How we researched this story: To develop this list of essentials, we interviewed professional mountain guides and also consulted a classic tome on climbing skills: Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills, now in its 10th edition.  

What climbers need to know: Before heading up a multi-pitch climb, an alpine ascent, a ridge scramble, or other remote objective, climbers should consult this list to fill their pack with the essentials that could end up saving their lives if things go awry and they don’t make it back to the tent or car by nightfall. 

Suffer bivy, shiver bivy, getting benighted—whatever you call it, an unplanned night on the wall or in the mountains is survivable with the right equipment. Everyone knows that packing certain essentials is a good idea, but most climbers still don’t actually pack them. It’s easy to get lax about loading things you hope not to use. But would you cancel your car insurance just because you haven’t had an accident yet?

We consulted professional mountain guides as well as the venerable Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills to create this checklist for what you need to cover your ass if your perfect day in the alpine or on the wall goes awry. This list assumes you are climbing somewhere with a lengthy approach—as opposed to a day of bouldering 10 minutes from the car—and packing all gear required for that climb. We particularly recommend bringing these essentials on every multi-pitch climb, for routes in remote areas, and on alpine objectives.

11 essentials to survive a suffer bivy

1. Insulation

You may stay warm climbing in a baselayer, but what happens when you stop to belay or wait out rain? Pack extra layers, including a synthetic puffy.

2. First aid supplies

Pack a kit specific for the trip and group size. At minimum, you’ll need a means of stopping blood and controlling pain and any personal prescription meds. Most other things you can improvise. Pack a whistle to signal searchers or other climbers. Also, consider a Wilderness First Responder certification.

3. Repair kit and tools

The potential uses for a knife or multi-tool and duct tape are endless. Add any equipment you can’t improvise to repair specialized gear, such as bailing wire for a busted crampon strap or binding.

4. Nutrition

Stash a calorie-dense meager ration to get you through at least one extra day, as well as an energy drink mix to replace electrolytes.

5. Illumination

A headlamp with fresh batteries is mandatory. Extra batteries are even better.

6. Fire

If you’re benighted in an area with wood, your warmth (and mental outlook) will improve greatly with a fire. It’s also an effective signaling tool. Bring a lighter or matches and tinder.

7. Hydration

In most alpine environments, you can replenish water from snow or runoff. Pack at least one bottle. Adding filtration to your kit is also a smart move so you don’t end up severely dehydrated and borderline delusional.

8. Emergency shelter

It’s easier to stay warm than to get warm, and to stay dry than to get dry. Bring a bivy sack or a tarp and a way to rig it. Emergency blankets are unreliable.

9. Sun protection

Sunburn can end a climb just as easily as a broken ankle. Climbing at altitude or crossing a glacier presents greater exposure to the sun’s radiation than bouldering beneath a canopy of 150-foot-tall trees. Plan for the worst-case scenario for the climate. Pack sunscreen, lip balm, and sunglasses with SPF/UV protection.

10. Navigation

Pinpoint key landmarks of the approach on a map (e.g., lake at the climb’s base, creek crossings, the summit, where the climber trail meets the official trail, etc.). Then plug their coordinates into a GPS (more accurate and reliable in the backcountry than a smartphone). Don’t forget extra batteries and a compass. It helps to practice GPS, map, and compass use first on a low-risk ascent.

11. Satellite communication device

Whether you just need to ping your loved ones to tell them you’re okay, or you end up needing to call for a rescue, satellite radios like a Garmin InReach or Rocky Talkies could end up saving your life.

This article, updated in 2026, originally appeared in Climbing in 2013, but it’s still full of good advice about how to stay safe in the alpine.

The post Want to Survive an Unplanned Bivy? Always Carry These 11 Essentials. appeared first on Climbing.

It was early spring 1986, Camp Four parking lot, Yosemite Valley.

“So what have you got in mind, Bob?” I asked my friend, who’d just showed up in the Valley.

In his usual soft voice—his sentences tend to trail off at their ends—Bob said, “I want to try soloing The Prow.”

Fresh in my mind was the memory of a recent rescue on The Prow (V 5.10a A3), a classic aid line on the east face of Washington Column. During that rescue, I had been given the honor of lowering down to the climbers, one of whom happened to be a good friend, then jumaring back up with them.

I gave Bob a sideways look. In my two-and-a-half-year tenure as a member of the Yosemite Search and Rescue team, I had been involved with dozens of lift-offs. So I was both smug and quick to dole out patronizing advice. “Just don’t get rescued,” I said flatly.

Bob looked nonplussed, but before he had time to think, asked, “Why?” Because, I thought, rescues are serious undertakings. Getting rescued doesn’t do a thing for your reputation with the Valley denizens, much of whose inner language centers around such events. “Rescue bait,” they call certain less-promising big wall climbers. All I said was, “I don’t know, that’s just the way it is around here.”

A winter attempt on a face known for failure

Several weeks later, two of my rescue-team friends and I would start up the South Face of Half Dome, intending to make a winter ascent.

The South Face of Half Dome, one of Warren Harding’s finest masterpieces, is a 2,000-foot wall. Its upper half is a blank sea of white granite, void of any apparent climbable features. Remote and beautiful, the route has a history of failures. Though Walt Shipley’s extraordinary solo ascent two years ago and the nearby free line put up recently by Dave Schultz and Scott Cosgrove seem to have tamed the wall’s fearsome reputation.

On the 1968 first-ascent attempt, Warren Harding and Galen Rowell were trapped by a severe storm for several days and had to be rescued, which in itself was a pioneering event in technical extrication. At that time, big wall rescue technique was still in its infancy. (The rescue was documented in The Vertical World of Yosemite.)

Other parties had faltered as well, for reasons ranging from lack of proper hooking gear to debilitating heat, often necessitating retreat. In several cases, friends on the summit have lowered ropes, gear, and provisions to stranded or stalled climbers.

In fact, the South Face had hosted more failures than successes when my eventual partners, two Yosemite regulars, Mike Corbett and Steve Bosque, decided to go for a winter ascent. The season had been extremely mild—some called it a drought winter—so the venture seemed very feasible.

Yet from the onset of preparation, as the two made multiple six-mile uphill plods to Half Dome’s base, then fixed several pitches, they experienced setbacks. In one storm, snow sloughed down the face into a 30-foot pile on the ground, forcing Steve and Mike to spend an entire day digging out their gear. Then it took another month before the long-term weather report looked good.

Committing to my 40th Yosemite big wall

Two climbers usually make for the most efficient wall team, but Mike and Steve, sharing a feeling of burnout, asked me to join them. Mike and I had done a few big walls together in the past, and I always found myself charged up by his undying affinity for them. Steve’s deliberate and understated approach to such adventures, which he would regularly squeeze in between periods of raising a family and working full time, always impressed me. I was really excited about our team and the chosen route. This would represent my 40th long route of 1,000-plus feet in Yosemite. 

Shunning the more intelligent option of packing two separate loads to the base, I carried all my gear in a single towering 100-plus pound haul bag, while Steve and Mike carried their light final assault loads. By the time we got up the Vernal Falls switchbacks—only two miles into the eight-mile approach—I was staggering every step. The one-shot technique works well for El Cap, where the torment of the approach awaits five minutes after you step out of your car. But this was one long, steep uphill plod. Mike and Steve periodically tried to persuade me to off some weight onto them. With too much pride in self-sufficiency, I refused. Thirty-one thousand staggers later, the grueling approach ended.

That night, it sprinkled on us, but the next day we climbed in beautiful sunny weather. The first two days took us to the end of the Arch, a huge left-facing dihedral soaring halfway up the wall, and onto the Face, a thousand feet of 75- to 80-degree featured rock with very few cracks.

The eighth pitch, which we named “The Great Escape Hatch,” was a contortionist’s dream: a gaping Bombay chimney, awkward as hell, like an aid version of the Harding Slot on Astroman. After that pitch, I told Mike, “You know, regardless of a wall’s actual rating, every route seems to require the sum total of my aid experience.” Mike understood exactly.

The third day, in T-shirts, we climbed five of the 11 remaining pitches. I eyeballed each for its free-climbing potential, realizing that we just might have discovered the most awesome free-climbable face in the Valley. I free climbed between some bat-hooking sections on my leads just to try it out. (Bat-hooking—placing specially designed hooks in shallow drilled holes—is a technique invented by Harding in order to surmount blank sections of rock.)

Up to this point, the climbing and setting had been awesome. We often commented on what an ultimate gem of a route this was. We were having a great time.

The energy of desperation and a historic storm

The day’s fourth pitch took us to one of the Tri-Clops, three large, shallow, dark indentations in the rock. From the ground, they look like caves and, with some imagination, passageways into the depths of Half Dome. This evil-looking place had been Harding and Rowell’s demise; the energy of their desperation seemed to linger. Though dusk was fast approaching, Mike had an uneasy sixth sense about the spot and decided to go for the next pitch, a steep bat-hooking stretch. The pitch ended on The Ledge, which on the topo looked like a potentially good bivy.

Darkness set in midway through Mike’s lead. Then came the frightening clanging of gear and yank on the belay rope.

Dead silence.

“Hey Mike, you OK?” Silence. “Hey, Corbett!”

Steve and I flashed headlamps upward but all we could see was the rope disappearing into the darkness. We found the explanation above. Mike had popped a bat-hook and taken a 20- or 30-foot fall, fracturing his finger in an attempt to grab the previous bat-hook. But a broken finger barely slows down a guy like Mike, and he finished the lead. We set up the bivy in darkness at The Ledge, which turned out to be nothing more than a small six-inch stance formed by a protruding flake. 

Sometime in the early hours of Friday morning, clouds moved in and a light rain prompted us to dig out our portaledge rainflies. Little did we know, it was the start of one of Yosemite’s worst storms ever. At dawn it was still pattering steadily. Mike suggested a general rest day, and Steve and I agreed. But instead of clearing, which our little box radio had promised, the weather became worse. We braced ourselves for a storm. Later, when the completeness of the radio’s lie became evident, I would jettison it, as a symbolic gesture of our isolation.

Dumped into the void

On Friday evening, the rain became a torrent and the winds picked up. Sometime that night, Steve’s ledge collapsed. In the minutes it took him to reconstruct it, he got completely soaked. From the relative comfort of my slightly damp ledge, I listened to his struggling and cursing and felt sorry for him. But there was nothing I could do, aside from lending him my headlamp, since an exit from the ledge for even a minute meant complete saturation. It’s funny about Steve; even when he has good reason to curse, he does so only as if playing a part. No semblance of actual anger exists in his tone. He is always like that.

Hours later, I felt my ledge’s suspension straps begin to slip due to the wet and icy conditions. I knew what was happening: slowly, my ledge was twisting, one outside corner sliding down, and the other twisting up. It was as if it were trying to dump me out into the void. Any movement accelerated the slippage, but in the dark I could not see what to do to fix it.

Trying not even to breathe, I cried, “Steve, I need my headlamp back, NOW!” (In the adverse conditions my headlamp, a Petzl Zoom, became our only functioning piece of gear—and a coveted item.) But in the tangle of his nearly destroyed portaledge, Steve was forced into stillness. Even the slightest wiggle caused his ledge’s suspension to slip, then the ledge to fall apart. By this time, it had collapsed several times. He tried to extend the headlamp to me, but to no avail.

So I tried to re-tension the suspension without light. My movement caused the structure to slip completely. The end-tubes dropped out of their shallow side pockets, leaving me hanging in space among an untenable assortment of tubing and fabric. Instantly, everything became soaked, as if I had jumped into the Merced River in full regalia—except colder. From the haul bag, I dug out my spare wool clothes and rain gear, but in the deluge they were soon drenched, too. A foot-thick sheet of water poured down from the moderately angled face above. Rain pelted us, driven sideways by the high winds. I finally retrieved my headlamp. With a mixture of determination and resignation, I took my time reassembling the ledge. I couldn’t get any wetter. 

In the end, the failing portaledges didn’t matter. By morning, all of us were soaked to the bone. Seemingly by osmosis, moisture poured through my “waterproof” ripstop rain fly. The waterproof coating mysteriously fell off the fabric in large cobweb-like stick sheets, creating another mini-storm inside.

Likely nightmares

By 10 a.m. Saturday, the winds blew over 50 miles per hour, with gusts throwing us and the ledges about. Visibility was nil. Then the temperature dropped, the rain turned to icy BBs, and our soaked gear began to freeze solid.

“We’re gonna die in these conditions,” Steve said. “We’ve got to at least try to get out of here!” We exited our ledges and inspected each other and our gear. Instantly, fingers and toes went completely numb, and the wind and cold penetrated to the bone.

