Tag: trad

The uninitiated, those who don’t climb, always ask me why I do. I normally begin my response with the statement…

“There were no girls when I started climbing [in England],” Alan said, in a tone more serious than joking. I’d…

“You know there’s something special you’re needing. And you know there’s no drug that’ll do the healing, and no liquor…

The granite escarpments of Castle Crags silhouetted the western skyway, massive gargoyles hunched and staring. I thought of my mother’s…

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Goerte I…

Doug Tompkins opens the door to a South American summer evening. At seventy-one—stooped and shuffling, a button-down shirt tucked into…

Pulling into The Chief campground in Squamish for my first time, I had to double-check the sign to make sure…

My path as a climber had to face a most real enemy: pure unadulterated fear. This fear manifested itself in…

Awake. Alone. It’s 3 am. Only two more hours to sleep, the clock is ticking. The world is silent. Maybe…

Right now, this detail is all that matters: the carabiner just fell back into the crack, and you’re staring it…

After a decade of writing, and re-writing, my memoir, American Climber is finally complete. It is a 75,000 word tale…

I am sitting in front of my computer, doing what I do to make my pennies, but in a few…

“What about you, Georgie? Are you a feminist?” I was sitting around a campfire with a group of friends. I…

The story of climbing in Yosemite is one that is well known and well told, and at times it seems…

Books often inspire me more than the imagery or dialogue in a movie and I think it has to do…