Cragmama "Not all who wander are lost…" JRR Tolkien

Tag Archives: videos

Parlier’s Project: A Documentary of Grayson Highlands State Park

Parlier’s Project: A Documentary of Grayson Highlands State Park

Last summer we spent a good deal of time bouldering up at Grayson Highlands, VA.  Its an area that has seen smatterings of activity for many, many years, but only in small pockets of the park.  In recent years, this park has seen a resurgence in development, due mostly to my friend Aaron Parlier, who we met out at Grayson last summer.  Aaron is in the process of writing a guidebook for the area, hoping to have it in the hands of the publisher by the fall. On the day that we met Aaron, we also met Daniel Caudill, who…Read the rest of this entry →

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Sentimental Snapshots: “Fun-ctional Travel”

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In years past we’ve always tried to tack on a longer (think plane flight, not road trip) destination to our climbing plans at least once or twice a year. We are pretty enterprising (or cheap, depending on how you look at it) when it comes to turning pre-set plans into climbing trips – a business trip to Las Vegas can easily become a long weekend in Red Rock Canyon, just like a family vacation to Yellowstone National Park can quickly extend into an extra week of climbing in Utah! For today’s Sentimental Snapshot, I decided to use a video from…Read the rest of this entry →

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Maple Canyon and Closing Thoughts

Maple Canyon and Closing Thoughts

The climbing at Maple Canyon is probably the most unique climbing area I’ve ever been to.  The rock is a conglomerate embedded with pebbles and rocks of various sizes.  The routes are difficult to read from the ground, and require a lot of endurance to onsight, since you never know what kind of hold a cobble is going to be until you grab it, so you end up spending a lot of energy trying to find the right cobbles to use.  However, b/c of all the  cobbles, we discovered that Maple is also a place that rewards good footwork.  No matter…Read the rest of this entry →

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Big Cottonwood Canyon

Big Cottonwood Canyon

Day 1 ~ Outside Corner, w/North Face variation, 5.7 Pitch 1 – Steve led the first pitch, a fun wandering crack system that wandered up and out to an arete, and up to a ledge.  We saw Norbert and Manuela driving up as we were just getting started.  They spent the day at the Salt Lake Slips, where our line was in clear view all day.  They were thoughtful enough to check on us throughout the day, and document our progress via photos 🙂 Pitch 2 – Short, but sweet.  I scrambled up a series of broken crack systems til…Read the rest of this entry →

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Logan Canyon

Logan Canyon

We left the Idaho Falls airport on Saturday around lunchtime, and drove 2 hours thru southern Idaho to the city of Logan, just over the border in Utah.  Our original plan was to drive east to the High Uinta Wilderness outside of Kamas, but apparently there was a lot of snow this year, and the melt off wasn’t quite as far along as it usually is this time of year, so most of the routes were running with water, with 10 foot snow drifts at the base.  So, one  could say that our Logan Canyon plans were sloppy seconds, but…Read the rest of this entry →

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“Not all who wander are lost.” —JRR TOLKIEN