Climbing Archive

I'd thought about onsight soloing it for a long time, basically since 2008 when I soloed Moonlight Buttress. It seemed to represent an ideal challenge - a secure style of climbing, difficult but not really cutting edge, and a manageable size - something I could get my head around.

What I realized after introspection gained from visiting the various climbing areas is that the routes I remembered the most weren’t the hardest.  They were the moderate, long, and exposed routes that brought me directly to a beautiful summit.   Here is a list of three of the most enjoyable and classic routes I have done, where the lack of hard grades puts me at ease and I can just climb for the pure joy of it.

Over the last few years I have focused on establishing my own lines. The thrill of figuring out new moves on fresh rock is priceless. Knowing that you can be the first person to complete the line is very motivating.

I always was under the assumption that climbing first ascents was harder than doing a repeat, but little did I know how much harder it truly was.

On Lhotse's summit, on May 26, three of us jointly became what are believed to be the first climbers to summit three 8,000 meter peaks in three weeks...

Finals iso didn't even open until 2 in the afternoon so we spent the morning in our hotel. I  woke up just after 9 to get the complementary breakfast and had a few hours to kill before  needing to get to the gym. I figured what better way to kill some time than to play video  games, so I broke out my laptop and played Starcraft II for a few hours.

After long flights, I arrived on the bus in all the sunny glory that is lusted after in El Chalten. We rolled in on the evening of January first. The other climbers and I were totally stressed, ogling the sunny peaks, knowing our partners were climbing. I had been checking the weather multiple times a day already, and knew I was totally blowing it, showing up right in the middle of a perfect window.

The plan was to spend time in the Ticino region of Switzerland repeating classic boulder problems I’d seen in various videos. I was also hoping to potentially add a few new lines. As the days counted down to the start of the trip, I found myself obsessively checking the weather forecast for the region. A week before I was due to leave, the long-range forecast looked clear and I was psyched for a killer stretch of weather. Then things started to go wrong.

On my first trip to the desert my senses were dull and oversaturated by the convoluted style of city life. It would take quite a bit of time and awareness to fully appreciate the wonders of Southwest Utah. Over the next decade I gradually came to understand this foreign environment in all its majesty and to eventually call it home. It calls to me, drawing me ever nearer to the roots of my existence and the quiet within.

The weather was perfect. We landed on the glacier and the next morning we made a huge breakfast and packed for four days. We walked out on to the glacier. Mt. Tiedemann, 3838 m (12592 ft) one of the high peaks in British Columbia's Coast range. This became the object of Julia Niles and my desire a mere six days before standing before it.

Jen Olsen, Ines Papert and myself recently returned from Nepal with cold toes and a C+ grade in Alpinism.

Like the changing phases of the moon, everything in life waxes and wanes. While you will likely improve as a climber for many years to come, there will come a day when your physical skills begin to wane.

The void drops away beneath me for hundreds of feet, the wind teases my balance.  I shift my weight onto a rounded knob, look back at the giant arc of rope between Bridget and myself, and laugh.  This is no epic, if fact it’s the antithesis of epic. 

As I untied from the Birthday Party Wall I felt exuberant. The familiar sense of adrenaline soothed my body. I had missed this; my body and mind had been void of this feeling for far too long. It had gotten to the point where I couldn't even remember what it was I was missing, I just knew I didn't feel whole.

No elbowing our way through the teleferique line this morning. No cappuccino either, unless you count the packs of instant cappuccino from Nescafe we pump out on the bivy stove. It’s quiet and still, the glacier suspended in its own, slow time capsule in the frozen crust of spring’s early morning cold.

I climbed the Crucifix in Yosemite Valley, CA for the first time in the spring of 2009 with my good friend Jon Gleason. Even before we'd climbed it, the idea of soling it had crossed my mind. It's a natural step up from Astroman or the Rostrum: about the same size but slightly harder and more physical.

Most climbers would agree that the words “road trip” and “freedom” typically mean one in the same. I had never experienced the significance of this synonymous connection until I hit the road for six weeks on a trip to the Pacific Northwest.

In North America, most of today’s climbing youth approach the mountains with a degree of respect that borders on trepidation – first spending the obligatory seasons in Yosemite and Indian Creek, learning to ice climb in Colorado or New Hampshire before venturing into serious alpine terrain.   Not so Colin Haley.

Hi, Beth! Thanks for sitting down with me today to talk about what’s been going on lately. It’s probably news to some people that you’ve been on the Injured List for a while. What happened?

We returned to our winter hub in Hurricane, Utah for the third year in a row. I was psyched to have bought a new drill over Christmas and could not wait to use it. Doors opened to new cliffs, new routes went up, and the area’s growth was added to. The most empowering and satisfying endeavor I have been a part of in the last year has been putting up

You just put up one of the hardest if not the hardest boulder problem in the world! How long did it take to work it out?

I first saw Lauren Lee in a bouldering video on Climb-X Media when I started climbing in 2001. But it wasn’t until the summer of 2008, when we traveled for a month together in southern France for a Rock and Ice story on the Verdon Gorge—the grand canyon of Europe—that I got to see the other side of Lee outside of the limelight of the climbing “pro” media.

La Sportiva catches up with Pro Climbing Athlete Sean McColl to talk about the traveling climber's life and the World Cup circuit.

Gazing up from the base of this playground, a beautiful, blue streaked, French slab of limestone, I wonder how I could ever have hated the feel of natural rock on my hands. I look back to the years I began climbing and see the gangly gym rat who spent hours training in the gym with her Dad, never to see her effort pay off on the cliff.

Nobody wants to face the facts when it comes to an injury, but when I injured my knee last January in Hueco Tanks, Texas, I new I would be taking the entire spring season off. This is hard to take for anyone, let alone an athlete. We make a living with our bodies and in turn our bodies thrive off the activity. Coming to terms with that fact is only half the battle and not only will the body need mending, but the mind too.

Once you get off the airplane in Windhoek, going climbing in Namibia is easy; the people are friendly, the food great, and there is plenty of exploring and new routing to be done. Aside from the fact that your body will have atrophied by the time you get to the crag and your bags could be lost, Namibian granite is a perfect climbing destination.

When boulders seem to materialize out of farmland and prairie you know you’re not in Kansas anymore…  You have just entered into Southern Illinois...