Yesterday, I was supposed to run my first marathon. Over the last few years, I’ve run a bunch of half marathons and a 17 mile mountain race, but I’ve never gone the full distance. Having grown up in Boston,...

Ahhh, Maple Canyon. Despite the fact that Maple was one of the first crags I spent time at after moving to SLC about ten years ago, we’ve never really gotten along all that well. While my endurance on trad...

Since I first started backpacking late in high school, I’ve spent many (more than I can count) nights sleeping outside the confines of a four-walled permanent structure. I’ve had the pleasure--and pain--of crashing outdoors in all manner of ways:...

Holiday weekends can be tough (most definitely in the “first world problem” sense of the word). On one hand, when you’ve got an extra day to play with, it’s hard to resist the urge to get out of town...

The motivation behind this post can be summed up very succinctly: I love the desert. Really, that’s all I have to say. But since that doesn’t make for very compelling reading--however authentic and pure the sentiment is--let me elaborate....

Although I haven’t been getting out as much as I did last year, I’m still having one of my best ice seasons yet. Nearly every day out has brought with it a new “hardest lead yet,” but most importantly,...

Let’s face it: this has not been a typical Wasatch winter. This morning’s avalanche report suggests that things might stay atypically lame--a strong persistent weak layer in the snow pack may never fully heal and, after a brief front...

It’s early January and so far, Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountains are verging on the wrong kind of snow records. We’ve been flirting with record low season-to-date snow totals, and before this weekend’s “storm” (5-10 inches, at best),...

In an earlier post, I alluded to some changes in the way I think about success and failure in climbing. Over the past year, I’ve been working to develop what you might say is a healthier relationship with climbing,...

I won’t go so far as to say that the SuperMoccs have actual super powers. But I will say that they contributed greatly to one of the best Indian Creek trips I’ve ever had. Creeksgiving 2011 (and yes, I...