With uncanny foresight, Mike had insisted on leaving a rope fixed over the otherwise-irreversible roof below the eighth pitch. Still, that was five rappels down and several hundred feet to the left. As we discussed our situation, we noticed that the ropes in front of us were frozen to the wall in solid tangles, and would need to be chopped out with an ice tool. We quickly realized that retrieving even a short length of usable rope would be impossible.

Even if we could have, our jumars would never have grabbed on the frozen cord. And the ice-covered wall would have thwarted any effort to swing sideways to belay anchors. And a near-certain hang-up in the rappels would have resulted in a fatal separation from each other. Drilling our own anchors was out of the question—that would require far more manual dexterity than our frozen fingers could provide. In the back of my mind, I remembered how miserably Rowell fared in 1968 while attempting to rappel in similar conditions from just 100 feet below our position.

All sorts of potential and likely nightmares crossed my mind, each ending with three bodies frozen to the wall. I was the first to disappear back into my portaledge.

We remained as a team, huddled in place, waiting.

Worse than the flames of hell

All Saturday, the storm beat us in a deafening roar of flapping nylon and typhoon winds. I realized how much my entire life depended on my lightweight rain fly. Violently whipping, it seemed ready to rip to shreds any minute. Earlier, Steve’s fly had been torn apart. Critical corner parts of his ledge were mangled into scrap metal, rendering it useless. He was now sharing Mike’s portaledge. If either of our two remaining ledges or flies failed, somebody was bound to die from exposure.

In the meantime, unbeknownst to us, a rescue effort was underway down below. In the deepening snow, Werner Braun, Dan McDiver, Sue Bonovich, and Tracy Dorton had hiked up the five miles to Lost Lake, from which they could get the Valley’s closest view of the South Face, and were trying to communicate with us through a bullhorn.

In one of the infrequent lulls in the storm, we suddenly became alert, hearing muffled noise. Instinctively, we broke out in loud shouts to expose our position. We were able to distinguish from below, “Do you need a rescue?” We looked at each other, quickly decided that we were in dire straits, and yelled in unison for help until we were hoarse. We couldn’t see who we were calling to.

Like turtles, we then retracted back into our shelters. As the hours passed, the initial hope and excitement of possible help dwindled. We replaced it with a renewed concentration on survival. We knew the top of Half Dome would be inaccessible: the hiking-route cables were buried and frozen over, and the storm would prohibit climbing to the top. The uncertainty of our fate made our exhausting, freezing misery that much harder. Right now, the flames of hell didn’t seem so bad.

Inside my ledge, I made constant efforts to keep the snow from completely burying me. Huge water-saturated snow piles rose in moments. I used all my strength to push them off one end of the ledge, then notice that at the other end, snow was piling up fast. A minute of inactivity and the weight of the snow would begin to crush me, tearing the fly apart at the seams, and become almost too heavy to push off. This went on for hours. Because of the angle of the wall above, and the distance in which the snow could accumulate and slide down, the snow was essentially coming down at the rate of several feet per minute.

Toward dusk, exhausted by my vigilant efforts, I dozed off, though I knew I was on the verge of hypothermia. It was pleasant. But then, suddenly, I was in a boxing ring, packed full of every variety of boxer and pro wrestler imaginable. Each mistook me for his training bag before a big fight. One of them tried to crunch my skull when I snapped awake. Steve was stepping on my head.

Mike and Steve, seeing that my ledge had become completely buried by snow, had yelled for me with no response. They thought that maybe I had died. Unable to see even where my ledge hung, Steve had kicked steps in the frozen layer of snow and ice across the near-vertical wall to investigate. In my stupor, and because of the dampening effect of the thick snow cover, no sounds had penetrated—only his foot. “Glad to see you’re all right, old buddy,” he said before returning to his and Mike’s hovel. 

It was dusk, but sleep, I realized, would be fatal. I tried to keep my mind busy. I thought about new portaledge designs, and shook my head, legs, and hands rapidly for warmth in my cramped quarters, by now reduced to the size of a small doghouse. In sets of 100, I counted to 22,000, twitching with each count. 

Eventually, I told myself that many hours must have passed since darkness fell. I looked at my watch. It was 10 p.m.

Steve and Mike, with the marginal benefit of ensolite and double boots, sat on a single portaledge, one fly draped over their heads, beating on each other for warmth and to prevent sleep.

It occurred to me that we were experiencing some of the worst storm conditions to be found anywhere. If the route was steeper, things might have been okay. If the winds weren’t accelerated by Little Yosemite Valley’s venturi effect, things would have been so bad. But mostly, if the temperatures had remained either above or below freezing, we would have been sitting pretty—relatively—either in a wet rainstorm or a blizzard.

Then came the avalanches

Sometime in the early hours of Sunday morning, the storm faded and the stars appeared. The absence of the deafening wind seemed strange and eerie. Steve and Mike were the first to broad the potent silence. We briefly discussed first-light retreat plans. It soon became apparent that the clearing storm was a mixed blessing. Radiation heat loss into the clear sky sucked the last bit of heat from our bodies. The most bitter of bitter cold prevailed. We struggled through each remaining moment of a long night.

In the morning, the sun finally appeared. The comparative warmth stunned us into passiveness for a while. We basked in the above-freezing temperatures and procrastinated for a few blissful moments. But we could see another storm approaching in the distance, so we started hacking out the ropes and made ready for what would be a horrendous descent. We were all functioning slowly and clumsily but thought we could probably make it down alive. Not a bit of rock was visible; the entire wall was covered with a four-inch layer of ice. 

Then came the avalanches. As the sun warmed the loosely attached stratum, hundreds of pounds of softball-sized chunks of ice began to crash down on us. Mike and Steve had helmets, while I stuffed soggy socks in my Peruvian hat for protection. Under one barrage, Mike’s suddenly plummeted several feet, when the bolt supporting his ledge popped. Luckily, the anchors at each side held. From above, Steve and I stared for a few moments at a wide-eyed Mike, still standing upright in his ledge. Wordlessly, except for a few “Hoo-mans,” we resumed our descent preparations.

Salvation

The ropes were still only partially cut out of the ice when we heard it: the whop-whop-whop of a helicopter. An emotional wave swept through us. In silent disbelief, we watched the chopper pass and fly almost out of sight. “I sure hope that’s for us,” I thought. Then it returned, and amidst continued avalanches, locked into place hovering 100 feet above us. An angel in a pilot’s suit lowered out—Petty Officer Davis from the nearby LeMoore Naval Air Station. We were saved.

Mike volunteered for the first ride, and was hooped under his armpits with a “horse collar” and lifted off. Steve and I watched Mike and Officer Davis dangle from the helicopter as it disappeared down the valley. We tossed some haul bags and sleeping bags and endured more avalanches.

Eventually the helicopter returned, picked up Steve, and took off again. Ten years ago, helicopters that could lock into a stationary flight pattern so close to a cliff didn’t exist. Despite technological advances, I was amazed at the pilot’s ability to counter every gust of wind. The spinning rotor blades sometimes came within a few yards of the cliff. The wind whipped up again, and it seemed like the pilot had a more difficult time locking in place for Steve’s hoist. Fearing the worst, I imagined being stranded on the wall alone, bivy gear tossed.

….he stopped right in front of me. I grabbed his outstretched hand, slipped into the “horse collar,” unclipped from the belay, and went for the ride of my life.

After what seemed like ages, the helicopter returned, but it took a couple of tries for the pilot to lock into place. Officer Davis, dangling 100 feet below the machine, darted to and fro just out of my reach, signaling to the pilot for positioning. Then, with a thumb’s up signal to the pilot, he stopped right in front of me. I grabbed his outstretched hand, slipped into the “horse collar,” unclipped from the belay, and went for the ride of my life.

As we flew toward the valley, dazed by the view, I didn’t notice that we were being winched up. Unexpectedly, the helicopter was directly above us, and I clambered into the cabin.

A huge crowd and several other helicopters greeted us in the Ahwahnee Meadow. The extent of the rescue effort astounded me, with over 30 people involved (many of whom had hiked all night in waist-deep snow and were still near the base of the Half Dome cables). Four helicopters remained ready to go. A sudden feeling of overwhelming gratitude intoxicated me. The LeMoore Station and the Yosemite Rescue Team had coordinated the effort admirably. It was thanks to them that we were all alive.

I stepped out of the helicopter and my legs buckled; I hadn’t walked for a week. I staggered toward my friends, Jim and Tory, who whisked me away, barely escaping the pouncing paramedics. They took care of me in Jim’s warm house, where I shivered uncontrollably for several hours. Meanwhile, over at the Yosemite Clinic, the medics poked and prodded Mike, giving him IVs and warm oxygen, and a splint for his finger.

At Jim’s, I mindlessly leafed through the Sunday newspaper. I became entranced by a particular photo in it, nothing registering at first. Then I realized I was looking at a picture of Warren Harding in 1970 standing on The Ledge. He seemed to be smiling at me. Coincidentally, the newspaper had done a feature article about the South Face the same day we were fighting for our lives on it.

Later that evening, an unidentified feeling gnawed inside me. The transition from one reality to another made both seem unreal. I realized that all my instincts insisted that I return to a soaked sleeping bag. I would shiver, stay awake, and generally fight for my life. It seemed we had been up on Half Dome for a lifetime, and I had developed a routine for staying alive that I could not shake.

Instead, I hobbled back to my dry VW van, pulled out a dry sleeping bag, cranked up the propane heater, and passed out—not to stand in etriers on a big wall again until the fall of 1989.

During his epic-induced, big-wall hiatus, John Middendorf focused on getting his climbing supply business, A5 Adventures, off the ground (it was acquired by The North Face in 1996). One thing he has worked hard to improve was portaledge technology. After regaining his psych, Middendorf and Valley local Walt Shipley completed a difficult new route on the Northwest face of Half Dome, Kali Yuga (VI 5.10 AV). 

This classic feature first appeared in Climbing’s 120th issue, released during the summer of 1990, under the title “A Turn of the Cards.”

Related:

• Remembering John Middendorf—A Legend On and Off the Wall
• Remembering Mike Corbett

The post Was This Yosemite’s Most Miserable Shiver Bivy? appeared first on Climbing.

Many climbers use a rubric to help build solid anchors. Guides and books often talk about SERENE (Secure/Solid, Efficient, Redundant, Equalized with No Extension) and ERNEST (Equalized, Redundant, No Extension, Secure/Solid, Timely). However, while useful as guidelines, these acronyms could stand to go deeper into the strength side of the discussion. That’s where the 12-Point Anchor Rubric comes in: It assigns a point value to each piece and aims for a minimum total score of 12. With a baseline strength ascertained, you can then focus on the SERENE/ERNEST side of the equation.

Over the last two decades, I’ve taught hundreds of climbers how to lead traditional climbs. This can be a nerve-wracking process, as new leaders often place poor protection. They need solid guidance as to what is good and what is bad. Weak pieces and an inability to evaluate the strength of a given piece can lead to weak anchors. And of course, weak anchors can lead to catastrophe.

Years ago, I discovered a paragraph in an old NOLS climbing-instructor manual concerning the 12-point system. It said this rubric was something that a few instructors had used in the past, but that it never gained popularity. I began to experiment with the system in my instructing and found that students could easily latch onto the rubric to build effective anchors. Students need simplicity. They need something they can understand. And, most importantly, they need something to keep them safe when they are on their own. The 12-point system allows for all of that.

Many instructors teach new leaders that an anchor should be composed of three good pieces. There is certainly value in this as a guideline. However, the problem with this is that students sometimes forget the “good” part of the three-piece anchor equation. A three-piece anchor is totally inadequate if the individual components are unreliable.

The 12-point concept both supports and undercuts the three-piece anchor standard. It supports it by saying that if you can get three four-point pieces, for a total of 12 points, then you have a solid anchor. However, it undercuts it by saying that some pieces might not actually be valued at 4 points, meaning you’ll have to be ready to improvise.

There are three additional considerations for new leaders to consider: 1) The individual pieces within an anchor must be good. In other words, they have to be placed appropriately to achieve their full point status (cams are not under- or over-cammed, cam lobes have appropriate contact, wired nuts are slotted with good surface contact, etc.). 2) The rock must be reliable—consider its density and overall strength (granite tends to be stronger than sandstone, etc.). And, 3) due to weird rock, flaring cracks, or a lack of pieces that fit properly, you may not be able to build a 12-point anchor with three pieces. The rock may force you to use four, five, or even six pieces to achieve your objective.

