My left hand cups a full undercling while my right shades the sun from my eyes. Above me, the short arete curves out of sight, my insecurity about balancing on sloping sandstone in the full sun causes me to hesitate. Climbing to the right is objectively more dangerous. I’d be farther from my last protection.…
The Factory Bouldering Gym in Orange, California, was by no means small, but it felt small that day. In addition to us thirty-one routesetters, there were about thirty or so people that were siphoning in for their late-afternoon sessions. The judges had just passed out our results and were preparing to announce the winners and…
“If you just stop for a second, I can show you there’s no road out there!” Ben said. “I know there’s a road there; we drove it a couple years ago!” I fired back. We hadn’t even started an ordeal that would surely drive us to our wits’ ends, and we were already lost and…