Returning from an ascent of Bear Creek Spire this weekend, Konstantin and I got into the topic of Winter climbing. We’ve been climbing partners for almost two years now, but this conversation, transcribed essentially verbatim, contains pretty diverse perspectives on why we go to the Sierra in Winter: More »
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 »
The Sierra season is short, we are told. July through September, then the snows come. True, but in the Range of Light, the sun comes out again after the storm and warms the rock faces. So Asa and I headed up this December for a chilly late season (or early Winter season?) ascent of the Strassman Route on Lone Pine Peak. More »
The normal approach to climbing is to maximize your chances of success. But Peter Croft talks about going for it–and being willing to fail big–rather than surely succeeding: “It’s kind of a lost, or it’s kind of an ignored idea, magnificent failure rather than a kind of mediocre success.” More »
In school we learn that Death Valley is the lowest place in the Americas. Less than 100 miles away, as the crow flies, is Mt Whitney, the highest point in the 48. Distance, elevation, extreme temps, and two mountain ranges is what lies between them. To visit both in a day on your own power, you need to think like Honey Badger. More »
Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thought’s escaping
Home, where my music’s playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me
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Past the point of exhaustion and chilled to the bone, I was only half relieved that we were making our last of roughly 15, 60 meter rappels to get off the face. For hours Fred had descended into the darkness below, tediously setting v-threads in the icy face. Now, after 20 hours on the go, we were finally back on the snow, almost to the glacier. “rope free,” called Fred. I put the ropes through my ATC, started to rappel, and then the unthinkable happened…the snow picket ripped, I fell backwards, and started sliding at full speed down the 55 degree snow slope. I knew the bottomless bergshrund was somewhere below, and I envisioned my broken body lying frozen in its depths. Unable to self arrest, I knew my time had come. I would die in the great Peruvian Andes, well before my time, under the glow of a full moon. 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.
“If I have gone a little faster, pulled a little harder, and seen a bit further, it is because I have tread in the steps kicked by Giants.” More »
Many cruxes were identified as we made our way up the drainage heading towards the Palisade Glacier. The perfect combination of conditions, psych, and weather had to come together before the mountains would permit our passage. More »
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 »
While Scotty and I were climbing Deborah on Arrowhead peak, I could not help but notice a fat drip of ice half way up the right gully on McHenrys peak. 5 days later I called Buster and convinced him we needed to go climb it. Our adventure on the Big Mac Couloir had been memorable, but now it was time to step it up. We would go for the obvious linkup…West Gully to Right Gully, car to car, and squeeze it in during the calendar winter. We approached, we saw, we sent. More »
Twitch… Twitch… Twitch… I could tell, it was time to go to THE NEEDLES! Who better to call than Roberto? I hadn’t really been climbing outdoors all summer due to full time work and full time class, and I had just received brand new shiny Totem Cams to review. Where better to test them out than the Needles where Roberto and I both intended to whip?
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 »
The piercing sound of gunfire rang out through the desert air, sending Charles, Asa and myself scampering for cover against the desert chaparral. Our panicked, semi-crouched positions belied our combat inexperience. Storms, avalanches, crevasses, rockfall — between the three of us we’ve faced our share of objective hazards. But the very real possibility of being shot was a new one. More »
June 2009, Chamonix
Kostas, Scotty, and I chose the Frendo Spur as our first route in the Alps. Of course our “real” goals were the Petit Dru and the Walker Spur, being California hotshot rock technicians and all.
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With my work trip to Antarctica quickly approaching, Friday Nov. 6 became Konstantin’s and my goal to climb Dark Star (V 5.10c) on Temple Crag. 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?
After bailing after only 1-pitch due to a late start and a heavy pack a month ago during a Whitney-Russell weekend, Lin and I decided to head back to the Direct East Face (IV-V 5.10+) of Mt. Whitney and try it again. More »
Shay and I had been talking for a while about heading up to get the first free ascent (FFA) of Pipeline (5.10 A0) on Mt. Carillon. It’s a 1000+’ route that he and Andre put up a year ago, and the “money pitch” involves liebacking, underclinging and smearing under an enormous roof that looks like a giant crashing wave. In addition, we planned on adding some new pitches leading up to and after the Pipeline roof. Mt. Carillon is just north of Lower Boy Scout Lake in the Whitney region, and is in a beautiful secluded valley away from the crowds.