Meanwhile, in the alpine, it may be impossible or too inefficient to build a 12-point anchor. For example, the terrain might force you to build a two-piece anchor. To increase security in this situation, you can clip into this anchor and then belay directly off your belay loop, essentially using your body and stance to “add” 4 points. As you gain experience and mountain sense, it becomes easier to improvise in varied terrain. A technically proficient climber knows the rules so that she can break them safely.

Anchor proficiency doesn’t come overnight. New leaders should build dozens of anchors on the ground before venturing up into real terrain, and ideally this is done with mentorship.

Point values

Let’s look at general point values, from best to worst. Note that these are point values, not the number of protection points in the anchor.

• A four-point piece is bomber—able to hold a substantial fall.
• A three-point piece is pretty good—able to hold a 10- to 15-foot fall.
• A two-point piece is weak. Placed at your waist, it will hold a fall or body weight, but probably not much beyond that.
• A one-point piece is essentially an aid placement. It will hold body weight, but it’s unlikely to hold a fall.

Point examples

Now consider the following specific examples of pieces/anchor options:

• 12 points: A large—at least desk-sized—stable, boulder
• 12 points: A large, living tree with a solid root base and a trunk that is at least 18 inches in diameter
• 6 points: A solid, well-placed bolt
• 4 points: A large (1” or more) cam in reliable rock
• 4 points: A large nut (Stopper size 8 or greater) in reliable rock
• 3 points: A small (1” or less) cam in reliable rock
• 3 points: A medium nut (Stopper 4–7) in reliable rock
• 3 points: A micro-cam (.3 or smaller) in reliable rock
• 1–2 points: Small nuts (Stopper 1–3); score contingent on nut size and rock quality

The post Learn to Evaluate Trad Anchors With This 12-Point Rubric appeared first on Climbing.

My first summer as a climber can be described in two words: Delirious excitement. I devoured climbing magazines, forced conversations upon anyone I suspected to be a climber, and got out five days a week while working and living in Lake Louise, Alberta. My climbing resume was pathetic (its shining highlight was a 5.7 I’d led on gear) but I didn’t care. I was inconceivably psyched.

My friend, who I will call David for reasons that will soon become apparent, recognized my excitement for the vertical and invited me to climb the long and easy Joy on Mt. Indefatigable, in Kananaskis. Joy is an apt name. The west side of Mt. Indefatigable is more of a ramp than a face, and Joy scampers up it via a continuous 2,000-foot limestone corner, gaining steepness with height like the ultimate ski jump. Going at an amicable 5.6, Joy would surely be overrun with crowds if not for one simple fact: there is not a single bolt on the entire route. Thankfully, however, it tops out on a gentle ridge, intersecting perfectly with a beaten walk-off trail. At least, that’s what we were told.

David was a more experienced climber than me. He climbed 5.11, had been to Yosemite, and, most importantly, wasn’t a star-struck kid dreaming of competency. David was confident and he exuded it. I respected that. I also respected that he (1) owned a car, (2) owned a double set of cams, (3) lacked any better partner to climb Joy with. We planned to climb it during a smoky day at the end of August.

***

David and I nailed the approach and clambered into Joy’s massive right-facing corner. At the time I didn’t really know how to equalize three pieces of gear to make an anchor, but I feigned confidence below the first pitch, so we decided to swap leads. By pitch six I had doubled the number of trad leads in my career, and had built an equal number of unequalized anchors. David didn’t say anything. I’m nearly certain he didn’t notice.

The hazy sun peeled around the mountain near noon and we reapplied sunscreen at a belay. David had been slurping water from a hydration pack and, in a surprised instant, sucked it dry. No matter, we laughed, only four more pitches to go. We continued up the steepening corner, staring at an emerald lake between our legs at each belay, watching the lodgepole pines grow smaller and smaller. I was blissfully—one might say ignorantly—giddy with excitement.

The post How I Was Benighted on the “Most Straightforward Route” in the Rockies appeared first on Climbing.

About our reporting: For this story, we interviewed the executive director of the nonprofit Joe’s Valley Climbing and Community and a board member of the Emery County Trails Committee, as well as solicited comments from a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) representative involved in the project.  

What climbers should know: After a coal mine reopened in Joe’s Valley in central Utah, a local climbers’ coalition partnered with land managers and the mining company to address safety risks through new climber parking lots and trails, offering a case study for other climbing areas facing mining claims.  

Over 25 years after the last coal mine in Joe’s Valley closed down, coal is once again coming out of the ground. For the thousands of boulderers who visit the hundreds of sandstone boulders here in central Utah every year, that means big trucks rumbling past the many roadside blocs every three or four minutes. Not only do those large trucks cause a ruckus, but they also pose a safety risk to the right-off-the-road parking found throughout Joe’s Valley. Climbers unloading crashpads from their vehicles—often with kids and dogs in tow—was an accident waiting to happen, says Julie Janus, the executive director of the nonprofit Joe’s Valley Climbing and Community.

“How can we all work together to get something that works for the community as a whole?” Janus says of how she approached the situation. “It’s not climbers versus coal. It’s not us versus them. We’re trying to bring climbers and the local community together.”

For those who have watched the 2019 Reel Rock documentary United States of Joe’s, this question is a familiar one, but it has become increasingly relevant to climbers in Utah and beyond. Since February, global demand for coal has risen due to the war in Iran, and the Trump administration has sought to eliminate barriers to mineral production, even at the cost of opening up valuable public lands to extraction. Just last week, we saw the first mining claims filed across acres previously protected as Bears Ears National Monument, which Trump downsized significantly in July. And as the feds close the comment period in early October on the rescission of the Roadless Rule, the possibility that new roads will be sanctioned across national forests could pique the interest of extractive industries scoping out previously inaccessible areas.

So what can this small rural community with globally renowned boulders teach climbing communities across the country?

Land of coal and climbing

One difference in the case of Utah’s Joe’s Valley from some other climbing areas staring down mining interests is that the concept of a coal mine here is nothing new—nor is it avoidable. “Mines have been here for a long time,” Janus tells Climbing, “back from the early days when pioneers were settling and looking for different industries.” Many of the roads climbers use to access the 1,100-some boulder problems across Joe’s Valley were built by mining companies. Mining is also a significant part of the local economy.

“Climbing and mining have been intertwined here for decades,” says Janus, who relocated to the area about six years ago, when she quit her corporate job to move into her van.

Steven Jeffery, a climber of 40-some years, the co-founder of Joe’s Valley Fest, and a board member with the local Emery County Trails Committee, also believes climbers ought to acknowledge the land users who came before them, from Indigenous people and pioneers to miners. “What’s really important is paying homage and respect to what happened in that area before you even showed up,” Jeffery says.

So three years ago, when climbers started hearing murmurs that the mine was reopening, it wasn’t exactly a shocker. Formerly called the Trail Mountain Mine, the new mine, dubbed Fossil Rock, would meet increased demand for coal. Soon after talk of a coal comeback started, the mine began clearing out the existing site, which overlaps with the bouldering. This past year, Fossil Rock has become officially active, with trucks running up and down UT-29, the road through Joe’s, every few minutes.

How Joe’s Valley climbers adapted to the mine

We often read about climbers pushing back on a mine opening as the first course of action. But with much of the bouldering accessed via old mining roads and overlapping with mining land, that wasn’t an option for local boulderers here.

Instead, the Joe’s Valley Coalition—a grassroots group under the larger nonprofit—began working toward a way to mitigate safety risks and traffic caused by Fossil Rock reopening.

“As soon as we started seeing the rumblings that the mine might reopen, we tried to be proactive and engage with the local community,” Janus says. “What can we do to get ahead of this?”

The Coalition identified the roadside pullout parking that climbers used as the biggest risk with the mine reopening and the truck traffic it would create. So they started looking for funds to pay for a new parking lot, and the expansion of another.

Another reality of the mine resuming operations? The noise and air pollution associated with coal trucks lapping the road through Joe’s. This is especially problematic in the Right Fork sector, also known as Cottonwood Canyon, which boasts the lion’s share of problems in the area and many roadside boulders. New trails that make it easier to access boulder problems in other sectors and further down in the canyon would allow climbers to escape the roar of coal trucks, as well as spread out climber traffic and reduce canyon congestion, according to Janus.

To pay for it all, Joe’s Valley Climbing and Community obtained two grants: $45,000 in federal recreational trails dollars, as well as $10,000 through their local Emery County Trails Committee. The county and BLM agreed to donate much of the labor involving heavy machinery as well.

“Joe’s Valley is a great example of what responsible multiple-use management can look like when we work together,” says Jaydon Mead, who serves as the outdoor recreation planner at a BLM field office in the nearby Utah city of Price. He was so pleased with the collaboration that he was inspired to create an AI-generated country music song celebrating the project.

While the BLM helped with the trail access work, climbers have also stepped up to support the construction of 1.2 miles of new approach trails, as well as 1.5 miles of trail maintenance. Last year, Janus estimates that between 30 and 40 volunteers busted out the garden hoes, Pulaskis, and shovels during the annual Joe’s Valley Fest to help. Using the grant funds, the nonprofit also hired a private company, Alpine Forestry, to support trailbuilding this year.

What climbing communities can learn from Joe’s Valley

In times of record-high political division, a story where everyone more or less gets along is rare. Both Janus and Jeffery say that the key to proactively navigating competing land interests is focusing on solutions, rather than problems.

The Coalition quickly moved to build partnerships with all the stakeholders—the county, the BLM, the Forest Service, and the mining company. Once they started the conversation, they stayed open to adjusting the solutions they were proposing (i.e., parking lots and trails), to ensure that they worked for the whole community, not just the climbing community.

“We’re trying to bring locals and climbers together,” Janus explains. “It’s part of our mission.” Even if she doesn’t agree with the local government or a mining company rep, she can still try to understand where they’re coming from. “I try to see it from other people’s point of view,” she says, acknowledging that for many local residents of the gateway towns of Castle Dale and Orangeville, mining is their livelihood.

Jeffery thinks that the current situation in Joe’s shows what happens when climbers actually take the time to explain what they do to other land users. “Climbers have always been out in the woods sneaking around, but it’s a whole different world now with so many climbers,” Jeffery explains. “You can’t just hide in the woods anymore.” He says it’s never been more important to own up to our increasing impacts as climbers and befriend land managers—and even mining companies.

Of course, no two mining projects are alike, and the pre-existing Fossil Rock Mine differs significantly from some proposed mining operations, like the Resolution Copper project in Oak Flat, Arizona, which climbers and Indigenous leaders have been fighting in court. While the proposed Resolution Copper mine is foreign-owned and set to destroy a significant portion of the land, Fossil Rock supports an existing community, poses minimal impact to access, and is a subsidiary of a Utah-based coal producer.

“I would love these coal trucks to get out of my climbing area,” Jeffery says. But he acknowledges the fact that he ultimately depends on the energy that coal generates, too. “When a mine shows up, open up your vision scope to the full potential of everyone who needs to benefit in the area,” he adds, “If we don’t, it’s just fighting again and fighting gets us nowhere.”

Mead, the BLM rep involved in the project, echoes that appreciation for collaboration. “The new parking area and trail improvements are a great example of what can happen when land managers and user groups work together,” says Mead. “We appreciate the Coalition and all of the climbers who care about this place and help us keep Joe’s Valley a special place for people to enjoy for generations to come.”

What’s next for Joe’s

So far, Joe’s Valley Climbing and Community has only had to close access to one boulder due to its proximity to the mining operation: Thor’s Hammer (V7). Janus remains hopeful that the reopened mine won’t impact access to any of the other problems at Joe’s.

“We proactively closed off a boulder that is on mine property and rerouted a trail to another zone that crossed mine property,” Janus explains of Thor’s. “So far this has stopped any other access issues to boulders. But there is perhaps potential loss of access to others, hence part of the reason to mitigate approach trails.”

Next weekend, Joe’s Valley Fest will host climbers and locals for night bouldering sessions, local and artisan climbing clinics, and even a rodeo. During the fest, on October 4, the nonprofit is hosting a Stewardship Day, which often sees as many as 60 climbers participate. The goal? Keep the Joe’s dream alive through trail work and community.

The post When a Coal Mine Reopened at This Global Bouldering Destination, Local Climbers Got Out Their Shovels appeared first on Climbing.

