Being an Ice Climbing Dirtbag at Lee Vining
Last week I took the opportunity to go ice climbing with SMC at Lee Vining under the wing of the great Darren Shutt (SMC founder and great guy). I ended up climbing for three days, leading a WI3+ pitch...
View ArticleAlpine Touring on Mt. Morrison
I happened upon the Convict Lake area on my birthday backpacking trip up to Mt. Baldwin in 2016. The area is an amazing Eastern Sierra setting with two notable peaks (Morrison and Laurel) within a mile...
View ArticleA Moderate Climber’s Desert Tower Ticklist
A few weeks back I visited Moab with the goal in mind to climb desert towers, accomplishing a dream of Sadie’s for her birthday. The Falcon Guide had some of the most popular climbs, but if I bought a...
View ArticleClimbing my First Big Wall with a Fractured Foot
Washington Column South Face (5.8 C1) is a 1000 ft granite face across Yosemite Valley from Half Dome. It is the easiest big wall climb in the valley and therefore the busiest. Optimistically, we were...
View ArticleGear Review: Yakima Skyrise Car Top Tent (2 person)
The Yakima Skyrise is the first car top tent from Yakima. After owning one for a couple months, I have slept in this car top tent now for 20+ nights in desert campsites, county campgrounds, snowy...
View ArticleThe Best Backcountry Food
“What food should I take into the backcountry?” is a frequent question among novice backpackers. Us frequent backcountry travelers often get into a funk of the same foods that work for us, but still...
View ArticleFind the Best Areas to Climb with ‘Where to Climb’
Backcountry Nomad just published its second app: Where to Climb (App Store). ‘Where to Climb’ answers that common question ‘where can I go climbing this weekend?’. It’s happened to us all where a...
View ArticleRunning Rivers and Colca Canyon Hot Springs in Arequepa
This week I’m going to talk about my time in Southern Peru last September where I ran a fourth class river and soaked in hot springs at the bottom of one of the deepest canyons in the world. Arequepa...
View ArticleCostumed Sailing in the British Virgin Islands
A soft sun rises over a gentle ocean, silhouetting several large puffy clouds. The light is diffused by a light haze of Sahara blown sand as I wake up in the sail bag of a 50 ft catamaran. My eyes...
View ArticleWork With Us
Contact me to support our adventure and help build our outdoor communities. Over the rest of 2017 Sadie Skiles and I (Brice Pollock) will be taking half a dozen pairs of bright leggings, a sunshine...
View ArticleThunder, Rock and Ice on the East Buttress of Mt. Whitney
I was flying down an icy, personal sized halfpipe with walls reaching up to three feet wrapped around me in the darkness of a moonless night. A few lights in the distance softly glowed from the town of...
View ArticleHow to Deal with Injury as a High-Performance Athlete
Guest Post by Noam Argov I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve been a serious athlete since I was 5. A gymnast from a family of gymnasts, I was practicing 6 days a week for 5 hours a day at the peak of my...
View ArticleThe Easiest Place to Camp in Yosemite is 1400 ft Up a Wall
Here I was, sleeping 1400 ft above the valley floor on a forested ledge. Drinking unfiltered, fresh water directly out of a granite spring. Not a soul around except for a midnight food attack by a...
View ArticleSix Strenuous Days Climbing Deep in the Cirque of the Towers
50 mosquitos swarm the car, waiting to sadistically assault me in vampiric fashion as I stop the Subaru at Big Sandy trailhead. They know no limits. I would get a dozen bites at 11,500 ft on the side...
View ArticleI Will Never Climb Brewer’s Buttress Again
A reasonable person only needs one reason not to do something again, “I didn’t like it”. I know I can be unreasonable, so I have eight: chossy rock, leader fall, lightning storm, lost hikers, hail,...
View ArticleClimbing Takakkaw Falls: The Most Special Place
A spray of cool water settles across my face as I lean against my climbing rope to get a better look at the billowing, glacier-fed waterfall next to me. Despite being nearly impossible to pronounce,...
View ArticleHigher than Three Half Domes: Mount Sir Donald
On Mount Sir Donald’s Northwest Ridge (5.4), I accomplished my first car-car summit, my first ~7,000 ft day and set a new record for my longest ever rock climb (2,400 ft). I barely stopped moving...
View ArticleIntoxicated Climbing on the North Shore of Minnesota
Staring down at the cover of climbing magazine I was intoxicated. A snaking shoreline in the distance. A couple feet of dark gray rock exposed from the vast, pristine, clear and fresh water. The rock...
View Article10 Things I Won’t Bring Next Time to the Bugaboos
Guest Post by Ryan George “The Bugaboos is a magical alpine playground of wild weather, pristine wilderness and towering granite spires…” – Atkinson and Piche, The Bugaboos guidebook I truly believe...
View ArticleMonster Movie Mosquitos over 26 miles of Canoeing the BWCAW
Let me take you to a place where there are more fish than people, where every campsite has a lakeside view and a swarm of mosquitos takes on a whole new meaning. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area...
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