La aldea de Ouray, Colorado tiene un grandísimo sitio artificial para escalar hielo: El Ouray Ice Park (Parque Hielo de Ouray). Creo que es la más grande en todo el mundo — pero no estoy seguro de este hecho. Sin embargo, Ouray es una lugar muy especial y única. El parque es increíblemente impresionante, y un destino para las alpinistas y escaladores de todos lados y países.
No hay muchas lugares así en todo el mundo. Permitime a explicarlo a vos porque.
Continue readingAs some of you may know, I was born and raised in the state of Colorado, in the USA. I recently came across this video for the song “San Luis”, by folk singer Gregory Alan Isakov, which was filmed mostly in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado.
The music and the images do a really great job of showing some of what makes this place so special.
I could write more about how this captures the essence of home so perfectly, but I think this is one of those instances where nothing more needs to be said.
P.S. GAI is one of those artists with such a small profile, that if you enjoy his music, you can make an actual, discernible difference by buying his albums.
Here’s a little bonus:
I bought a disposable camera before my trip to Joshua Tree in January.
This turned out to be a pretty good decision, as the cold of the California high desert killed my phone battery. So, while my climbing partner Jose had a high-end DSLR to take as many photos as he wanted (and they are great), I was limited to shooting on film.
I had only 24 exposures for more than three weeks on the road. That meant I didn’t take a lot of them, but every photo I do have is sincere. In addition to the prints, they gave me digital copies of all my photos, too.
Check them out, below the jump.
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One of the great charms of traveling in Asia is the charming broken English.
English signs, menus shirts, slogans, etc. are pretty common. English isn’t everywhere, but there’s been an effort made. The strange thing though, is that these English translations are littered with misspellings and poor grammar. They’re generally intelligible, though, with a little work.
Part of the fun and charm of traveling in Asia!
Below, I’ve compiled a gallery of some examples of bad English in Thailand, gathered from a recent thread on Twitter.
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Las Vegas, Nevada.
It was the final day of our climbing trip. Three weeks of uninterrupted time together: me y mi hermano Jose.
I had introduced Jose to bigger, more complex forms of climbing, while he had mentored me in Spanish, my second language. We had shared a soggy tent, shivered through a few cold January nights, spent half our budget on alcohol, eaten like dirtbags. Laughing, learning. We had made a strong memory.
We planned to end our trip with an exclamation point: climbing Birdland (5.7+) in Red Rock Canyon, a five-pitch route that would take us higher than anything we’d climbed previous. The route had been recommended to us by a free-solo climber we met in Joshua Tree.
Jose had been sad to trade Joshua Tree, where we passed almost three weeks, for Las Vegas.
I had pushed for Vegas. I wanted Jose to get a taste of real multipitch climbing. I wanted to get high — something you can’t really do in Joshua Tree.
In the end, I’d won. We drove to Vegas for a few days.
Our final day, we slept late and headed in to climb Birdland around noon. We stopped at the First Pullout in the Red Rock Loop Road, to look at some of the beautiful rock formations, and see if we could glimpse some of the sport climbing crags — shorter, bolted cliffs.
The rock at the Calico Hills in Red Rock Canyon is filled with swerving lines: undulating waves of red, white, and shades in between. Without hurry, Jose and I walked the trails off the pullout, breathing in cool, fresh air. Despite being so close to Las Vegas, a major city with plenty of pollution, Red Rock feels crisp.
Walking back to la camioneta (our truck), three people around a small folding table waved us over. “Free food?!” they yelled. Dead broke after three weeks of too many cervezas, we swerved right over.
Two of the group were ambassadors for Climbstuff.com. The third, a guy in his late twenties or early thirties, was looking for people to climb with. We chatted for a bit while we ate bananas and tortillas.
“Well,” I say, “we were going to go climb Birdland, if you want to tag along. Multipitch.”
His face lights up, he thinks about it for a sec, and he says: “Yeah, that would be great! You guys got wheels? Just let me grab my stuff.”
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