About the quote of the day: “I’m not anything a woman should be” is a remark from the late climber Jan Conn, who moved into her panel truck in the 1940s to seek rock around the country—and never looked back. Conn made the statement several years ago while recording interviews for a new documentary about Jan and her husband Herb called Catching Pinecones. The quote reflects her self-regard as a misfit who chose to reject the prevailing cultural standards of a house, a 9-to-5 job, and having children in favor of following her passions.

I can see why Jan Conn declared “I’m not anything a woman should be.” She is from the same place as me: Maryland, or the DMV, as we dub it today: the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area where state and city borders scarcely matter. She was born on April 22, 1924 in Montgomery County, MD, where I spent many years of my youth. I should add how fitting it is that she was born on Earth Day, given the extremely low-impact lifestyle she lived until her last day, and the love she held for the wild places of this planet.

After meeting Herb, Jan married him and initially lived in D.C., where they first fell in love with climbing. Jan started climbing on the East Coast, around the Carderock cliffs above the Potomac River, Maryland on one side, Virginia on the other. Herb was working for the Navy during World War II, keeping the couple in D.C. When the war ended, Jan, together with Herb, embarked on the existence that she felt defied womanhood, as this quote illustrates.

The reason that I can understand Jan’s sentiment of resisting gender expectations starts here: After the end of WWII, rather than settle down, buy a house, or get pregnant, she and Herb moved into a panel truck. It was 1946, the recorded onset of the Baby Boom, when women, feeling optimistic about the state of the world, were having a lot of babies. Instead, many decades before it was considered even relatively acceptable to live in an RV or adopt “van life,” Jan was sleeping in a narrow cot in the back of a truck beginning a life-long quest for beautiful rocks to climb.

“I don’t know where people get the courage to have kids,” Jan remarks in Catching Pinecones. “We didn’t think we could raise them to fit in with this world.”

When I first heard about the documentary Catching Pinecones about Jan and Herb’s unusual life, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t already heard more lore around this climbing couple. Then I was dismayed to find that Climbing had published an obituary for Herb, when he passed away in 2012, but had never shared a tribute to the life of Jan, when she died at the age of 99 in 2023.

As this excellent new documentary made by a couple of climbers reveals, Jan and Herb continued rejecting societal norms for their entire lives. While they eventually upgraded from a truck to a modest hole in a South Dakota cliff that they nicknamed the “Conncave,” they kept climbing well into their golden years. They made hundreds of first ascents, from Texas to Wyoming, including the first and possibly only ascent of Mt. Rushmore, which is illegal to climb.

Jan seems to have taken the sharp end just as often as Herb, leading up loose, uncharted rock without the harnesses, helmets, or bomber protection we rely upon today. After climbing Devils Tower in Wyoming with Herb, she overheard some guy say that it couldn’t be much of a climb if she was able to do it. So to prove that Herb hadn’t hauled her up, she teamed up with Jane Showacre to make the first all-female ascent of the iconic formation in 1952.

Together, Jan and Herb made over 200 first ascents in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the landscape they eventually fell in love with and made their home. After Herb passed away in 2012, Jan remained in the Conncave, heating her home with a wood-burning stove and making music, her other passion. When the Conncave burned down in an accident, friends and neighbors went looking for, fearing she’d lost her life in the fire. But she’d simply sat down in a chair in front of the Conncave, with her cat Vixen in her lap, and watched it burn, then hiked into the hills looking for help.

While the film Catching Pinecones, which I highly recommend watching, is about Jan and Herb, Jan emerges as the hero of the tale. Since Herb wasn’t around to sit for interviews, Jan became the de factor teller of their tale. Her original music fills the archival footage and interviews, while a musical she wrote gives the documentary its name. And while both Conns represent mavericks of their era and rebels against conventions, Jan, in particular, bravely followed her heart at a time when women were expected to do exactly the opposite.

So while one might interpret Jan’s quote (“I’m not anything a woman should be.”) as an admission of sorts that her identify was at odds with her womanhood, I see it as a proud proclamation.

Jan Conn was everything a woman should be.

The post Quote of the Day By a South Dakota Legend: “I’m Not Anything a Woman Should Be.” appeared first on Climbing.

REI just significantly marked down one of our favorite approach shoes: the Arc’teryx Vertex Alpine. We called this shoe the best all-around pair of the year in our most recent guide to approach shoes. Right now, the Vertex Alpine approach shoe is 30% off at REI, with good inventory in both men’s and women’s sizes in two different colorways. That means climbers can invest in this normally $230 shoe for $161.

This unique shoe blends the design elements and traction of an approach shoe and a runner so that you can keep your quiver of adventure shoes from taking over your entire gear closet or mud room. This shoe is also great if you’re an impatient climber who likes running or speed-walking to the base of your next climb.

A couple summers ago, the Vertex’s rockered sole propelled our lead tester, Climbing Senior Editor Anthony Walsh, across long Cascadian approaches. The Vibram XS Flash 2 outsole rubber let him smear confidently through Red Rock canyons and Squamish chimneys. Its 8mm drop both cushioned his stride while pounding down the Stawamus Chief’s walk-off descent, and kept him grounded while soloing fifth-class approaches.

The Vertex is a true “climber’s running shoe” because, shocker, you can actually climb in it. A stiff Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) shank and the outsole’s lug-free “climbing zone” toe provides decent edging support on terrain up to 5.10-. And unlike flimsy mesh hybrid shoes, the Vertex’s upper is made of burly Matryx fabric, a breathable material found in hard-wearing items like harnesses and soccer cleats. Crucially, this fabric lets the Vertex jam the occasional hand and fist crack without tearing.

How we field tested the Arc’teryx Vertex Alpine

The thoughtful features of the Vertex—sticky outsole, stiff midsole, durable upper, cushioned platform—make it our tester’s go-to summer-alpine shoe. While testing in Washington Pass, Walsh walked through thickly wooded forests, lush alpine meadows, and ball-bearing scree for two hours to reach the base of the South Early Winters Spire. He even wore the Vertex on for Southern Man’s (5.11d; 900ft) first two pitches.

On a 10-day climbing trip to Las Vegas, the Vertex also delivered on long runs across the limestone escarpment of Mt. Potosi, scrambles through cavernous sandstone canyons in Red Rock, and climbs on low fifth-class terrain.

After well over 100 miles (160km) of distance and nearly 10,000 feet (3,000m) of vert, the Vertex has shown zero signs of premature wear. The Matryx upper has no scuffs or holes, the rand is firmly adhered, the Vibram sole has all its 4mm lugs. You can read our full review of the Arc’teryx Vertex Alpine here.

What size should you get in the Vertex Alpine?

Arc’teryx has dubbed the Vertex Alpine with a “precision fit” which just means that, if wearing your normal Arc’teryx size, the shoe will feel quite snug and short across the forefoot. If you are planning to climb or scramble a lot in the shoe, choose your normal street shoe size. If you plan to do equal amounts of running and climbing in the Vertex Alpine, bump up a half size.

Where to save on the Arc’teryx Alpine Vertex Shoes

You can find this discounted shoe from Arc’teryx at REI here:

Shop Arc’teryx Vertex Alpine – Men’s

Shop Arc’teryx Vertex Alpine – Women’s 

The post Deal of the Week: An Arc’teryx Approach Shoe That Doubles as a Trail Runner appeared first on Climbing.

Free soloing is so psychologically challenging—and not just to people who do it but also to everybody else—that it always gets everyone asking, “Why? Are you sure you’re doing it for the right reasons?” Alex [Honnold] has thought about this a lot. He says the positive ideal, among close observers of the sport, tends to be Peter Croft. As Alex put it, “Anybody that looks at Peter Croft’s climbing always gets a sense that everything he’s done he did because he loves it, because he’s just out playing on rock. He gives off the effervescent joy of a child, like bubbling around having a good time. And so in a way that seems like the purest and best motivation. Why wouldn’t I do that? It’s incredible! It’s so fun!”

But Alex has also acquired a nuanced understanding of motivation and of the whole notion of good and bad reasons. He suspects, for example, that Croft was well aware of what other free soloists—and I think we’re just talking about John Bachar here—had done, and what he, personally, was capable of.

“When I was young,” Alex said, “I’d look at what all these other soloists had done and be like, ‘They’re just heroes! They’re mythical.’ Now, as an adult, I’m like, ‘Well, they were also just other humans looking to make their place in the world.’” Alex suspects that he isn’t the first soloist to have considered history and legacy in their choice of projects, nor the first to have been motivated, now and then, by painful personal experiences. Both Croft and Bachar, he said, “had random failed relationships, things like that. Probably some of that was fuel for the fire of soloing big walls. Everybody has stuff going on.”

Alex isn’t discounting the aspiration to free solo—or do anything hard—for reasons devoid of extrinsic motivation like money, fame, or love. He’s just saying those motivations are sometimes inescapable and even useful. “I’ve always been a fan of harnessing the wrong reasons to do things that you want to do,” he said, “like using those extrinsic motivators to your benefit. Like I’ve done a little bit of angst soloing, where I’m upset about a breakup and I’m like, oh, I’m going to go soloing, and it’s not like I’m trying to kill myself, but I’m in this charged emotional state, and I’m going to harness that to do something I’ve always wanted to do.”

Alex mentioned a TV commercial that we worked on together, where I was filming and he was free soloing for the camera. “This is obviously free soloing for the wrong reasons,” he said. “But, at the same time, I wanted the practice. I wanted to free solo something challenging in bad emotional conditions with pressure to perform. Otherwise, how am I ever going to free solo really big hard things if I can’t do something like this on command for TV? So whether the drive is coming from the inside or the outside, you can still use that. I just don’t think you should be too puritanical about motivation because, at a certain point, life is complicated. If you want to be good at soloing or whatever else, harness any motivation you can.” It’s that same mindset that led him to accept a similar TV event in which he scaled the Taipei 101 tower on Netflix, a terrifying live event for viewers, but a relatively routine ascent for a climber like Alex.

I knew that Alex was big on visualization. I knew he spent a lot of time in his van, just parked somewhere, lying on his bed in the back visualizing every move on El Cap. He visualized odd little details, too, like waking up early and walking over to the wall, and what it might feel like to bump into people he knew. As he put it, “What if you have to chitchat? And what if it feels humid or what if there are a lot of mosquitoes? Just imagining all the scenarios so that nothing feels surprising when I actually climb the route.”

I was surprised to hear that Alex deliberately visualized falling from different parts of the wall. He identified a very small number of spots from which falling would not necessarily be fatal. These included the first few feet of climbing above a couple of big ledges and also inside certain chimney systems—cracks so wide that he would squeeze his whole body inside to climb and where, if he fell, he would likely be able to stop himself.

“But most of the time, if you fall, you’re going to die,” Alex said. “So in the same way that you imagine yourself getting to the top and feeling like a total hero—you know, being the man—you also have to imagine what it’d be like to slip and then tomahawk down the wall and explode at the base, because if you haven’t visualized any of those things, you run the risk of being up on the wall and suddenly having that visual for the first time. And that would be bad. Like you don’t want to be halfway up El Cap and suddenly realize that if you slip, it’s going to be terrible. You need to have already dealt with that and internalized it.

“If looking up at the wall fills you with dread, then maybe it’s not your time. But if looking up at the wall fills you with excitement and trepidation, then you’re like, ‘Okay, maybe it is time.’ There’s a gut-feeling side to it, but then there’s also the rational side where if you’ve done all the prep, you know you can do it, you physically can do all the things you’ve practiced, like you have a plan.”

With something this dangerous, even gut instinct isn’t always reliable—as Alex discovered the first time he tried to free solo El Cap. He’d decided he was ready, gave us the signal to start filming, and got a little way up before something felt wrong and he aborted—grabbed on to a bolt drilled into the cliff and then called for a rope.

“Basically, I was really scared,” he said. “This is not for me, and I just gave up. At the time it felt like a terrible failure. This is totally embarrassing. The whole crew’s in position. They’re all there to film a free solo. And I gave up. But, in retrospect, it’s like, ‘Oh, this was an important part of the process,’ because just to hike to the base of El Cap with no rope and start climbing is an important step for me. It still broke some ground psychologically. That afternoon, I went and free soloed a couple of other routes and felt great and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m almost there, but just not quite.’”

Finally, Alex was all the way there. As a final step, he spent an entire long day rappelling all 3,000 feet of the route, sliding down ropes from the top with a bag of climber’s chalk. Along the way, Alex used that powdery white chalk to mark countless specific handholds and footholds that he meant to use. Then, on the day he meant to go for the free solo again, he—and the rest of us on the film crew—woke up to rain. To be on the safe side, Alex waited a day for the rain to clear and then hiked back up to the top of El Cap and rappelled the entire route all over again to make sure the rain hadn’t washed away any of his chalk marks.

