Alpine Climbing

2020 Climbing Goals: Here are my ideas so far for some goals for the year. They will likely become more specific over the course of the year: General Redpoint 15 Traditional 5.10 (5 >= .10c | 5 multipitch): The Fracture (5.10d) South Tahoe, CA redpoint Cut Loose (5.10d) Red Rock Canyon, NV redpoint Touch of […]

After several years of snowboarding in the backcountry I knew my old, baggy snowboarding pants weren’t cutting it anymore. They were heavy and the insulation was built in so I had no temperature control. If I was in deep powder, snow would get up my back and down my pants. It was miserable. Because I […]

2019 Goals: For 2019, I’m guessing that this post will morph and evolve over the next six months as I sort of reshape my goals for the year. For now, I would like to just kind of spit out some ideas that are starting to form in my head and fill in the gaps throughout […]

Every year, I try to set up a list of achievable climbing goals that will help me focus on improving the areas where I am the weakest. In 2018, my main focus was pushing grades. I focused on number grades as a benchmark for where I wanted to be as a climber. I didn’t quite […]

In the summer of last year (2017), we attempted the Direct North Ridge on Mount Stuart, but retreated once we reached the notch about 1,500ft up the route. Storm clouds had completely covered the peak above, and without sufficient rain gear, we were afraid we would become hypothermic if we got wet. We figured our […]

For some reason, we thought it would be fun to drive down to Moab and give the classic route Fine jade (.11a | 5 pitches) a try. It is a route that is a bit beyond our climbing ability, but we figured that we could just aid through any tough spots on the route. We […]

We began our hike in around 4:00am and made our way to the base of the direct start of the Ellingwood Arete. With two teams of two, Martin and Brent started up the first, 5.5/5.6 pitch while Kim and I waited restlessly to begin. Kim and I started climbing once Brent had made some progress […]

Lone Peak Cirque is one of the most amazing places that the Wasatch has to offer in terms of scenery and awesome, high quality granite climbing. The hike is steep and grueling, but once you enter the meadow at the top of Jacob’s Ladder, the cirque comes into view and the steep hiking is behind […]

Castleton Tower is an iconic climbing destination for trad climbers all over the world. With two routes on it rated in the 5.9 range, it makes it one of the first towers that many climbers do. Because if this, the tower is popular and there are generally multiple parties on every route. We chose to […]

A few weeks ago, my friend Kirk and I were trying to decide on an adventure. Being from Salt Lake, we had plans to go to Yosemite, but ended up not working out for the timeframe that we wanted. We did have a couple days to make something happen, so the Elephant’s Perch stood out […]