At the end of July, we got sick of the heat and humidity of Padova and boarded Enrico’s old motorhome for a trip to France. First stop was the famed crag of Ceuse, home of Biographie and other famous test pieces. Patrick Edlinger (RIP) didn’t have any money when he developed the crag; the result, highly technical and pumpy climbing on bullet-proof limestone and really spaced out bolts. Nothing like cruxing out way out from the last bolt, racing the pump clock to no avail… we gradually got used to the whippers and simply enjoyed the air time. More »

BEYONDgear and the Centro de Escalada Urbana Climbing School in the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeira

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Friends,

We recently received an email from Eric Tomczak, who was one of the original 3 members of the search and rescue team that went out to find Ben and Gil in Peru. We published his email below in its entirety along with his account of the search. More »

The Cordillera Blanca is world renowned for its high altitude mountaineering. But almost as awesome as the mountains themselves is the motley crew of international climbers who come to try their hand at getting high, on big peaks, cheap and fast. Example #1, Marko, from the Czech Republic. Hands down, the zaniest Eastern European caricature imaginable, complete with “Borat” accent and a lust for liquor. He climbed in a cotton sweatshirt and used a bandana as sunglasses…aka a blindfold. Marko eloquently explained the great physical difficulties of climbing in the area in said Borat accent: “If my knees had hands, they would punch face!” More »

When I came down from a week in the Cordillera Blanca to learn that Michael had died while soloing in the high Sierra Nevada, my reaction was one of sadness tinged with the stoic quiver of knowing that a friend died doing the things he loved the most. In the brief time I got to know him, I discovered that Michael and I shared an ever-waning appreciation for the romantic intricacies of the human spirit upon which climbing has the ability to shed light; A deep respect for metaphor, the awareness of self which inevitably flowers from the absurd and often dangerous situations we put ourselves in, and the power of that awareness to let us sympathize with our fellow adventurers and those who have risked and thrived in so many other arenas. More »

It is 4AM and I cannot sleep. I’ve been asleep on and off for the past three days, getting up only when it was necessary. The sick feeling in my stomach is still there but the worst is over. It is warm and cozy in my sleeping bag as I reach out to grab my camera. The images taken only a few days ago have now become a part of a distant past, split into two eras: Before and After. The first one is a picture from the plane landing in Mexico City, taken 3 days “BP”. “Before Puking” that is. More »

Kostas came in from Italie. Nate from Maryland. Shay from San Diego. Scotty and Charles from Colorado. We converged at an apartment that Nate hooked us up with in Chamonix. More »

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 »

Denali has a split personality. On the one hand, it is “The High One,” the stately and lofty red and white ruler. But it is also De-gnar-li, the snow-choked, windy, frigid monster. In summer, you get to see a lot of the former in nice weather windows. But the latter rears its head even more often. And yes we got to see him up close and personal. More »

In high altitude climbing, weather windows are everything. If you can move fast enough, and are opportunistic, you can sometimes grab the summit alpine style while expedition climbers are waiting around for a bigger window. It worked for me on Denali: I just had to push harder. More »