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.

The never-ending pursuit of new routes, fame and glory.

They say that good things come in small packages, but the Dolomites of northern Italy are great things in a very big package.

Fast Times with Micah Dash.

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.

The GoPro is a near-perfect pocket-sized video camera that shoots surprisingly great 1080p high def, and takes nifty wide-angle photos at a respectable 5 megapixels. The camera itself runs on a rechargeable battery (just plug it into your computer) and lasts about a day.