Why do you climb?  Does it light the fire in your belly?  Does it make your heart beat faster?  Do you seek adventure, or stay in your comfort zone?  For me, I know that the bigger and harder the better, and I’d rather be on the rock with an amazing friend, than anywhere else on earth… More »

Pop!  “Falling!”  I sat on the ground after lowering thinking, “Really?  Really?  Did that just happen?  OK, calm the storm.  Moonlight Buttress is about two weeks away, it might heal…”  I had just tweaked something pretty bad in the left side of my calf heading up into my knee, while heel hooking.  I sat there on the floor at the Mesa Rim climbing gym telling myself it would be OK.

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After a crazy and hectic 1st semester of business school in LA, I felt an overwhelming desire to get myself involved in something non-urban and anti-corporate.  Over eight days spanning New Years 2011, I met up in Yosemite with two up-and-coming young climbers from Boulder, Cheyne Lempe and Colin Simon. More »

When did I know I had bitten off more than I could chew?  I think it occurred to me about 10 feet into my 25 foot fall…WOOOOOOOOOOO! More »

Over the last year and a half I have been lucky enough to put together a spectacular list of long climbs: Dream of Wild Turkeys, Levitation 29, The Original Route, Rainbow Country and Moonlight Buttress, but none of them really felt like they were my trip.  It never felt like success or failure rested on my shoulders.  So I figured it was time to plan my own trip and climb a big wall with all the pressure on me.  I chose the Original Route on the Rainbow Wall for two reasons; first, I had done it before, so I knew I could do it again, and second, it is close to San Diego. More »

Goals create motivation, motivation leads to goals.  It’s cyclical.  Without one, it’s hard to have the other, but with both anything is possible.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say “that’s my dream climb.”  Dreams are for the thinkers, goals are for the doers.  I’ve learned that once my dreams become my goals, they quickly become my accomplishments.  Sometimes it’s hard, but I always end up with a smile on my face and memories for a lifetime. More »

Looking back on this trip all I can remember are the breathtaking views, the phenomenal rock climbing and the laughs, but that is only half of the story.  Be forewarned this is not your typical trip report. More »

A couple of weeks ago Luke and I drove into Yosemite with the intention to check out Free Rider — kick its tires, try and get its general idea. Things went better than expected and we ended up climbing up 1/2 of El Cap free in a day. So we figured, “Eh, doing the whole thing can’t be that hard.” When I said that to my friend Traian, he laughed and answered “Yeah right, you guys climbed ‘Easy Rider’. Wait till you get higher.” He was spot on. More »

I hadn’t been on a really long hard route for a while and I wanted to test myself.  This year I’ve started training a little more intelligently and it was paying off.  I was strong, but did I have endurance?  Not really sure how hard I was climbing when it comes to 10+ pitch hard stuff, I decided what better way to find out than try to free a bigwall?

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The trickling sensation of fear and anticipation moved slowly through my body in the days leading up to the climb. Every thing I had done to this point would not compare in shear scale, where we were headed was in my mind the “Mount Everest of rock walls”. Driving into the Yosemite valley I thought back again to the days of my youth, where a wide eyed 12 year old sat in the back of his parents car staring up at the towering El Capitan in amazement… at that point I would have never believed I would one day scale that very wall. More »

I don’t usually post trip reports, not because that I rarely take trips, but mostly because I’m a sport climber with the literary skill of a fifth grader. But once a while, I get on something so big and exciting that I feel compelled to write about, only to get swamped with work and actual climbing. Let’s see how this one goes… More »

Failure is a relative term. Though one that is not often sought out among members of the climbing community. On the weekend of May 3, 2008 Albert and Shay came to know this phenomenon during our ascent of the Moonlight Buttress in Zion NP. More »

Shay and I decided that our main objective during our weeklong stay in Yosemite last summer would be the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome. Since Shay had zero aid experience, I showed him how to aid and jumar on Lie Detector at Woodson… A couple laps up and down and I pronounced him ready for a bigwall. More »

I have this friend, Scotty. He likes to push the limits. In fact he’s famous for it among our group of friends. We’ve all been on a “Scotty Vacation™.” They typically involve at least one (or more) of the following: unplanned bivy, dehydration, hallucination, cramps, stumbling from exhaustion, feeling like you might throw up, altitude sickness, and more. They ALL have four things in common: More »

In April, Josh and I did the Rainbow Wall Original Route in a 16 hour push car to car, 36 hours San Diego to San Diego. We freed all the pitches, with Josh ropegunning all the hard stuff (and me hanging a few times on TR), redpointing the lower half of the route and onsighting everything after “Over the Rainbow” Ledge. More »