By the morning of June 3, 2017, Alex had done all the preparation he was going to do. He left the bottom of El Cap before sunrise. The only gear he had with him was a pair of climbing shoes and a chalk bag.

We had spent two years preparing, too. The night before, I told the team: “Worrying about Alex is not going to serve anyone. Focus on your job. Don’t forget to press record. No mistakes.”

Alex topped out three hours and 56 minutes after he started. He sat down on a flat rock with his shoes off and said, “So delightful.” Like he had just finished a meal.

As of this writing, it has been nine years since Alex’s free solo of El Cap. Alex is now married and has two kids. I’m a father, too, so I think a lot about risk and how the stakes have changed now that my children depend on me. I wondered how Alex thinks about this and was surprised to hear him say, at least initially, that he didn’t think the stakes were so different now. Alex conceded that he would feel bad if he knew that he was going to die soon on a climb. But, he said, “I never wanted to fall and die. I still don’t want to fall and die.” Even if he did, Alex said, “realistically, my daughters would be fine, my wife would be fine, they’d move on. Like, no matter what, my daughters are going to have a good life.”

He’d like to think that his family’s life would be better with him in it. “At the same time, it hasn’t prevented me from leading a rich, full life.”

Excerpted from Jimmy Chin’s new book, Rules to Live By, © 2026 Celadon Books. Reprinted with permission.

The post Yes, Honnold Visualized Falling—and Other Details from Jimmy Chin’s New Book of Advice from Extraordinary People appeared first on Climbing.

There are few things as scary in climbing as getting stuck in a rock. Not only are you trapped in place, exposed to the elements for an indefinite amount of time, but you’re locked into an endless wave of pain, with sharp edges digging into your body. If the pain doesn’t get you, the sudden feeling of helplessness—and the humiliation—just might.

I’ve only witnessed one person get her head stuck in a crack; most of the time, people trap themselves with a knee. Last year, the American Alpine Club wrote that they publish “at least one report of a climber getting their knee stuck in an offwidth crack every year.” No climbing story involving a stuck knee is more famous than Canadian alpinist Jason Kruk’s 2010 fiasco in Squamish’s Boogie ‘Til You Puke (5.11), which was immediately renamed Boogie ‘Til You Poop for unfortunate reasons. But at least Kruk got out relatively quickly. In 2023, an Indian Creek climber got his knee stuck in Generic Crack (5.10-) for a whopping 12 hours, during which rescuers built a seven-to-one pulley system to free him and gave him ketamine to relax his muscles. (Today, you can find a sandstone plaque announcing Ketamine Crack at the base of the route.) And in April 2025, a Salt Lake City climber got his knee stuck while in an upside-down position for more than four hours in Little Cottonwood Canyon’s Cashmere Crack (5.11a/b), requiring a complex rescue to free him. Meanwhile, hundreds more such incidents have occurred under the radar. It’s a constant terror that all crack climbers must brave, from newbies to professionals.

I count myself among the knee-stuck survivors. In early 2022, I was bouldering upside down on Out of the Blue (V6-7), a 40-foot invert offwidth boulder atop a hangar-sized slab of rock in South Platte, Colorado. Thinking I’d try a knee lock—something I will never, ever do in an invert offwidth again—I shoved my straightened knee above my head. Rock immediately locked onto bone like an animal’s jaws. My full bodyweight hung from my kneecap. For more than an hour and a half, I was in excruciating pain, completely helpless, even as my friends tried to help lift me. Eventually, one of them used an ascender to chip a bit of the rock—something I’m not proud of—to get me out.

Since that horrid experience, I’ve made it my personal life goal to never, ever get my knee stuck like that again. Yet as I continued to climb offwidths, I kept coming face-to-face with situations that asked me just how badly I was willing to keep that promise. Just last year, for example, Paisano Overhang (5.12c) dangled a send in front of me—if only I could rest on my knee cap for just a moment. Was it worth it?

That’s a question that every climber will have to answer for themselves (with Paisano, I eventually did it, but it took me three days to build up the guts). However, what I do know is this: Not getting your knee stuck is almost always a skill issue, and freeing it is definitely a skill issue. So if you’re looking to avoid joining the long list of people who thought they’d have to amputate part of their leg just to escape the rock, here are the tactics I use today to avoid getting my knee stuck in a wide crack—and, if necessary, escape it.

A traumatized climber’s guide to not getting your knee stuck

1. Never fully straighten your leg inside an offwidth.

Straightening your leg in an offwidth is a surefire way to get your knee stuck. When your leg is straight—or even more, hyper-extended, like mine in Out of the Blue—your kneecap shrinks into it, which means that when you bend it again, your kneecap can easily become the biggest thing. That’s when you’re truly trapped.

When you’re climbing in thigh locks, you’ll need to unbend your leg a little between moves to loosen the lock and move up into a new position. However, you should never fully straighten it. Even in these transitions, only unbend your knee as much as you need to, ideally not more than a 120-degree angle.

The best way to avoid getting your knee stuck is to keep your leg bent at all times, ensuring that your thigh always stays wider than the knee cap itself.

(Note: If you’re climbing upside down, this rule still holds, unless your knee is fully outside the crack. If you’re hanging by your ankles, you’re fine—go ahead and straighten your leg. But don’t ever stick your straightened knee up into the crack.)

2. Know what your knee-stuck size is.

It should be comforting to know that your knee can only get stuck in one specific crack width. However, that width is unique to every person, and you’ll need to measure it yourself by doing some offwidth climbing.

Start off by figuring out your thigh lock size. A thigh lock (known less accurately as a “knee lock” or “alpine knee”) occurs when you stuff the upper part of your leg into a wide crack, then crank your calf back toward your butt. This results in the fleshy part of your thigh expanding and “locking” you into the crack. If you can hook your toe around the crack’s edge, this position becomes a passive, no-hands rest. But make sure that it’s the fat and muscle of your leg, not the bone, that’s pressing into the rock. If you feel pressure on your kneecap at all, abort!

Your knee-stuck size is the size just tighter than your tightest thigh lock. For example, I can thigh lock a crack that fits a tight Black Diamond #5 Camalot C4, so my thigh lock size is #5s, and my knee-stuck size is #4s. That’s where I face the greatest danger of getting stuck.

3. Learn the technique for your knee-stuck size.

Once you know your knee-stuck size, you need to figure out a way of climbing it that doesn’t involve sticking your knee into the crack and trying to force a too-tight thigh lock.

In most vertical offwidths, you’ll have the advantage of bumping cams just above you, so you’ll get a preview of where the crack narrows and expands. If the knee-stuck size only lasts for a foot or two, you might be able to skip past it by reaching high with your hand stacks and pulling one big move. But if you’re climbing a long, sustained offwidth like Indian Creek’s Big Guy (5.11-)—a notorious spot for getting one’s knee stuck—you’ll need to figure out another solution.

One popular tactic is to perform calf locks. A calf lock occurs where you stick the below-knee part of your leg—your calf—high into the crack and twist it centrally toward your body like a foot jam. This should give you enough stability to move your hands higher before resetting your calf lock.

If calf locks don’t feel stable enough to go briefly hands free, make sure you’re sticking your leg in as high as you can. And if that still feels too hard, you can still use plain old foot jams to fill the space. This is a bit riskier, as your knee could always slide forward into the crack, but if you’re disciplined to keep your knee on the outside, it can be a stable and steady way to move up until the crack widens enough for a proper thigh lock—and a rest.

4. Wear kneepads, just in case.

We all know that kneepads can be helpful to minimize bruises from scuttling up a chimney. But in my experience, they’re also useful self-rescue tools for stuck knees. Having a thin layer of foam around your kneecap gives you a critical extra layer between rock and bone in the worst-case scenario. If and when you get your knee stuck, you can pull the kneepad down to free up space to escape. It’s a valid safety measure, especially if you’re climbing in a high-consequence situation (e.g., in the alpine, in an approaching storm) and aren’t 100% confident in the offwidth technique for your knee-stuck size.

So why don’t we all wear kneepads all the time? Because their extra thickness does slightly increase your thigh lock size. Sometimes this doesn’t matter; the crack is expanding quickly, and you can handle climbing a bit farther to get your perfect thigh lock. But if getting a tight thigh lock happens to be your crux—for example, at the lip of Moab’s classic invert offwidth Supreme Manliness (5.13-)—you may choose to risk bare-kneed offwidthing for additional mobility. In this case, it’s even more important to never straighten your leg in the crack (See Rule #1).

The best kneepads to buy for offwidth are the slim and slender ones; the chunky, padded ones are unnecessary. I like the Nike Dri-FIT Essential Volleyball Knee Pads ($25) or anything resembling those. Compression knee sleeves are too thin to be useful for stuck knees; you’ll want at least a few millimeters of foam.

When you wear kneepads, put them on over your clothing, not under it, so you can see when the kneepads inevitably roll down and need to be adjusted. Many offwidth climbers even tape their kneepads onto their pants to prevent this rolling effect. It might look wonky, but it works.

5. Never climb offwidth alone.

Boulderers, I’m speaking to you here. If an offwidth includes your knee-stuck size, then you should always consider the worst-case scenario: You get it stuck, and you need someone to either help you out of it or call in a rescue. Having someone there to help you unweight your knee can be the difference between a few minutes of pain and a full day of it.

Even if an offwidth doesn’t include your knee-stuck size, you can still get your foot stuck, too—and this can be just as painful. So save the solo sessions for other boulders, or better yet, forget them entirely. After all, most offwidth boulders involve inverts, and who wants to fall on their head without spotters?

Whether you’re ignoring my advice and bouldering offwidths solo, or showing up with spotters, if you’re in an area with no cell service and know you’ll be climbing an offwidth, carry an emergency SOS device (e.g. a Garmin inReach Mini) to contact help in case you find yourself in the worst-case scenario.

6. Carry an extra cam in your knee-stuck size.

If you actually get your knee stuck, you’ll need to unweight it immediately, which means you’ll need to place a cam above you to take your weight. Most offwidth climbers will bump cams in vertical terrain, so this is no problem. But if you are anti-bumping, and you like climbing offwidth cracks above your gear, make sure you always have a backup cam on your harness in your knee-stuck size.

This includes bouldering. If you get your knee stuck above the ground, higher than your friends can reach you, you’ll want a cam and a short personal tether to help escape a stuck knee situation. It’s a smart part of your self-rescue kit, especially for highballs.

Help! Despite everything, I got my knee stuck. Now what?

1. Don’t panic, but act quickly.

Accept the emergency. Forget sending; forget that you really want to get this route clean. Your goal is now self-rescue, not glory.

When your kneecap starts to take pressure, you have about 30 seconds to a minute before it begins to swell and gets even more stuck. This doesn’t make it impossible to free, but it’s much easier to free it before this happens.

2. Unweight your knee.

You need to lift your bodyweight off your stuck knee. If you’re bouldering, ask your spotters to stack pads below your hips, or physically push you up by the shoulders or waist. If you’re on a rope, try to get a hand stack or reach a crimp above you. Relax your leg. Then, yank hard with your hands to lift your bodyweight off your knee. Try to wiggle it free in the direction it went in. Your other leg may be helpful here, to push you up and take some of your weight.

If you can’t easily free your knee with normal hand moves, place a cam high—yes, even if it means weighting your stuck knee a little more, temporarily, to free your hands—and clip the rope into it. Have your belayer take hard so they can reduce the weight on your knee.

At this point, you should feel your weight lifting from your body, even if your knee is still locked in position.

3. Reverse your motion.

Whatever direction your knee went in, you have the best chance of getting it out in that same direction. If you slipped and sank your knee into the trapped position, you’ll want to pull it up. If it got caught mid-move at the top of a narrowing flare, you’ll want to shove it lower.

Find the best angle for your knee to be freed, and keep working, millimeter by millimeter, toward that angle. If your kneecap is already stuck, straightening your leg won’t help. But it is okay to be forceful here: Bruises and scrapes are a small price to pay for getting your knee out.

4. Reduce the friction.

Any additional bit of space and slipperiness can help. Ask your partner to tag up a knife and cut off your pants around the knee to remove any bunched-up material. Pour water—or dish soap, oil, sunscreen, whatever you have—on each side of your knee to lubricate it. Then repeat step #3, noting any additional places where moving may be easier. Remember to keep your leg relaxed, even as you’re working to free it.

5. Recruit others to help you.

Sometimes, having an additional person lift your weight or hold your leg in a certain position can give you the freedom to inch toward the open spot. If other people can reach you, explain to them where you’re trying to move your leg, and they may be able to help you adjust it.

