I remember flipping through 5280 Magazine‘s 2011 “Top of the Town” issue to the section where “Best Bike Shop” appeared, and seeing a full-page photo of my friend Scott Taylor sitting on a bike in front the south wall of Salvagetti Bicycle Workshop, and I started giggling like a little kid and pumping my fist [...]
I am a disappointingly unattractive drag queen, but I don’t feel so bad about it when I am surrounded by 40 other equally homely drag queens. Each year at the Snowsports Industry Association SnowShow, there is a fundraiser called “Ramp It Up,” and during this fundraiser, 40 to 50 “industry veterans,” all men, dress up in [...]
When you go on a climbing or backpacking trip and someone says, “I’ll bring the coffee,” do you secretly bring your own stash to supplement whatever they’re bringing, because you know you’re going to drink double the amount of coffee they think you’re going to drink, and then some? I do too. This is not [...]
This year’s Outdoor Retailer Winter Market marked many things, not least of which was the first time I got a pro deal while standing at a urinal. Thanks to the QR code on the SOLE ad pasted above the toilets and in the men’s restroom stalls at the Salt Palace, premium footbeds may soon be [...]
Christmas Eve, 2011, I am going to throw up on a spin class bicycle. Sweat is raining off my temples and pooling on the floor beneath my bike. This is my first spin class ever. Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is playing, and is now the soundtrack in my evolving [...]
For years, I have known to pee on rocks at high altitudes because mountain goats crave salt, and if you pee on plants, mountain goats will eat them until they’re gone. I have seen goats milling around the restrooms at Summit Lake on Colorado’s Mount Evans, kind of bashfully but definitely intently making their [...]
Andy. He has many talents. There’s a reason you clip everything to your harness when climbing long routes: If you drop something, chances are pretty good you’re not going to get it back. Which is why I was less than optimistic that I could find my camera after accidentally dropping it from the top of [...]
One Saturday morning last October, my friend Greg and I were running down the North Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon, close to halfway through 26 miles of trail. We had run 4 miles and would run about 4 more to Phantom Ranch, where we could double-fist coffee and Lemmy lemonade at the cantina before [...]
“So I was thinking,” I said to Dustin in front of his house in Phoenix, “you can be either Santa or the elf, but I think the elf should lead all the pitches, because trying to see footholds over a huge Santa belly and beard is going to be tough.” And then: ‘Twas the [...]
The Primus Profile DUO has more or less been my kitchen for the past 5 months, riding around in the back of my Subaru through something like 13,000 miles and 10 states. At one point, I thought maybe I should get it out of my car to save some space, and just use the small [...]
Every year, my pal Nick and I inevitably have a chat about our goals for the year, at some coffee shop in Denver. In 2009, it was already late February or March by the time it came up in conversation. I probably told Nick about my goals, which usually include sleeping outside at least 30 [...]
“Do you have a Barnes & Noble membership, boss?” I have noticed lately that baristas, waitstaff, and on Monday, a clerk at a Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica, have all been addressing me in terms of endearment like bro, man, and dude. Apparently, I am not yet a “sir.” Which makes me feel good, [...]
On Nov. 25, Black Friday, Patagonia placed an ad in the New York Times, telling readers, “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” As they said in a blog post on The Cleanest Line, they felt it was time to address the issue of consumerism head-on, and laid out how they were addressing their environmental impact — telling [...]
This might be my favorite piece of climbing gear I used in all of 2011: The Wild Things Guide Pack. I got one of these to review back in July, and then spent the better part of two months beating on it over several days and several dozen pitches in Idaho, Yosemite, and Washington. I [...]
Remember that time you took that photo of you and your friend(s) standing on the summit of something and it was the most exciting photo ever? Of course you don’t. Look through your outdoor photo collection. Do you have 100 photos of the same thing, of you and various friends standing in front of various [...]
I have this paper map in my car where I’ve been highlighting every stretch of road I’ve driven on in the past 3 1/2 months, and there’s not a very simple explanation to the 12,000-mile line I’ve drawn. The places I’ve been, driving around, finding a storyline about the mythical American road trip, don’t fit [...]
My profile of the Grand Teton is up on Adventure Journal today — if you’ve ever seen it, or seen great photos of it, you know what I mean when I say, “The Grand Teton was not the first mountain I ever saw, but it might as well have been.” Click here to launch the [...]
My friend Greg had hit the wall about four miles from the top of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and every time I looked back, he was a few more feet behind. Greg is a trail runner, but had been sitting at sea level for all but the last 21 hours, and had [...]
A year ago, a friend asked me what I thought of the Street Strider. He had seen it on The Biggest Loser or something like that and was thinking about getting one. I Googled it, and I thought, if I saw someone rolling down the street on one of those, I would point and laugh. [...]
