Climbing Mentorship, Egregious Bolt Jobs, and Humility
Another botched bolt job shows how the lack of humility in climbing is straining the climbing mentorship gap. To access this post, you must purchase Annual Subscription, Monthly Subscription or...
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Testing the Edelrid Tommy Caldwell 9.3mm Rope
Let’s face it. Tommy Caldwell is basically unimpeachable. I’ve never heard anyone say a negative word about him, except perhaps for the self-deprecating words he levels at himself. He’s got a high bar...
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The Updated Boostic is Another Winner from Scarpa
In the past decade of climbing, three things have gotten softer: shoes, grades, and climbers themselves. Who’s to say whether these things are correlated or entirely incidental, but I for one am happy...
View ArticleLife After First Ascent: The Ethics of Updating Routes
Should one person get to decide a route's fate for all time? Considering how first ascent ethics serve our long-term interests in climbing. To access this post, you must purchase Annual Subscription,...
View ArticleAre you really excited about climbing in the Olympics?
It was opening night for the Olympics and the mood in our house was festive. My wife, Jen, was full of a kind giddy energy reminiscent of Christmas morning. She is a former gymnast and grew up watching...
View ArticleThe Alpinist: Marc Andre-Leclerc and His Last Climb
I was hanging out with the Sender Films crew at SXSW for the Dawn Wall premier right around the time we all learned the sad news that Marc Andre-Leclerc had gone missing and was presumed dead in...
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Gym To Crag: Knowing the Basics of Climbing Outside
You’ve heard of farm to table, but all across the country, a new artisanal movement is taking place among rock climbers. It’s called gym to crag, and it’s an educational initiative to help people learn...
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Why Can’t Alex Honnold See Sport Climbing in the Olympics?
Despite my best efforts to sleep in, I accidentally woke up early and turned on the Peacock app to see the official debut of “sport climbing” in the Olympics. Track and field was on. Then I checked the...
View ArticleGood Riddance, Combined Format
A conclave of climbing’s top experts and oracles convened in Tokyo to begin the ordained business of determining climbing’s Olympic medalists. This process is known to the mystics as the “Combined...
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This week in Climbing: GOAT BLOAT
The Olympics are over, leaving the climbing world in a post-coital daze, smoking a cigarette and wondering whether or not we’re going feel any regret tomorrow morning. It still feels pretty good, at...
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This Week in Climbing: This is 40
Padma Lakshmi had a birthday this week. She posted a stunning portrait of her ageless, beautiful face with the caption, “This is 51.” I am not sure if this kind of trope is meant to be humble or vain,...
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What I Should Have Said About Joe Kinder
Earlier this year, Ethan Pringle took a whipper off the top of Empath, a new, hard sport climb in the Tahoe basin. He crashed through a massive tree branch and injured his leg, requiring a few weeks of...
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This Week in Climbing: Rifle’s New 5.15a
Sendtember draws to a close with Rifle getting its first 5.15a thanks to Joe Kinder. He sent his project last weekend. “Kinder Cakes” is a direct line out of the center of the Skull Cave, and having...
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Climb Harder Just By Getting Older—like Tommy Caldwell
There’s a joke in climbing about how to climb harder the older you get. Just wait long enough, the joke goes, and the routes that you did years ago will probably be upgraded. And who knows? Perhaps you...
View ArticleDaily Stoke: Chris Kalous Does 50 at 50
My friend and cohost at The RunOut podcast Chris Kalous turned 50 earlier this year. We discussed the possibility of him doing a “birthday challenge” to celebrate the turn of a new decade on one of our...
View ArticlePoaching Tengkangpoche: A “Slimy” First Ascent
It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission, as the old saying goes. And that might have been true had you been on a remote mountain with no easy way to contact the outside world. But Tom...
View ArticleBroken Discourse: the Tengkangpoche story
My wife Jen once told me a story about climbing with her friend at the Red River Gorge. She left her rope at one cliff, walked to a different cliff to belay, and upon returning found a clueless guy...
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This Week in Climbing: Thanksgiving Edition
Many people will spend 3 hours today, and 4 hours tomorrow preparing a meal that will be consumed in 20 minutes. I see an obvious analog here to writing: you can spend 7 hours working on something that...
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Click-baiting Climbing’s Culture of Risk
In “Free Solo,” there is a sequence in which the filmmakers attempt to establish just how deadly free soloing is by invoking the names of several famous dead climbers who were well-known for...
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Daily Stoke: Ryuichi Murai: “Floatin” (V16)
Ryuichi Murai has completed “the launchpad project” which he is calling “Floating'” and rating V16. The send was compiled for Mellow’s YouTube channel. This is one of the purest boulder problems I’ve...
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