6. Call for a rescue.

If you’ve been stuck for more than an hour and are making absolutely zero progress, or if darkness is falling, it’s probably time to call for a rescue. Make sure you tag up layers, food, and water so you’re comfortable for however long it’s going to take rescuers to reach you and get you out. Try to keep the weight off your knee as much as possible. And while you’re waiting, keep trying to free yourself; every bit of progress is still progress.

7. Don’t give up.

Do not think of worst-case scenarios. You got your knee in, and you will get it out. Throughout all my research, I’ve not yet found a situation in which a climber with a stuck knee could not be eventually extracted.

Keep going. Do not stop trying. Climbers get their knee stuck all the time, panic, and eventually free themselves. You will do this, too. And you’re probably closer than you think.

The post Getting My Knee Stuck in an Offwidth Was Just as Scary as It Sounds. Here’s How I Avoid Doing It Again. appeared first on Climbing.

Today, September 22, Canadian climber Barry Blanchard releases a new book recounting tales of “punk rock pure alpinism,” Hollywood rigging, and loss in the mountains. Below, we share part of the first story from chapter 1, entitled “The Infinite Spur,” about a near miss Blanchard experienced in Alaska. The Echo: Stories from the Edge of Survival is published by Patagonia. The following story is excerpted with permission from Patagonia.

Mt. Foraker, Alaska, 2000  

MAY 15: Ropes, we needed ropes. Steve House, who would be flying into the Alaska Range with Mark Twight and Scott Backes in a couple weeks’ time, told me to grab a 165-foot half rope from his cache in Talkeetna. Carl Tobin and I bought a brand new 200-foot half rope, the only length they had, to pair with it, and decided to cut it down so that our leads would be shorter and we could rest more, carry a single rack, and place protection more closely.

MAY 18: We drove to Talkeetna, where Carl asked Paul Roderick, the owner and head pilot of Talkeetna Air Taxi, to put us down on the west fork of the Kahiltna Glacier below the southeast aspect of Mt. Foraker [commonly referred to as Sultana]. The landing plunked us closer to our objective, far removed from the peopled cattle track leading to the West Buttress of Denali—aka “The Butt.”

MAY 24: We gorged on goodies: blueberry pancakes with bacon, thick slices of salami on Sailor Boy pilot bread with mustard and jalapeño Havarti, tubes of Pringles, cups of Kaladi Brothers coffee, and shots of Laphroaig, neat. I bartered for a rest day, but Carl had had enough languor.

“I want to get on the route and get home. I miss my son,” he said.

MAY 25: We skied toward the Spur with day packs and our food, fuel, and climbing gear sliding along behind us in plastic kiddie sleds. Over the first pass, and across the eastern head of the Lacuna Glacier, we buried our cache below the second pass—the low point on the eastern bifurcation of the French Ridge (the southwest ridge of Mt. Foraker that was climbed in 1976 by six French men, one French lady, and one American fellow)—and skied back toward camp. That was when we saw the Lads skiing up our track.

“I wonder where they’re going?” Carl said.

Soon, they were on us, making good time in our tracks. “Right, we’re off to make the third ascent of the Infinite Spur,” Gren Hinton said, beaming, his voice ringing with an Aussie accent. Holy crap! said the voice in my head. The route had only seen two ascents in twenty-three years, and now there would be two parties on it at once!

“No shit,” Carl observed. “We’re planning on climbing the route, too.”

“Looks like we’ll beat you to it,” Glen Deal, an American, said with a smile.

We talked some, feeling each other out. Carl and I learned that they’d turned around on Mt. Hunter.

“How are you planning to get off?” Carl asked.

“The Sultana Ridge and down Mt. Crosson. I went up and down it last week, by myself, while he was sick,” Gren said, pointing at Glen.

“I caught a cold, but I’m ready to climb now,” Glen said.

“Carl and I spent four days acclimatizing on Crosson. We’re planning on coming down that way too.” There was a pregnant pause, then I added, jokingly, “Well, we’ve got a Bibler I-Tent, so if you guys could chop tent platforms to that size, we’d appreciate it.”

“We don’t have a tent. We’re going with bivy bags,” Gren said. There was another pregnant pause; Carl and I couldn’t quite believe what we’d heard.

“You’re going onto the Infinite Spur without a tent?” Carl asked.

“You bet, mate,” Gren effused.

“Well, good luck with that.” The Lads skied west while Carl and I skied east, back toward camp.

“Can you fucking believe there’s another team on the Spur?” Carl spat when we got into camp.

“Ya, man, what are the chances? Sounds like they were gunning for the Lowe/Kennedy on Hunter. I guess if you get shut down on that route, the logical next step is to go for one that’s twice as long and twice as hard.”

“Hmmm.”

MAY 26: We skied to our cache, dug it up, and added it to our packs, which now weighed over fifty pounds each. We left our approach skis there (both of us had a second pair, to facilitate retrieving the first pair, back in base camp). We followed the Lads’ footsteps over the second pass. A 90-foot rappel got us over the bergschrund and onto the west fork of the Lacuna Glacier, where we followed more footsteps as close as we dared, to get to the 9,000-foot face. Here, a half dozen hanging and tumbling glaciers calve tons of blue glacial ice that trigger snow avalanches into the three-quarter-mile wide cauldron footing the south face. It is a killing zone. Carl and I gave it respect and pitched our tent out of its firing range.

MAY 27: We started toward the face, crossed the threshold of the avalanches, and picked up our pace. Carl and I wanted to be through the danger and onto the relative safety of the Spur as fast as possible.

“Holy shit!” Carl bellowed back along the rope. “The Lads camped here!”

A wall of snowballs fenced their sleeping platform from the face, while two tendrils of recent debris reached past their site. Carl and I scampered on and soon made out the Lads entering a large couloir left of the route proper. That gully served as a drainage for two hanging glaciers fronted by 200- to 400-foot-high seracs and two tumbling glaciers. Much of the ice and avalanches that the glaciers spat blasted through this gully, creating a massive fan of debris on the glacier below.

“Lads! Lads! The route is over here!” I bellowed. They yelled back but then continued. Carl and I soon lost sight of them as we jogged breathlessly through avalanche debris.

Soon we stood panting below the ‘schrund, nervously flaking our ropes.

“Oh, man, can you believe where those guys are climbing?” Carl gasped.

“No. You couldn’t get me to go in there with a gun to my head.”

Carl hustled us up 700 feet of snow and onto the face proper, where we were finally out of the firing line of the seracs. Then we heard the Lads’ bloodcurdling screams followed by the thunder and roar of an avalanche crashing down their gully and running out onto the glacier, like a slithering tentacle of the Kraken.

FUCK! bellowed in my head. The avalanche came to rest. I heard one last, loud scream…then silence. I yodeled and yelled but got nothing in response.

“Son of a bitch…. They’re dead,” I said, with no one to hear me. I climbed to Carl. We screamed and shouted some more but got no reply. A darkness descended. What could we do? What should we do?

“I don’t know if anyone could have survived that hit. The debris took a full minute to come to rest on the glacier,” I said.

“Well, if they need help, they’re going to have to get themselves to the glacier. There’s no way I’m going into that gully,” Carl said. I agreed.

There was no help we could provide, so we kept on climbing. It was my turn to lead. I looked above to four parallel cracks splitting monolithic golden granite. Three were less than overhanging and held gunmetal ice and crusty blobs of snow; the fourth was over vertical, finger width, and darkened inside by black lichen.

“I’m going to have to haul my pack on this pitch,” I said, surveying the options.

Carl squinted up from under the brim of his blue helmet with a blue handicapped sticker front and center on it. A sticker he’d earned the hard way. My helmet sported a Patagonia surfboard sticker on the front and a white rectangle on the back that read in bold black lettering: BAD COP NO DONUT.

“I think I can lead that with my pack on,” Carl said.

“Man, if you can, we’ll be way faster.”

“Hand me the rack, youth,” Carl said with a grin. He was forty-seven; I was forty-one.

Then it got a little hard to comprehend. Opting for the first of the four cracks, Carl cranked his way up the intermediately difficult climbing, 5.7 or 5.8, like he was enjoying a mixed pitch at a roadside crag. It was a breathtaking display of proficiency, élan, and POWER. That pitch set the tone for so much of the Spur: 5.4 to 5.9 mixed climbing clothed in crisp, fresh, frozen snow from the recent moist storm, iced-up cracks in solid granite that yielded great drytooling—when the climber uses the pick of his ice-ax on the rock rather than his gloved, or bare, hands; we used our hands directly on the rock around 10 percent of the time—good protection, and secure anchors. We took to clipping our packs in with a locking carabiner and lanyard and shucking them off at every anchor; those rests, gained while we belayed, helped us recover.

We continued shouting for the Lads. The thought of their shattered bodies lying under all those tons of ice weighed on us. Why the fuck had they gone there?

Late in the day, amidst a pulsating mist, I led us onto the very edge of the Spur. Carl mounted a fantastically symmetrical pyramid of jig-sawed granite blocks. We anchored and flattened the snow ridge on top and then set up our wee yellow Todd tent. (Todd Bibler was the designer and owner of Bibler Tents. We liked to call his gear “Todd stuff.”)

“Blanchard/Tobin party on the Infinite Spur for Denali Park,” I said into my VHF radio for the fifth time. No reply. We hadn’t heard, or seen, the Lads since the avalanche; now that we’d stopped climbing, the possibility of their deaths towered ever taller like a dark shadow in my mind.

“I think they’re dead,” Carl said in a somber tone.

“Ya, me too. Fuck.”

“I’ll try to call Nora on my cell phone. I want to save the battery, though, so I can call her from higher on the route.” No luck. Were we too low in the gut of the cauldron for either the radio or the cell phone to work?

MAY 28: I tried my radio again. This time I got a response from Kahiltna Base Camp. My heart beat a half dozen times as my trigger finger hovered over the push-to-talk button. As soon as I reported the accident, word would get out and our families would hear about two climbers lost on the Infinite Spur of Mt. Foraker. I pushed the button and explained the details.

By midmorning, a fixed-wing aircraft was making passes across the south face trying to spot the Lads with information supplied over my radio. The plane, however, had no success. Carl and I concluded that they were dead in the debris below the face. As that funereal moment passed between us, we lowered our heads.

As a counterpoint, the climbing was fabulous. Beautiful tawny granite. Carl and I had an absolute blast figuring out our pitches, ropelength after ropelength, our heavy packs snapping tight and weighty to each successive anchor. The kindness of direct sunlight in the morning was juxtaposed against yet another invasive mist in the afternoon, cold but also mystical and mythical, like climbing into an Arthurian legend.

Late in the day, we heard the baritone rumble of a Hercules circling somewhere above the clouds. Next, a Pave Hawk helicopter thumped into the cauldron and made a half dozen amazingly precise passes, contouring the topography of the face 100 feet out, like a wood router following a jig. The ship gained elevation with each pass. Carl and I gazed down dumbstruck at the prowess of the pilot.

“I wonder what kind of navigation devices those guys have on board.”

“I don’t think that they’d be allowed to tell us even if we asked.”

Still no sighting of the Lads. The park declared them “missing and presumed dead.”

The temperature dove and the mist withdrew. Carl was leading. I heard him shouting to someone out to his left—and then I heard shouts in reply! What in the hell? Another party on the Infinite Spur! Where had they come from? It couldn’t be the Lads, because the Lads were dead. But it WAS the Lads!

And there they were, bedded down atop a serac in a tumbling glacier, with the deadly aquamarine arc of a higher serac rearing above like a big ocean wave poised to crash. They hadn’t learned a fucking thing!

Carl and I gained the white edge of the Spur and flattened it out for our tent. We were camped at about 11,000 feet, with 3,000 feet of exposure falling dramatically from either edge of our tent. The Lads were level with us. I tried to contact Mt. McKinley National Park (now Denali National Park) on my radio. No luck. Carl tried his cell phone.

“Fuck! I can see fucking Anchorage. I don’t know why I can’t talk to Nora!” he cursed.

“Here, let me try calling my wife in Alberta,” I said. Catherine answered on the second ring. The shock—and relief—in her voice was audible: All anyone knew was that two climbers might have been dead. For some fucked-up-money-grubbing-dogs-pissing-out-their-territories reason, Carl’s cell provider didn’t cover his call, while my provider did. We’d made National Public Radio: “Two climbers lost on the Infinite Spur.” I explained the situation and asked Catherine to call Nora. Nora called the park.

