Posts under ‘climbing’

When asked if I would be climbing in the Phoenix Rock Gym’s Thrash and Dangle Climbing Competition I almost couldn’t stop myself from laughing before getting my response of “no” out. By nature, I am not competitive (in sporting events anyway). I feel bad if one team beats another by too many points, I hate [...]

Making it back to Arizona brought us back to familiar territory. Things got easier, we knew where to camp, where to climb, we even had friends that wanted to see us and generously offered beds, washers, driers, and showers! We took full advantage of this familiarity as soon as we arrived and did some climbing [...]

Rock climbing is a strange sport. There is a lot of pain, discomfort, and generally crappy situations that climbers have to endure. Well, a certain breed of climbers choose to endure… and Erin and I are that breed of climbers. Again and again we choose to hike for hours and hours to reach climbs. We [...]

Miguel’s Pizza is THE climber’s hangout at the Red River Gorge. Cheap camping as well as the best food around make it an awesome place to hang after climbing… in theory. I’ve never heard anything bad about Miguel’s. Everyone says it’s the place to stay when climbing at the Red. So maybe things were so [...]

Tim Toula’s Rock ‘n’ Road atlas of North American rock climbing destinations lists the Red River Gorge as a five star location. Which is the same rating he gave to Yosemite Valley, Squamish, Red Rocks, and many other awesome climbing areas. So going to The Red had me pretty excited and my hopes pretty high! [...]

The Grand Ledge in Michigan is supposed to be the best… well… ONLY climbing in the lower peninsula of Michigan. You see Michigan is pretty flat, so finding any rock to climb is pretty surprising. Grand Ledge offers top rope only routes. Even though there are climbs up to 45 feet in length, the locals [...]

The Offwidth, is a size of crack which is too large to use your hands, but too small to fit your body. In order to climb an offwidth, you must employ strange and awkward techniques to inch your way upward. This size crack is either feared or sadistically sought after, but always respected by climbers. [...]

I should have known that climbing to 13,775 feet would give me altitude sickness. The headaches, dizziness and nausea have plagued me on various high peaks in my climbing career. The symptoms have always forced a speedy descent before my conditions worsened into something more serious or even life threatening. So when my headache got [...]

Some of the best plans, are ones that happen last minute. We had rolled into Ketchum and found our friend Cody’s apartment after a LONG drive from Glacier National Park. Cody’s dad, Gordy, was in town as well visiting from Michigan. We barely had time to eat dinner before Cody started telling us about Elephant’s [...]

When it rained in Squamish, we went to Leavenworth. When it rained in Leavenworth, we went to Frenchman Coulee! Dave continued to be our Washington state climbing tour guide. He sent us up a ton of great lines at The Coulee… Shake it don’t break it (5.5) The Uprising (5.8) Desert Shield (5.9) Dawn Coyote [...]