We drive 22 hours from Boulder, USA, to El Potrero Chico, Mexico. The journey takes three days, and we barely stop. We see nothing. The insides of Texas gas stations. Rest stops alongside the highway. A Wells Fargo bank or two. Endless fields of cotton & many drive-thru restaurants. We sleep in the car & we talk to no one until we arrive in Mexico.
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I talked to an old friend from university the other night on the videophone. “You haven’t really been blogging much,” he said. “In fact, you haven’t done anything creative of late. It seems like all that energy has just gone into climbing.”
It was an insightful comment and made me think a lot.
Anyways, here’s some photos from the first day out ice climbing this season.
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“Remote” backcountry place popular with climbers, backpackers, and fisherfolk.
I write “remote” in quotes because there were easily over 100 cars in the Big Sandy Trailhead parking lot when I arrived. A bit shocking after an hour spent driving in on “Am I in the right place?” kind of dirt roads.
The Trip: Drive (8 Hrs) > hike (5 Hrs) >camp (4 days) > climb 1,000+’ faces (x2) > hike out (4 hrs) > Drive home
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Rock climbing is going through some changes these days, with the explosive rise of indoor climbing gyms, joining the Olympics as a competition sport, and the popularity of bouldering. It’s easy to be confused when someone tells you they’re a ‘climber’ — this could entail any number of different activities.
At its most basic, climbing involves using gymnastic ability to reach places generally considered inaccessible by humans. And there is nothing that fits this definition better than a desert tower.
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I bought a GoPro last summer for a specific project. It has been rarely used since. Nothing against the GoPro – it’s a tremendous camera – but using it changes the context of things.
Climbing is one of a vanishing number of modern situations where you can feel free of cameras and expectations. Your buddy might bust out the phone for a quick photo at the belay, but in general the nature of the activity prevents obsessive documentation. All the really great climbing photos are taken by a third party, usually planned well in advance.
We brought the GoPro out on a recent outing in RMNP thinking we might capture some really badass mountaineering footage.
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