Maybe you only ask yourself this question while bicycling or running: Can I beat up that dog? When it comes down to it and a dog is chasing you, you start to calculate your odds of survival if the dog actually attacks you. Most breeds, you think yeah, maybe I could. Not pit bulls or [...]
City of Rocks, Idaho, early August 2011: Two men in their late 20s/early 30s sit at a picnic table in the shadow of the Upper Breadloves East formation as the sun sets after a long day of climbing. Their dinner is: Red beans and rice One package of refried beans 2/3 of a one-pound block [...]
Not so long ago, my pal Nick made up his mind that he was going to get himself a motherfucking Trek 970 if it was the last thing he ever did. And it was beautiful. Not the bike, mind you, but the pursuit of the bike. It was nothing short of Ponce de Leon searching [...]
Give me a tent with two doors, easy setup, quality construction, make it reasonably lightweight, and I’m pretty happy. I spent a month of nights all over the West beating on the Sierra Designs Lightning HT 2, and it proved itself to be a very solid, very lightweight backpacking tent, with a couple interesting design [...]
This is my friend Jayson. When I’m telling people about him, a lot of times I say, “If you know him, and he isn’t one of your heroes, you need to re-think your values.” I’ve always wanted to write a story about his life, and Becca and Fitz Cahall and I were able to make [...]
Snow is falling in the high country. Be honest. Can you really afford to start this year’s ski season with anything but the best? The best costs money. But it’s worth it. Outfit yourself with all this hella expensive ski gear that I Googled for you — only $125,561.00, plus probably some shipping fees and [...]
One night a couple weeks ago, I ate dinner with my back to a 180-degree view of Titcomb Basin, one of the most spectacular mountain valleys I had ever seen. I suppose when you think about it, it was like going to a restaurant and asking for a table with an ocean view and then [...]
I had a blast writing this profile of Mount Rainier for Adventure Journal, which published today — if you get inspired by mountains, click here to launch it. -Brendan
It was the night before my 5-day backpacking trip with five tough teenagers from East Palo Alto when someone asked about toilet paper, and we discovered we hadn’t been issued any. This was most of the kids’ first time in any sort of backcountry outside the Bay Area, and each seemed to have a different [...]
It’s hard to sell me a water purification device. I’m a lifetime backcountry iodine tablet user, because of its simplicity: The only way it can malfunction is user error, it’s light enough to put in any pack, even if I don’t think I’m going to need water purification. Never have to worry about leaving other [...]
I tried to pull around a corner on nothing, the crux moves of the third pitch of a route on Mary’s Bust in the Big Thompson Canyon near Loveland, Colorado. My climbing partner for the day coached me from about 10 feet away, at the bolts at the top of the pitch. I knew I [...]
It is 105 degrees in this room, 50 percent humidity. Seven of us are standing in the middle of yoga mats with towels covering them. I am sweating from every pore, and when I bend over, sweat pours into my eye sockets. I am in a room full of women, I am wearing nothing but [...]
“Hey, can you take photos with your phone?” I yell down from the belay to my pal Lee, as he works his way up the last 50 feet of the third pitch of Kor’s Flake. “Yeah, why?” he says, as he cleans a cam and clips it to his harness. “I set mine down on [...]
JanSport has dominated college campuses as far back as many of us can remember, introducing and patenting the first daypack, a non-top-loading backpack, in 1975. But the company’s roots are in the outdoors: Skip Yowell started a tradition of sending the company’s equipment to high, harsh environments like Mount Rainier for testing, and the company [...]
Sometimes men grow boobs. This is just a fact of aging, or more accurately, the lack of priority we give to fitness as we get older and more things take up our time, and our bodies don’t respond the way they did when we were 19. Lots of men accept the development of man-boobs as [...]
By Brian Williams, Southern Gentleman, World Traveler and Hopeful Somebody Sawtooth Wilderness, Idaho -Brendan
A few weeks ago, a friend had stopped her car at a 4-way stop sign in Capitol Hill, and drove forward to proceed through the intersection just as a young woman riding a bicycle rolled up to the stop sign to her right. As my friend rolled through the intersection, the cyclist ran the stop [...]
GoLite makes a lot of things — ultralight backpacking gear, trail running gear and apparel, outdoor performance clothing, even luggage. One of the things they probably don’t focus on is rock climbing. But I’m going to tell you that one of their packs is great, not for ultralight backpacking, as advertised, but for alpine rock [...]
Remember your last road trip, the day you left town? Wherever it was, whenever — July 4th, Memorial Day Weekend, Spring Break — you were driving toward a place where you wouldn’t have to work. You could just play. Biking, climbing, backpacking, whatever. You were going to sleep on the ground in a place you [...]