“The whole world thinks that you’re dead!” I shouted across to the Lads. “Do you want us to call your parents?”

“No, mate,” Gren bellowed. “They don’t give a shit anyway!”

“Yes, please,” yelled Glen. “Please call my mom.”

I handed the phone to Carl and wrote Glen’s mom’s number in the snow as he shouted it to us. When I called, she was overjoyed to hear that her baby boy was still among the living.

MAY 29: We convinced the Lads to abandon their line of death and join us on the relative safety of the Spur. The park sent a Lama helicopter in to get a confirmed sighting of the Lads, which was accomplished via my instructions over the radio and the Lads waving to the ship as they crossed the snow slope from their glacial bivy to reach Carl and me on the Spur.

Carl and I packed up our camp carefully. Our situation felt so much like a picture I’d seen of Michael Kennedy and Mugs Stump perched atop a similar feature during their attempt on the Shining Wall—the west face of Gasherbrum IV—two corners of their Todd tent dangling over thin air. One shocking difference between the image in my mind and the reality around me was a thirty-foot-long line of frozen urine and feces that funneled away from our tent to disappear over the lip of the Spur!

We got the story from the Lads. Glen had finished a lead in their gully and was about to bring Gren up when he heard the rumble. Looking up, he saw the sky billowing white. He screamed and leaned into the wall and pulled his pack over his head. Then he got pummeled by chunks and inundated by dust-fine snow that got into any opening, including his mouth. The avalanche passed, and Gren bellowed the last shout I’d heard. Glen thought he had broken bones and was pleasantly surprised to realize that he’d suffered no more than bruises; likewise with Gren.

When I questioned their choice of line, Gren said, “Ah, mate, I don’t mind taking a little risk to jump-start a route.” Then he went on to explain how they’d observed the face the day before and only seen avalanches after 1 p.m.—the storm snow cleaning off, yes, but my suggestion that seracs don’t observe the same timeline earned only a blank stare. Their further reasoning was that they’d planned to climb through the night and be out of the gully by 11 the next morning, but Glen’s leads had taken too long. It was obvious that the Lads were not enjoying the partnership bond that Carl and I were. But now it was a beautiful day with the Lacuna Glacier stretched out behind us like the staircase descending from Valhalla, and the Lads, despite their challenges, were ALIVE!

Midday we gained the ice arête, a 1,500-foot-long spine of ice canted at 50 degrees that somehow held a three-foot depth of snow. The four of us leapfrogged up the arête using the only tool for the job: a shovel. With lethal falls to either side and no protection to be had, as the ice was unreachable underfoot, Carl and I shortened the rope between us in anticipation of one of us having to jump off the other side should the other fall.

We’d been wallowing up the arête for over a thousand feet, astride a razor’s edge of insecurity with nothing anchoring us to the mountain. A small wall of granite now paralleled us 100 feet to the west. I left the arête to nervously kick steps across the snow to it. If the snow avalanched, Carl would have had to launch himself down the eastern side of the arête in hopes that the rope between us would cut into the spine of the arête and stop us. Big physics. It was such a relief to touch the diamond-hard granite and sink in three, beautiful, solid cams. Carl followed up to my anchor.

“Fuck, man,” he said when he got to me, “I just had to play dad and break up an argument between the Lads.”

“What do you mean?”

“They started swearing and threatening each other. I had to raise my voice and chastise, ‘No! You guys can’t be fighting up here—you have to get along up here!’”

The Lads came across in our footsteps. Clouds boiled up from the cauldron footing the south face and Spur, and we could see the thickening juggernaut of a front advancing from Cook Inlet. A storm was coming, and we were going to get smacked.

The granite wall abutted us against an intrusion of fractured, metamorphic-looking rock. Carl stitched together anchorage, and then we swung our axes for 2.5 hours to hack a modest six-by-three-foot ledge into armor-colored ice below the rock. The work was as exhausting as breaking stone with a hammer and chisel. Toward the end, my grip strength would fail, leaving my ax thrashing from my wrist loop like a fish pulled out of the water.

I’d brought a silk-weight guide’s tarp, and we tied it to ice screws to form an awning over our partially pitched tent. The Lads dug into the snow slope fifty feet east of us, their position more exposed. The last thing we heard was Gren shouting at Glen, “Dig a fucking hole for your head, mate, so you can put your pack over it and have room to breathe.”

It began to storm that night. All the spindrifting snow slid right over the guide’s tarp, a miraculous improvement over all the other nights I’d spent getting out with a shovel to keep the intrusive snow from pushing me off the mountain. The Lads were soon totally buried and invisible under the snow.

It stormed for thirty-six hours.

MAY 31: We were able to get weather information from the shortwave and the repeating weather forecast on my VHF radio. The forecast promised an end to the storm. Carl and I crawled out to stand and piss for the first time in a day and a half. Once again, we were worried about the Lads. Were they alive? Had they frozen to death?

“LADS! Lads!” I bellowed. There was movement from within the whiteness. Gren’s bloated face emerged, smiling. He told us that they’d been able to brew up only once during the storm. It was obvious that they’d suffered physically, while Carl and I had gorged ourselves and drunk gallons. Our tent and awning had granted us sanctuary, while our willpower had preserved a piece of reindeer Landjäger sausage for the two of us for the next three days; we couldn’t eat enough of it, especially coupled with cheese sticks.

The fractured rock overhead looked hard—and proved to be the most challenging climbing on the route. I chose to leave my pack and haul it. The pitch delivered me into the miracle of direct sunlight. I watched it wash benevolently over the Lads at their tent site below, where they clung like lethargic caterpillars half-covered in the yellow cocoons of their nylon bivy sacks. My own days as a young alpinist came to mind—situations that I had learned from and become more tactical for having survived. An old joke, “I hope we don’t die so that we can try something harder,” rang in my head.

Carl and I finished our fifth day on the left flank of the Spur. Steely ice took hours of exhausting hacking to yield a platform. We gained six inches of horizontal by cutting one-foot cubes of snow and bricklaying them onto the shallow snow of the outer edge, saving ourselves an additional hour of hacking. The night was calm and cold, so we didn’t string our awning.

JUNE 1: Carl and I climbed onto the amazing knife-edge ridge of snow that slices out from the upper bulk of Foraker to form the Infinite Spur. We profited from the Lads’ footsteps. Within 150 feet, we came to the bivy ledge they’d left an hour earlier. It was flat and comfortable, but directly on top of a cornice—an unsupported wave of snow with nothing but 7,000 feet of air below!

“We came upon this flat spot in the dusk and decided to bivy,” Glen confessed when we caught them up. Then he exclaimed, “In the morning, we saw that we were bivied on top of a cornice!”

“Why are you stopped here?” I asked. The Lads sat lassoed to a jumble of granite blocks in glaring sunlight.

“The snow is getting soft,” Glen said. “We think the slope above us could avalanche. What do you think?”

The surface snow had been cooked to snowball in the last hour, but it was still holding together. I wanted to get up the slope quickly.

“I don’t think that it’s ripe yet,” I said. I saw no recognition of my western-Canadian avalanche jargon. “It’s not isothermal yet. I’ll go feel it out.”

Fifty feet into the slope, the sun swung to perpendicular. Within ten minutes, the surface snow had cooked to the consistency of porridge; wet, snotty sloughs began hissing down. Fuck. I was totally exposed and felt like I’d screwed up—I knew that I’d screwed up. I dodged some of the sloughs, dug in, and prayed nothing bigger was coming my way. It was a little mind-boggling to see how fast the snow had cooked to crap, but then the sun glided off and the slope fell into shade. Ten minutes later, the surface had frozen to plaster, and I couldn’t have started an avalanche with a hand grenade.

“That was fucking dumb of me,” I confessed to Carl when he arrived at my anchor.

“Man, I thought that big one was going to take you off. It looked like ocean froth when it surged around you. I was mighty glad to be anchored to rock.”

The Lads played through, and then the four of us stepped from the breathtaking tightrope in the sky to stand anchored to golden granite against the broad upper swath of Mt. Foraker. I led off, turning the steep rock overhead to the east. The Lads planned to tackle the wall straight on.

Forty-five minutes later, Carl climbed up to my anchor.

“Fuck, man. I had to be the dad again,” he spat.

“What happened?”

“They had another fight, and Gren took a swing at Glen!”

“He punched him?”

“Tried to. Glen ducked, and I had to start yelling and telling them to get the fuck along! That’s when Glen said to Gren, ‘When we get down from here, man, we’re brawlin’!’”

I choked on a guffaw. “You’re shitting me. He said, ‘We’re brawlin’?”

“‘We’re brawlin’!’ But then Glen launched into a rage, charged up, and took a thirty-foot fall—and I’m sure it was because he was so riled up.”

“Are they okay?”

“Ya, the fall calmed them both down.”

I let thirty seconds pass. “We’re brawlin’?” I cocked my eyebrows.

“We’re brawlin’!” Carl said with a grin, and we both burst out laughing.

One last tumbling glacier straddled the top of the Spur. East of it lay a wide snow couloir with intermittent rock on its right and the crumbling edge of the tumbling glacier to its left. If we could cross to it and ride its right-hand edge, we would be out of the range of serac fall. It looked like we’d be able to simul-climb, moving at the same time with pieces of rock equipment between us to hold a fall.

“Let’s show the Lads how to deal with a serac,” I said. Carl and I charged across the traverse and got to the rock and out of harm’s way. It was heartwarming to see the Lads pop up above their steep cliff and, like a couple of wee and eager chipmunks, scamper to our steps. For the remainder of that misty, frigid day, the four of us took turns breaking trail.

JUNE 2: Carl and I got away early, before we heard anything from the Lads. We moved together, simul-climbing up a broad gully. As we exited the gully, the slope angle backed off and we untied; by and by, ascending into clouds, we gained the apex of the south face and a fine, flat camp against a crevasse and sheltering wave of snow.

The morning brought beautiful blue sky and true Arctic temperatures. My fingers froze within minutes of exposing my liner gloves, and I rammed my insensate hands back into my double-layered expedition mitts and swung my arms through full and aggressive circles to get blood back into my capillaries. We climbed away, but I couldn’t keep my hands from freezing. For the first and only time in my climbing career, I put air-activated hand warmers into my mitts. I was damn glad that I had them.

Some 16,812 feet above sea level, on the south summit of Mt. Foraker, Carl was ahead of me on our rope shortened for glacier travel. He stopped and bent over at the waist and braced his hands against his knees. I thought about how very, very hard you had to work Carl Tobin to get him to sink into that position.

One mile north-northwest and 588 feet higher, Carl and I walked onto the summit of Mt. Foraker. My hands were finally warm. I had a perfect view of the south face of Denali and could see the Cassin Ridge, which I’d climbed with Kevin Doyle eighteen years earlier, from top to bottom—that amazing and breathtaking line separating sunlight from shadow for two vertical miles.

“Bubba! We did it!” Carl bellowed, and then we bear-hugged each other.

“Let’s leave some candies here for the Lads,” he added, grinning. And there, at the base of a sole bamboo wand, we nestled two Werther’s Originals in the glinting snow, then headed off to find our descent down the Sultana Ridge.

Where you can find The Echo: Stories From the Edge of Survival

This new 352-page hardcover book ($30) is available directly from Patagonia.

The post Barry Blanchard Shares an Epic Encounter on One of Alaska’s Infamously Hard Routes appeared first on Climbing.

A new documentary currently in the film festival circuit, Catching Pinecones, profiles Herb and Jan Conn, who made over 200 first ascents across the country while living a pure dirtbag lifestyle. We preview the film and interview the directors to find out what the Conn story can teach climbers in 2026, and where they can watch it.

Before there were Stonemasters squatting in Camp 4, before Fred Beckey and his dilapidated station wagon, before Yvon Chouinard and his diet of porcupines and cat food, long before all of that, there were the Conns. Jan and Herb Conn put all of the above—plus every vehicle-dweller with granite in their bones, and all other self-proclaimed dirtbags—to shame. They were doing it before you were born and they lived it until the very end.

In 1947, in order to rove the country in search of rock, the Conns moved into a panel truck, where they set up a cot and stowed all their gear and earthly possessions, which were few. In their post-war euphoria, without the shackles of full-time employment, they bagged first ascents from Texas to New Hampshire. After they climbed Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, Jan teamed up with another woman to make the first all-female ascent. The Conns even made the first—and possibly only—ascent of Mt. Rushmore, scrambling between Washington’s wig and Jefferson’s cheek.

