Climb long enough and you’ll have a close encounter ... or several. Mine was in 1986 at Arches National Monument, five minutes up the black- top north of Moab.

Lynn Hill and I spent the winter of 1981 in Las Vegas, climbing daily at Red Rocks and plowing through nights at dead-end jobs. After roughly 10 seasons of climbing 300 days a year, my learning curve had flattened and I found myself singing the same old song.

The gem state is full of diamonds

Mike Foley likes to draw, usually portraits, in charcoal. He spends anywhere from a couple of hours to a few days on a given drawing. “I like stuff that involves a lot of fine-detail work,” he says. “I’m pretty meticulous like that.” He also likes complex, “minute-detail” climbs.

Joe Josephson phoned with an interesting proposal: Fred Beckey had come to town for a reunion of Montana's Dirty Sox Club, a guild of Montana climbers from the 1960s through the 1980s.

If anyone has earned an honorary membership in a group named Dirty Sox it is Washington's Fred Beckey, sovereign of American DirtBag Climbers.

$49 | www.blackrockgear.com | 5 starsYOU LOSE UP TO 30 PERCENT of your body heat through you head. In short, if you are cold, wear a cap. I tested the...