I have learned many things from my friend Lee: How to place gear on trad routes, how to suffer with enthusiasm, how to talk to myself while on the sharp end of the rope. Other things are more simple. Like how to keep critters from eating the zippers off my climbing pack. Here on the [...]
Maybe you’ve seen this photo somewhere on the Internet before. I came across it the other day, again, when I saw it as someone’s profile photo on a climbing web site. It’s of course not new (note Lycra tights on man, Reebok aerobic cross-trainers on woman.) Plenty of Internet commenters have weighed in on the [...]
I have a drip of sweat on the end of my nose. It itches, hanging there, but I cannot wipe it off. Even if I were to lift my hand to my face, I would not be able to touch my nose, because my head is inside a giant bear mask. I am dancing with [...]
I have biked everywhere within 4 miles of my apartment in the past 5 years, including every job I’ve had — I’ve never had to drive to work in Denver. I find riding a bicycle exhilarating, but that’s no reason for you to think you should. In fact, here are 9 reasons you shouldn’t bike [...]
I don’t know if Tom Hanson, the Commisioner of Castlewood Canyon, made it up, but he said to me once, “There’s no cheating in climbing — only lying.” Some of these techniques were mentioned in a Twitter conversation with mtsquirrel, jrmontag, splitterchoss, aleyajean, rockmaven56, and climbwithkids. This is not a complete list of techniques, so [...]
I feel lucky to have a story that Grant Petersen thought worthy of the latest Rivendell Reader. It’s about riding across the country on the same bike I ride to work every day — the 1985 Raleigh Team USA I bought from a Craigslist ad for $100. Click the photo below if you’d like to [...]
“We’re going to take a little drive down Wall Street and check it out.” This is my friend Chris telling me that I am going to lead one more pitch today, no matter what level my motivation is at this point. It is late afternoon in Moab, and the wind has kicked up so much [...]
Maybe you missed some of the Internet chatter a few weeks back when Levi’s announced its new 511 cycling jeans. Big news for folks who don’t like to wear lycra when they ride to work or the coffee shop. Even bigger news for Levi Strauss & Co. is that they have been making comfortable, somewhat [...]
I was renting this guy a backpack and 3-person backpacking tent when I worked at an REI store several years ago, and he and I had the following conversation, as he was holding the tent bag in his hand: Guy: I bet I could just strap the tent on the back of the backpack here. [...]
A little over a year ago, I was bicycling across the country with my friend Tony. It was almost exactly 3,000 miles, and took us 49 days. It was the longest vacation I’ve ever taken since I was 16 years old, by about 40 days. I remember talking to my friend Nick when I got [...]
Since March 15th, two good friends of mine have been in car accidents that could have killed them. My friend Mick blacked out on the freeway because of a still-undiagnosed heart condition last week, unconsciously swerving across two lanes of traffic on I-25 and slamming into a guardrail. He woke up when he hit the [...]
I was sitting in The Shoppe, a cupcake and cereal place in Denver, with my pal Nick last week, and we started having this conversation: Nick: You know, the last time I was here — you know that gym next door? Me: Yeah, the place where they do the spin classes or whatever? Nick: Yeah. [...]
Petzl designed the Ultra Wide headlamp for “activities like caving.” I’m not a caver, but I’ll tell you what this headlamp is awesome for: Night biking. Especially night mountain biking. Also night hiking and scrambling, or any night activity that would be more comfortable with a huge box of light projected in front of you. [...]
My girlfriend is taking a break from leading right now. Sport climbs, trad climbs, no leading. No sharp end for her, for a while. When we met, our first times hanging out were mutli-pitch trad climbs, with me leading all the pitches. She was a new, enthusiastic climber, and as we started to hit it [...]
I must have pedaled past this wall on the Cherry Creek bike path 200 times in the past five years, and every time, I thought, “I wonder if you could do some bouldering on that thing?” It looked like well-featured flagstone blocks, from what I could see at 12 mph anyway. If you live in [...]
There’s a single paragraph in Yvon Chouinard’s Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of A Reluctant Businessman in which he talks about solo expedition kayaker (and grandmother) Audrey Sutherland, who at that time had paddled more than 8,000 miles around the world. One of the quotes attributed to Sutherland is one of the [...]
“Let’s just sleep in the car Friday night,” my girlfriend said a couple weekends ago, on our way to Ouray to do a little ice climbing. “No way,” I said. “I found a hotel for $42 a night.” I just got a new job. After years of scraping by on a newspaper salary, then [...]
A few years back, I went from a co-habitating man living in a spacious apartment with a walk-in closet dedicated to gear, to a bachelor living in a tiny studio apartment. I owned one chair, a couple plates and a bowl. But I still had several thousand dollars’ worth of climbing equipment. I thought about [...]