But when they laid eyes upon the Needles of South Dakota, their traveling days were over. They had found their own personal rock Valhalla. “This is where we belong,” Jan said. So they moved into a literal hole in the wall—one already blasted into the side of a small cliff. They called their eight-foot-wide abode the “Conncave.” Herb lived there until the day he died in 2012, and Jan soldiered on in the cave until an accident engulfed it in flames—she watched her home burn down while perched in a chair outside with her cat on her lap. She spent a couple more years living with neighboring climbers before passing away in 2023. Now, a new film brings the story of the Conns to life.

Catching Pinecones: The story of Herb and Jan Conn

In the complicated, over-stimulating days of 2026, the story of the Conns is a beautiful reminder of what a life of following your heart really looks like. Recently, I interviewed two climbers who collaborated to bring that story to life. Their film Catching Pinecones, which I previewed a couple weeks ago, is currently making the festival circuit. But it all began when one of those climbers, Chad Heddleston, noticed that a bunch of the routes he was climbing on the East Coast had been developed by the Conns.

Conn routes around the country remain some of Heddleston’s favorites today, from Seneca Rocks in West Virginia to the Needles of South Dakota. “I really like Wicked Picket (5.8-) in the Picket Range of the Needles,” Heddleston says. “It’s got this wild exposure pitch. And I definitely love one of Jan’s favorites: Spire One (5.7+). But also the Mules Ears Spires in Big Bend [in Texas].”

Heddleston first became interested in telling the Conns’ story after meeting Jan back in 2015 in South Dakota. “Well, our whole story is already out there,” Jan told him. But Heddleston insisted that while her story had been told, it remained in threads here and there, in trip reports and old videos, unconsolidated. He wanted to stitch the strands together to tell the full story of these ahead-of-their-time American rock climbers.

How the Catching Pinecones documentary came to be

What started as “a fun little project” of Heddleston interviewing Jan Conn turned into a real documentary when he teamed up with photojournalist and fellow climber Parker Michels-Boyce. “I was very nervous to mess up these legit heroes’ story,” Heddleston told Climbing. “So I held off for a number of years until Parker signed on.” It was 2020 and Jan was 96 at the time. “We knew we had to jump on it and get it going,” Michels-Boyce says.

Previously, Heddleston had mostly just recorded audio of Jan. So the duo set about recording video interviews with her. “She was cracking jokes about four guys and two cameras,” Heddleston says, laughing. They also sat down with Jan’s many friends in the South Dakota climbing scene, and even polled Conrad Anker on the Conns (“No one did more for rock climbing than Jan and Herb Conn,” Anker opined.) Their last interview with Jan took place about a month before she passed away.

One friend of the Conns they didn’t manage to get on record? Yvon Chouinard. The couple apparently met him when he was a teen dirtbagging in the Tetons. “They crossed paths pretty early in [Yvon’s] life and may have had a big impact,” Michels-Boyce says. “He was 17, living in the park with a big, bushy beard, poaching all his food.” Chouinard apparently got kicked out of the park because he exceeded his camping limits, but his car was broken down, so he had to go find a car part and fix it up before he could heed the park’s demands.

Heddleston recalls another tale involving the Patagonia founder from around the late-’90s: “Supposedly, Yvon Chouinard gave [Jan] a new rope and they immediately cut it in half because they didn’t climb with long ropes. They probably used it in the early 2000s.” That likely would have been one of the last times the Conns climbed.

The weird and wonderful lesson of the Conns

Something Jan says toward the end of Catching Pinecones stuck with me. She reflects that if you follow your personal passions, good will come out of it. “They really pursued their genuine desires and they made contributions because of that,” Heddleston says. “Go do your own thing and you’ll make genuine contributions.”

At a time when the motivations to climb might involve attention, fame, ego, or chasing sponsorships, the reason the Conns climbed serves as a powerful foil: for the love of it. “A lot of what they did nobody even knew about until years later,” Michels-Boyce reflects. “As Jan said, ‘You climb because you want to climb.’ At the heart of it, I think that’s the purest approach.”

There’s a common trope in rock climbing that the sport is inherently selfish. It’s about you and the route—a hero’s journey on stone. Climbing isn’t a team sport and goals are intrinsically self-centric. There are plenty of examples that debunk that sentiment, from the selflessness of route development, to the people that take belaying seriously, to the strong communities that climbing fosters.

The story of the Conns represents another powerful counterpoint to this notion of climbing as selfish. Well ahead of their time, Herb and Jan opted out of careers, societal norms, and the expectation that they’d become parents in order to devote their lives to what they loved. In so doing, they gave the world well over 200 new routes. The Conns made over 230 first ascents in the Black Hills of South Dakota alone. Through their extensive spelunking adventures, they also helped map caves, including 65 miles of Jewel Cave, which is still not fully charted. They touched the lives of the many climbers whose paths they crossed, from Chouinard to Heddleston to the South Dakota climbing community. And they showed us all—to this day—a purer way to approach this life.

“Catching Pinecones,” the name of the documentary about the Conns, comes from a musical Jan wrote that came alive on a local South Dakota stage. Jan was also an avid musician and her bright voice and strumming serves as the soundtrack for the film. The idea is that if you catch a pinecone, you grasp something between heaven and earth—much like the mythical life these climbers managed to lead.

WWCD: What Would the Conns Do?

After watching Catching Pinecones, I had a fleeting thought that I was doing it all wrong—that I should have carved out a life more like the Conns, and maybe still could. So I asked Heddleston and Michels-Boyce if the time they spent with Jan and the Conn story changed their own philosophy of or approach to life.

“When in doubt, run it out!” Heddleston joked. But considering the extensive questing they did in these early days of the sport and the limited gear they had access to, massive runouts were part of the deal. He says he feels more inspired to just go for it.

“It makes me look at everything I put my energy into,” Michels-Boyce reflects. “Is it fun? Is it something I want to be doing? Am I going to be proud when I finish it?” The Conns, after all, did exactly nothing they considered meaningless.

Aside from the meaningful messages of the film, Catching Pinecones is also filled with strange and whimsical details that even Wes Anderson couldn’t manufacture, from whimsical details of the Conncave to Jan adding sound effects to her songs by gurgling in a small bowl of water. From the deep to the eccentric, below are a few of my favorite quotes from Jan:

“If you don’t think you can climb down, you shouldn’t have climbed up.”

With no harnesses or belay devices, rappelling was a treacherous and uncomfortable affair. The Conn way was to downclimb.

“I couldn’t let him get ahead of me like that.”

Jan after making the second ascent of Herbie’s Horror (5.9), a slabby testpiece at the time (1942); the film shows Chris Sharma toproping the unprotectable (and un-bolted) route.

“We didn’t have chalk. We didn’t know anything about that. We had muscles.”

That feeling when you get sandbagged by your grandma, who climbed with a hip belay, boots, and not a trace of chalk.

“I’m not anything a woman should be.”

I can see why Jan felt this way, growing up in the late 1920s and 1930s. But in retrospect, she is everything a woman should be.

“We got sick of smiling at people.”

Jan recalls a brief stint when she and Herb worked part-time at a ski resort. Unsurprisingly, they couldn’t bear it very long.

“I don’t know where people get the courage to have kids. We didn’t think we could raise them to fit in with this world.”

Standing testament to the Conns self-described identity as misfits, they focused their lives on one thing: climbing.

“I still talk to Herb and he answers.”

One of the most interesting aspects of the film explores the deep yet unusual level of connection and climbing partnership between Herb and Jan. Herb passed away on April 16, 2012.

Where you can watch Catching Pinecones

After playing at film festivals across the world (from Minneapolis to Iceland) through early 2027, Catching Pinecones will be available through VPM (a Virginia channel) and their affiliate American Public Television stations starting in April 2027. “Eventually, YouTube is likely,” Michels-Boyce adds.

The filmmakers also noted that they can arrange local screenings through climbing gyms or at other community hubs upon request. Climbers can reach out to catchingpineconesfilm@gmail.com for screening requests.

The post Life Lessons From the Climbing Couple Who Became Dirtbags in the 1940s appeared first on Climbing.

When gear reaches the end of its lifespan—functionally or due to safety recommendations—don’t toss it. Instead, try these 11 weird but wonderful hacks for reusing old climbing gear around the house and in your everyday life.

Despite my efforts to present as a sane and well-rounded person, I tend to identify first and foremost as a climber. That means I want everyone to know I climb. In everyday life, this is easy—I just add a chalky handprint to my work slacks or loudly complain about my tendonitis until someone reminds me that they don’t care. But at home, once I’ve kicked off my approach shoes and tucked away my Patagonia puffy, it’s not as easy to be insufferable. What if a neighbor pops by? What if a new acquaintance comes over? How will they know?

Yes, there are limitless options for climber-forward home decor. But what if you find crimp-handled mugs and climber-shaped wall hooks hopelessly tacky, and still want to virtue-signal aggressively to all your house guests? Reduce, reuse, recycle, baby. If, like me, you have absurd amounts of decrepit gear that should be retired, do as I do and repurpose them as household hacks. Do they look good? No. Are they functional? Almost.

Based upon my own personal experience as a long-time competitive climber and gear tester, here are 11 ways I use my old climbing gear around the house and beyond.

Accessory cord for ceiling fixtures

Using cordelette to tie stuff together is an obvious solution. Using it to tie a disco ball to your loft is somewhat less so. When a friend gave me this house-warming present and I found I could barely lift it, I decided not to trust it to my go-to utility cord (an old shoe lace from a pair of La Sportiva Bushidos). Instead, I broke out this 6mm cordelette and hung it in my loft with a munter-mule overhand. Haven’t had it crater into my desk yet.

Ice picks as cabinet pulls

You can only file your ice picks down for so many seasons before they become unusable. At that point, you can either recycle them (sad) or bolt your hundreds of dollars of technical steel to your kitchen as cabinet pulls. This was my ex’s idea, but because he installed his old ice picks on my van, I get to take credit. They are not the most comfortable to pull on, but I like to think of that as a good incentive to keep my callouses up.

Carabiners as clothespins

When I got an opportunity to test the Trango Quantum Alpine Draws, I was initially excited about the super tiny carabiners. Then I tried to use them with gloves on. These days, I use these micro-carabiners for the one thing they do best: hold wet clothes onto my laundry line. Through my empirical testing, I’ve found they boast a performance rating up to wet overalls in strong wind.

Webbing as a laundry line

Shortly after I started using carabiners as clothespins, I realized they looked rather lonely and out of place without any slings to accompany them. Around the same time, massively baggy clothes became fashionable, and my old laundry line started to sag under the weight of my newly oversized clothes. So, I switched to something much more robust: 1-inch webbing.

Carabiner as pants cinch

Sometimes my pants are too big because I’ve been climbing too much. Other times it’s simply because I’ve tried to keep up with the baggy-trousers fashion (see above). The fix: a carabiner between belt loops. But that’s not the only climber-minded way of keeping your pants on. You can also do as my friend does and use a single-length sling to tie up your jorts. Or, do as my other, cleverer friend does and take the core out of an old rope, stitch the empty sheath flat, and sew buckles to either end. The result: a belt that actually looks good.

Slings as curtain tie-backs

The uses for old soft goods know no end. I use a set of old alpine draws to hold my curtains open, and a carabiner to hold them closed if I don’t want the neighbor’s porch light shining into my eyeballs in the middle of the night. My tip: wash the slings first, or they’ll leave little dirt streaks on your nice curtains.

Antihydral as a salsa dancing aid

The men in my salsa class like to complain about my sweaty hands. So, I’ve begun applying either antihydral or Rhino Tip Juice to my hands the night before class. This both cuts down on the amount of comments I get, and makes it less likely that I slip out during a spin and go launching into the furniture.

Cam as vertical storage

I do intend to find the motivation to mail this damaged #3 cam somewhere to get its trigger wire repaired. But in the meantime, it’s doing a fine job of keeping my apron off the floor. It’s also helping me make use of organizational vertical space, which I know is a thing because my mom made me watch a lot of HGTV growing up.

Alpine draw for holiday light storage

My hooks are rarely big enough to accommodate an entire extension cord, hose, or coil of holiday lights. However, they are big enough to hold an alpine draw. You can either saddlebag your coil or girth-hitch it for a tighter cinch.

Bouldering brush as toothbrush

Hey, sometimes you get desperate. That desperation goes both ways. I have used a toothbrush to scrub holds during last-ditch send attempts. And, more embarrassingly, I have brushed my teeth with a bouldering brush.

The post 11 Weird Ways I Use Old Climbing Gear in Everyday Life appeared first on Climbing.