The UIAA is the international driving force to get climbing into the Olympics, and influences the sport in other ways such as setting competition standards for anti-doping. It was with great interest, then, that I read the report, UIAA Policy on the Preservation of Natural Rock for Adventure Climbing, issued late last year. ...

I’ll never forget my first real gun, a seven-shot Ithaca .410 pump shotgun. It was a surprise Christmas present from Mack, my alcoholic grandfather who, in the 1950s, had murdered a black musician with a ball peen hammer when the guy rolled into Mack’s Paris, Texas gas station asking for a battery charge after hours. Apparently, the man had been rude. ...

If you ask climbers what our favorite part of climbing is, we would say solving problems. Well, we might actually say, “slaying the Gnar,” or “sending the chronicles of Gnarnia with advanced kneebar techgnarlogy,” or even just, “taking a dump on a route,” but we all mean the same thing, and that is we enjoy figuring out solutions to vertical challenges....

The tank top grew worn and faded while enduring numerous ropeless jaunts from Eldo to Yosemite. I like to picture Stevie’s screen-printed image high on the Redgarden wall, moviIn 1985, the legendary British free soloist Derek Hersey witnessed Stevie Ray Vaughan pour his soul into a beat up Fender Stratocaster. Stevie was at the height of his powers, having just cut his second studio album, Couldn’t Stand the Weather. Derek was pretty impressed, I assume, because on his way out, the thrifty Brit splurged and purchased an SRV-tour tank top. ...

"Oh no!" Randy thought, or so he'd tell us later, as he skied down from the top of Sunlight Mountain at dawn in storm. "Alison's going to kill me! I've lost the intern!" At Rock and Ice we usually have an intern around, writing and helping in different ways; and intern mortality and well-being are good things to be concerned about. ...

From my vantage beneath a steep bouldering wall at the Movement climbing gym, called by some “the best crag in Boulder,” I sat hypnotized by the sight of a tight little package, all hot with hair full of body and bounce, pumping an elliptical machine. I enjoyed this nice moment until the guy (jerk) next to her diverted my attention....

Klem Loskot talks about his return to the top of the game....

Bouldering was climbing's highest art form. Then it was regimented. Can the pure experience be reclaimed?...

Climbers are always “injured,” and we endure these perpetually compromised states with the grace of a World Cup soccer player writhing around on the ground like he was just stabbed in the groin with a fork. Fingers, elbows, shoulders, knees, ankles, skin, balls and brains—you can be sure that, among climbers, at least one of these things is either sore, torn or simply just not working.
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What’s the most impressive unclimbed line on an 8,000-meter peak? Before July 15 many climbers would have said it was the Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat (8,126-meters/26,660 feet). ...

It is not every day that someone’s “person” contacts me, and when a voice on the phone asked if I could take a call from Tony Scott, I at first did not know who he was. A director, she said. His films included Top Gun, The Crimson Tide and others. “He’s pretty famous,” she added, and trust me that she was being helpful and not snide....

“Hi Jeff, you don’t know me but my name is Wade Fairley. I’m an adventure photographer and I’ve secured some funding to climb a peak in Irian Jaya. Just to give you an idea, we want to climb a 2,000-foot limestone wall on Ngga Pulu, a sub-summit of Carstenz Pyramid."...

DURING A HOT summer day, while climbing with my friend Dan, I took off my shirt. Sorry, it happens. The muzzle-loading firearm that is my pallid skin shot a round of the sun's white-hot reflection at everyone within range. There was an instant massacre of eyeballs and appetites....

You can run, but you can't hide...

On The Road A Desperate Search for Climbing's Soul The Greatest Feeling in the World?...

The scorched desert expanse surrounding Las Vegas smears together into one terrible brown color as Chris Sharma, Dalia Ojeda, Miguel and I whiz along at 90 miles per hour in an old Jeep Grand Cherokee. The American West, this celebrated frontier, as tame as it has become with commercialism and super highways, is still the last good place I know of for real adventure....