I think the first time I heard anything about Chesler Park, I was being a non-productive REI employee and flipping through a copy of Peter Potterfield’s Classic Hikes of the World at the Paradise Valley store in Phoenix. A couple months later, I would move from Phoenix to Denver, on the way stopping at [...]
Does the lining of Sigg bottles contain BPA? Who cares — this one’s not going to hold water anymore. A nice reminder to take care of my stuff/clean out my car more often. -Brendan
The average human poop event weighs between 7.3 and 9.3 ounces, according to an Iranian study of 100 male and female subjects. I only looked this up because I think no one should buy a $7,000 carbon-fiber bicycle, since the only people who arguably “need” a bicycle that expensive already get them for free and [...]
Last Wednesday, I was standing in my neighborhood liquor store trying to decide whether I should buy a bottle of scotch or a six-pack of good beer for a friend of mine. I was borrowing his set of ice tools, and seven ice screws, for a trip to the Ouray Ice Park. My girlfriend does [...]
This interview was originally supposed to appear on Spadout.com’s Gear Talk before it stopped publishing Jan. 31. I still wanted to share it here, since Mile High Mountaineering is one of the few outdoor gear companies to call Denver home, and I’m excited to see their stuff, which will be available at retailers on March [...]
I rode my bike across the country last year, carrying three free water bottles from my pal Scott’s bike shop, Salvagetti Bicycle Workshop. I wasn’t really convinced there was much difference in any water bottle I owned — basically they all hold water and allow me to pour it into my mouth at some point. [...]
“This is the kind of climbing I like!” -My pal Brian, pitch 2, Saturday, February 19 The East Face of the Fatiron is anywhere from 2 to 8 pitches of climbing, and is rated somewhere between 5.4 and 5.6 R, depending on who you ask. If you ask Colorado mountaineering legend and guidebook author Gerry [...]
I had this old, beat-up REI Mistral soft shell for 4 years, and finally, when the cuffs started fraying so badly that particles of dirt, rocks, and Doritos would get into the sleeves, I started looking to replace it. My pal Chris, who won’t buy anything without a hood — if Patagonia made a pair [...]
I know people love skiing — I live in Colorado. People move here just to go skiing. They start salivating when the first reports of snow falling in Summit County, when summer is barely ending for me, and I’m still looking at climbing routes in the lower elevations. I’m less into the stuff I call [...]
I review books and movies for the Mountain Gazette, which means I have to read a lot of books. I’ll never get rich doing it, but every once in a while, I get a book in the mail that makes me love, love, love my job. Jim Thornburg’s Stone Mountains is one of those rare [...]
(photo borrowed from avtraining.org) I’m not anyone’s mother, but stories like this make me feel like being everyone’s mother. I wouldn’t call myself an experienced backcountry skier. But the days I ski every year are backcountry days, and when I ski, my No. 1 goal is not dying. No. 2 is fun, and No. 3 [...]
Although lift tickets at Vail are now back down to a so-affordable $94, this season was the year of the $100 lift ticket in Colorado — Vail and Beaver Creek both had $102 single-day ticket prices just before Christmas. I was grumbling about lift ticket prices a couple years ago, and decided to do a [...]
I’ve been lucky enough to have RMNP in my backyard for the past 5 ½ years. The opportunities to hike, backpack, camp, snowshoe, ski and climb have kept me as excited about it today as I was during my first visit as an adult back in 2005. I’ve spent lots of time in my [...]
I’m not a roadie, or much of a mountain biker. I’m just a guy who rides his bike to work 52 weeks a year on a $100 steel frame from 1985. I own the Easton EA50 SL wheelset because I walked into my local bike shop and said “I need a pair of wheels I [...]
The nut tool, in the entire history of its existence, has pretty much been an incomplete piece of climbing equipment. Manufacturers provide the tool, basically a narrow hook that can withstand frustrated climbers beating the shit out of it while trying to push, pull and yank stubborn chocks and cams out of cracks while following [...]
The official name of this product is the Sierra Designs Microlight Jacket. To me, it is The $30 Jacket, because you will find thousands of them during REI’s annual spring sale for about $30. It is not waterproof, nor is it advertised as waterproof. It is, to quote an old friend of mine, “uh, I [...]
You like your bike ride to work. It fires up your heart, lungs and legs before you spend 8 hours sitting in desk chair getting soft. You lessen your impact on the environment. You spend a few more minutes outdoors, every day. It makes you smile. One thing can wipe that smile off your face: [...]
Want a couple free Semi-Rad stickers for your climbing helmet, water bottle, bike frame, skis, coffee mug, cooler, rear car window, rocket box, bumper, laptop cover, household pet or favorite public restroom stall? These are 4 inches long by 1 1/2 inches tall, and look like this, as designed by my good friend, obsessive urban [...]
