It is well established: Punishment=Glory. But the glory usually comes at the summit; we seldom experience glory on the route’s descent. Backcountry snowboarding is an exception. Hours of work on the climb up = minutes of joy on the ride down. More »
Once upon a time, a friend of a friend nicknamed “the Nizzler,” for reasons lost to time, took a trip to Indian Creek. After getting brutally worked on one of her projects, she laid down amongst the gear at the base, like a wolf puppy who tried her first hunt on a porcupine. Semi-fetal, with knees tucked up but limp arms and lifeless eyes, my friend snapped a picture, and it provides the blueprint for when we tell each other we’ve been “nizzled.” More »
Most weekends you can find the pullharder crew suffering in the high Sierras, fighting their way up big walls or training…hard! However, one weekend a year we take a break to meet up with friends from all over the country and enjoy ourselves. It just so happens that our idea of a good time is a costume party/BBQ 160 feet off the deck. More »
There were falls into the engulphing blackness. Some pitches were onsighted, others not. There was blood, both fake and real. Cloaks blew in the wind, and mezmerized in the moonlight. An adventure was sought, and experienced. It was a good night….. More »
Back in the summer of 2009 Nath climbed The Vampire at Tahquitz (5.11a) with her friend, Linda. She’s from Montreal and spoke French growing up and so this needed a little editing. For various reasons (none good) I slacked and didn’t get to it until now. Sorry Nath. In any case, below is her awesome tale of leading The Vampire. She’d been leading trad for about 2 years, and what made it exceptionally challenging was that she’s about 5′1″. More »
Training for Moonlight Buttress, Roberto and I were short on time one weekend but long on energy. We decided to hit Eagle Peak and just climb everything we could get our hands on! The plan was simple: show up and punch out as many pitches as possible with the time we had.
Roberto and I recently wandered off to the desert for a weekend of punishment. I’d been sport climbing, or climbing easier stuff for a while and I needed to get WRECKED! I asked Roberto if he was up for some punishment and he gave me a big fat YES. We flipped through the guide, and found our instruments of self annihilation.
Nate and I found a day without rain a while back, and decided to hit the Mt. Woodson boulders. We only tried a few problems that day, but three of them were absolute classics and we shot a little video. There was Silk Banana, the obscenely strenuous lieback, which neither of us had tried before. That provided a wicked warmup, being one of the most powerful problems I’ve ever tried at Woodson. More »
The long awaited 2nd installment is finally here. That’s right, last month I got the itch again, sent out the e-mails, and this time an even bigger crew went up for punishment on some of the more heinous offwidths at Mt. Woodson. Round 2!!! This time we tried Right Long’s Crack and Greg’s Crack as the main course, with a little Big Grunt for dessert!
The other day I hatched a plan and started recuiting. Being surrounded by motivated climbers, I talked four others into my crazy scheme. We all want to improve our offwidthing so the plan was, head up to Mt. Woodson after work and try some of the more gnarly offwidths up there. On the ticklist were Right Long’s Crack, Mother Superior, and Greg’s Crack. As you can see below, at least we were smart enough to tape up. Check out the video to see if we triumphed or not…
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 »
Another beautiful weekend in Joshua Tree and a few more sweet routes ticked. After a lazy saturday-morning wakeup Josh and I made it to the park before noon and headed straight for Hidden Arch, an amazing left leaning corner just to the left of Loose Lady. This thing is pretty hard, with funky crimping outside the corner followed by body-englishing your way up the corner. A total Scotty route. More »
I tried to find a partner – I really did, but problem one was that I don’t know very many strong skiers in SoCal. Problem two was that the few people I knew strong enough to ski it, weren’t too keen on earning their turns from the bottom up. Problem three? The two I did know who were strong enough and “willing” were busy, and this was the last weekend of winter and the only weekend I had time for it. 3 strikes, I guess it’s solo time…
Ben and I hit Woodson today with the goal of doing thirty routes.. BLITZKRIEG DAY!!
Back in February of 2006, I climbed my first multi-pitch route. I had been climbing for about 3-4 months at the time, mostly indoors and on toprope. My hands were still soft, my forearms puny, my gear still shiny, but my mind was gung-ho on this new sport More »
We’ve all been to Woodson and looked at some of the heinous offwidths out there, but few actually DO them. Well, on a recent trip we managed to rope in one of the true present day Woodson “Locals,” the very understated and modest Eric Roed. He was kind enough to show us what punishment really meant. More »
I hiked to the top of Corte Madera many times before I even knew what trad climbing was. It is classic backcountry San Diego…fields of rugged manzanita, yuca that seem to actively spear your body, endless small mountains and deep valleys all blanketed by harsh green brush More »
Thought I’d post some photos of this amazing boulder problem in the Outback, Joshua Tree. More »
Mission Gorge will always occupy a special place in my heart. It was there that I first climbed outdoors, first lead a trad climb with the 5 pieces of gear I owned at the time and subsequently fell and ripped out my first piece and decked. More »
Okay, assholes. Since nobody is posting anything to PH, I’ll stick this little TR from when the fires were raging, the gym was closed, and we had to fucking crank! More »
On the way back from Joshua Tree, Josh, Alex, Albert, and myself stopped at Texas Lucy’s in Temecula. We gorged ourselves on flatulence inducing grub, made obscene comments about the waitresses (whose ass cheeks and cleavage are more apparent than the Bush administration’s hypocrisy), and talked about climbing. More »
