Classes have finished, and winter break is just starting. Over the past month, I’ve mostly been climbing indoors both at the gym on the Stanford campus and at Planet Granite in Sunnyvale, CA. Actually, just recently at Planet Granite, Andy Lamb and I saw Daniel Woods, Alex Johnson, and Kevin Jorgeson, who were teaching a clinic as part of Professional Climbers International. Andy and I have both been training hard, and we’ve also been taking interested students to the climbing gym. A couple days ago, we, along with another climbing buddy named Matthew, met with the director...

SEATTLE!!! It was awesome to have such a HUGE Pro event in the Pacific Northwest. We haven't had a Pro Bouldering Competition there in my lifetime, and it was awesome to break free from the typical geographical locations. Seattle was awesome, it's a cool city. We had GREAT weather (surprisingly enough). The Unified Bouldering Championships Competition was held at Stone Gardens, a new gym that just opened up in Seattle. I have no doubt that after we cleared all our comp mess out of the way Stone Gardens is going to be one amazing bouldering gym. There...

This past weekend the largest outdoor sports and music festival took place in Richmond, VA. Totaling an estimated 75,000 people at the event over the course of three days, The Dominion Riverrock Festival was without a doubt a huge success. Joyfully, for me, too! For the second year in a row, the Dominion Boulder Bash took form with unique “cage-like” volumes composing two steep, impressive structures. The competition began on Friday with Qualifiers in the evening, then Saturday were Quarterfinals in the morning and Semifinals at night, followed by a fourth round (Finals) on Sunday. Having four rounds of...

The 2012 Bouldering Nationals, held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, saw one of the strongest fields that North America could have provided. I was fortunate enough to score a press pass for the event, and got a pretty edifying, behind-the-scenes perspective on what is going through the minds of a number of Five Ten athletes as they line up time and effort for the annual showdown.

The last couple weeks I've been bouncing around some St. George and Vegas areas with numerous climbing partners. I've never gone on a climbing trip alone before and usually have much more specific goals but I basically haven't had any idea where or with who I'd be climbing recently until the day before. It's turned out amazing since there are tons of people psyched on getting out and everyday my skin could handle it I've been at the VRG, Cathedral, Moe's, Krafts, Mt. Potosi, or Black Velvet. Part of the trip will be in a...

This past summer I was fortunate enough to take a two month trip of a lifetime to Europe with Alex Johnson, Josh Levin, and Nick Milburn. We boarded a plane in Atlanta the day after U.S. Nationals (which went very well) and flew across the Atlantic Ocean, landed in Munich, and began our European climbing trip.