On Friday I emailed Nate asking if he wanted to climb at Tahquitz over the weekend and he replied with a “pass” as he was trying to put together a trip to the Sierra’s. A few hours later he emailed me again asking if I wanted to go attempt a new line up Mt. Langley. Shay had climbed on Langley the weekend before and attempted a ridge that dead-ended before reaching the summit – Nate thought he saw a ridge in the pictures Shay brought back that might connect to the top. He thought we’d try to do the route in a day but there was a good chance we’d face an unplanned bivy and a cold night on the rock at high altitude. More »
After not climbing anything significant for a while due to a certain Mongolia trip, Nate and I decided to jump right into the Sierra alpine season with an ascent of Michael Strassman’s If At First (V 5.10+) on the East face of Mt. Whitney. More »
Wednesday morning, 230am (roughly)
“dude, I forgot my harness…”
Brad and I were inside my shitty tent, bivied at 11500 feet in Glacier Gorge, rain fly flapping in the wind and the sound of alpine streams filling the silence in between gusts. We had hiked in around sunset and went to sleep around midnight with BIG plans for the next day. I woke briefly from my slumber and was greeted by Brad, who was apparently wide awake. All he said was, “dude…I forgot my harness.” More »
I’ve been climbing in J-Tree for almost a decade now. In fact, it’s the place that I started climbing outdoors. It’s a magical place for me, the home of my first multipitch, first 5.10a gear onsight, first 5.12a gear redpoint, and so much more. For seven years now, I’ve had the idea of leading the number of 5.10s equal to my age. More »
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”
Buster and I left the Glacier Gorge trailhead at 330am. Our skinned skis sounded like laser guns, gliding along the snow which was well packed thanks to the hoards of people who come to the gorge to cross country ski and snowshoe into that majestic section of Rocky Mountain National Park. More »
Many of us know Tasmania for one thing: The Totem Pole. It is a very sought after and coveted ascent in climbing. It consists of a thin freestanding spire of rock 4m wide that thrusts out of the raging ocean almost 65m. More »
Winter Ascent of the Complete North Ridge of Lone Pine Peak from the Owens Valley.
Climbed by Scott Nelson, Nathan Ricklin and Charles Ince, January 30th 2009.
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On January 18th, 2009 Charles Ince and Albert Yu-Min Lin woke at 3:30 am to embark upon what may have been the first winter “ukulele” ascent of Mount Whitney’s East Face. The Video below is the story of that climb… More »
“Tienen drugas?”
“Tienen armas?”
These were the questions the Mexican cop asked us as he patted us down with our hands on the side of Buster’s Mini-van, The Silver Bullet (TSB). The four of us, my roommate Pete, Jeff, Buster, and myself, had been driving for 23 hours from Boulder, CO without incident, and now, with the Potero just a dozen Kilometers away, it seemed our luck had run out. More »
Like so many climbing trips and adventures, this one started with an email. It was from Buster, and attached to the email was a picture of someone following The Flying Dutchman’s (TFD) crux ice section: More »
Lin and I headed to Tuolumne over Sep 19-21. On Friday we climbed OZ, a 3 pitch 5.10d. The third pitch is supposedly the best 5.10 crack in TM, and I’d have to agree. Afterwards we got totally hosed trying to TR “Galen’s Crack”, a 5.10c OW next to the road. This thing is pretty brutal. More »
The Michael Strassman Memorial Route climbs the South Face of Lone Pine Peak following an impressive right leaning dike, dubbed the Super Dike. This prominent feature rips across the otherwise blank wall for nearly 500 feet, offering up some incredible climbing along the way. The first ascent was accomplished on September 30, 2008 by Scotty Nelson, Charles Ince and Nate Ricklin. More »
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 »
Scotty had promised that we would do an FA for our birthdays back in July. Unfortunately the weather had other plans for us that weekend (We were able to do the FFA of Kostas and Nate’s route Cleavage Dreamer, with a direct start). A promise is a promise, so the next chance we had, we were headed back up to the North Face of Mt. Russell to give it another go. Things went smoothly enough (I have yet to go on a Scotty vacation). We got up at 4am on Saturday and got to the base of Mt. Carillon where we set up camp and had a leisurely afternoon of bouldering, top-roping, among other things… More »
Teased by reports of big virgin granite up the Cleaver Valley, Lindsey, Shay Andre and I found ourselves parked at Whitney Portal late one August evening. We immediately started hiking up, bivying on the sandy bench above LBSL. I think this is a useful strategy for mitigating altitude sickness, and it also allows one to enjoy the hike in the coolth of the night. More »
The pipeline is perhaps the most imposing roof in the Eastern Sierras. Flawless granite extending itself from the wall more than 30 feet. Andre and I spotted this obvious feature while putting up Sweet Carillon. This weekend we went up to explore it. More »
There I stood, perched on a small face hold hugging the arete trying to surmount the 5 foot roof that marked the middle of our 3rd pitch. This was my first look at the wall above it and it looked blank. Would I be able to downclimb? Was there an alternative path? More »
Scotty and I spotted The Cleaver while we were on the NERLPP, and after getting home and looking it up saw that it had only one route on the South face. Sick! We made loose plans to check it out, but Scotty suggested the idea to Kostas before taking off on a 3 week roadtrip. 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 »
“Maybe that couple” I muttered to Scotty, trying to send the 40th pitch of Galactic Hitchhiker; the ride back down to the valley. More »
Mission: 
The Northeast Ridge of Lone Pine Peak in Winter. This route rises 6,900 feet from the valley floor. Over three miles of knife-edge ridgeline lead to the pyramidal summit of Lone Pine Peak. From the moment Scotty suggested we try it, this route appealed to me. It’s so simple. Start on the desert floor. Get on the ridge. Climb all the way to the top. More »
If I remember correctly, the idea was to basically climb the biggest route possible – in winter.
On January 18th we took our first attempt without oxygen, only one stick of lip balm and a marginal weather window – the results were disastrous. More »
“Hillary! Why must you leave me???”….Ok, so perhaps Hillary Clinton didn’t visit us on our winter ascent of Mt. Whitney last weekend. After all, she is probably busy campaigning in South Carolina or something, maybe it was just the effects of altitude and exhaustion wearing away at my consciousness. 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 »
