoucetteIt was 80-degrees in Boulder yesterday, October 29th. Almost too hot to climb…rock. The ice, on the other hand, is on.

Pike’s Peak, Colorado. Home to a road to the 14,000’+ summit and early season ice. I don’t exactly live next to Pike’s Peak, but I live close enough to warrant a drive down with my ice gear fresh from six months in summer storage. Like all climbing excursions, it seemed like a good idea to Peter and I at the time. All the way through the Denver traffic and construction, past Santa’s Workshop where seniors get in free with children (grandkids, anyone?) and through the entrance fee to the “America the Beautiful Highway.” In fact, it all worked until I got out of the car at 13,000’ and started sucking wind....

Click to read more ...

Expando-Crag: Whipped Insallment

EXPANDO-CRAG: MAXIMIZING YOUR CLIMBING SPACE, POLISH-STYLE
(Part of an on-going series on my blog of posts from my column Whipped, for Climbing Magazine. September, 2006 Installment.)

Read in PDF version Here

The Poles, long known for making do in the face of social, political, and economic hardship, have also always applied the same perseverance to sport. Consider the recent introduction of the bicycle with hydraulic saddle-lifting mechanism, or the kayak-surfboard for those especially tricky waves, introduced in 1999 with some success. But by far the best example of Polish ingenuity is the Expando-Crag, a yet-to-be-patented system I experienced firsthand during a month-long trip to Polska in 2005.

Click to read more ...

Burley Integration

My senior photo for high school was a shot of me in a Crazy Creek chair on a rock next to a lake in Glacier National Park in Montana. More so than a glammed up version of myself, I wanted to present the rough and ready self to the world. Everyone else’s head took up the whole frame—I was a small figure with a book as big as my head in the distance. I took that same chair with me into Elephant’s Perch this past week. It still works. And when I sat in it all of those politics of identity come back just as fierce.

Click to read more ...