Backcountry Beacon

The Hone Zone: Confessions of a Training Junkie

Andy Chapman — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:02:40 +0000

With the debauchery of the holidays over, you might feel that it’s time to repent and start training. A month of over-consumption and inactivity has left you feeling lost. Having strayed from the path, you look to the web for guidance. The Google leads to many websites, books, magazines, and blogs offering recipes for success. [...]

Shoulder Season Sending: Tips for climbing in the cold

Andy Chapman — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:05:11 +0000

Winter is imminent, but you still haven’t done your proj. Don’t despair. Cooler temps are actually quite conducive to “sending.” With a few tricks, you could turn that draw-recovery mission into a productive day of climbing. What to wear The first rule is to bring a lot of clothing for your single-pitch climbing or bouldering [...]

Destiny Manifested Part II: Gear for Peak Bagging

Andy Chapman — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:00:16 +0000

The conditions encountered on your average summer or autumn peak-bagging outing can vary considerably: one minute you are blasted by the sun, the next minute it’s hailing or even snowing. Relatively long walks or exposed scrambles mean that you want to bring just enough to deal with precipitation and temperature swings but not so much [...]

Destiny Manifested: Peak-Bagging Colorado’s 14ers

Andy Chapman — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 06:05:14 +0000

Sometimes the universe seems to conspire against you. My best efforts to have meaningful (or any) progress climbing this spring and summer have been consistently shat upon by the cosmos. After six months of setbacks, I was hardly surprised when my wife/climbing partner hurt her wrist a week before our planned road trip. Accepting that [...]

10 Tips: How to Make Swimming Part of Your Fitness Routine

Genevieve Mount — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:20:32 +0000

When things get a bit dull or a bit injury-focused in your fitness world, it’s good to get a change of pace. And what better than an infusion of refreshing wetness (swimming, that is)? The good news is that you don’t have to know how to execute a crisp flip-turn or a perfect butterfly stroke [...]

Alaska Gear Reviews: Oban 14-Year Scotch

Adam Riser — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:00:17 +0000

Since this will be the last gear review from my Alaska trip, I figured I should end with the one item that we got the most use out of. Some trips are cold, and good down jackets are really key. Other climbing trips have lots of steep ice and mixed terrain where the choice of [...]

Nice Rack II: Put Together Your Climbing Rack

Andy Chapman — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Part 2: Putting it all together Building a rack is an investment that is best viewed on a lifelong time frame. You’ll have to throw down on the front end, but aside from occasionally cleaning, re-lubing and re-slinging, cams will last many years. If you climb in The Desert or other cam intensive nitch crags [...]

Nice Rack: A Practical Guide to Cams

Andy Chapman — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Knee-deep in the gear room last June, I was confronted with a major dilemma: what rack to take for the summer? Heading mainly to Squamish and the Bugaboos in the Northwest, I realized that taking the entire arsenal would be overkill. A phone call to my friend Nate in Portland, Ore., quickly sorted things out. [...]

Alaska Gear Reviews: Primus Profile Duo Campground Stove

Adam Riser — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:14:34 +0000

My partner and I had an obscene amount of gear when we got off the plane and set foot on the glacier in Alaska. Among our several duffel bags, skis, and backpacks was a Primus Profile Duo Campground Stove and 10 large propane canisters. The rest of base camp must have thought we were nuts, [...]

Road Trip Essentials

Josh Barnes — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 06:05:00 +0000

The road trip is a time-honored American rite of passage. In fact, failing to embark on at least one road trip per summer basically means that you hate apple pie, fireworks, and babies. We recently embarked on a kickass weekend road trip and wanted to share our firsthand experience and a few time-tested tips on [...]