CRACK! The jolt back onto the bolt, into which you are still quickdraw-tethered, stuns you. You only fell two feet, but your neck is stiff and your innards feel like they’ve been kicked by a mule.

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.

New England’s Meanest Winter Streak

Francesca Metcalf sits on her bedroom floor for over an hour, fixated, clicking and forming the top layer of a Rubik’s Cube. A few days later she wakes up and finds the Rubik’s Cube in her bed. “It’s a little sad,” the Boston-area climber, who turned 18 in March, says, “how much time I’ve put into it.”

Where are all the dirtbags? I'm not talking about these imposter dirtbags, the new-age lurkers taking up all the parking spots at Camp 4, Indian Creek and Miguel's Pizza with their pimped-out, Direct TV-receiving Sprinter vans that look like college dorm rooms on 26s.

Yates/Bluewater Slimline EliteSlimline: $215 for 60-meter dryMy friend James, an Alaskan native who flips trucks like pancakes, dragged me out to Utah...