Past Featured Articles

A lot of people would like to learn how to Rock Climb but don't know where to start. This article will provide a simple road map through the learning process.

There are many ways to learn to climb stone. This is a generic approach I have compiled from teaching friends and guiding. It's methodical and direct and provides a safe path to self-sufficiency and competency in the vertical world.

If any terms or concepts are unfamiliar - don't worry - it will all make sense in time. In the beginning everything seems daunting and unforgiving, that is normal, rest assured that your outlook will change as you learn more. The modern system of Rock Climbing is exceedingly well thought through and very safe. However, it requires time, focus, and respect to learn how to rock climb properly.

The flake, which I weighted with both hands, sheared off without warning, leaving me instantly airborne with the 10.2 mm rope, a # 7 stopper, and my belay partner providing my only assurance of safety. Many thoughts crossed my mind in that instant of time, but I distinctly remember one, “How could that be? There was chalk all over that hold.” Equally troubling was the “lunch pail” sized rock hurtling down on the climbers below.

The chimney that comprises the second and third pitch of Skyline Traverse at Seneca Rocks, WV is notorious for rock fall. The Seneca Climbers Guide explains, “USE CAUTION: There is a large amount of loose rock at the top of the climb, and some of Seneca’s most popular routes are directly below you. In fact it is unwise to be at the base of YE GODS, DROP ZONE, and CANDY CORNER without a helmet.”

Up until the middle of the 18th century, the Mont Blanc was totally unknown. The Swiss scientists had explored their own mountains but had avoided the Chamonix valley (then part of the Savoy duchy and realm of Piedmont-Sardinia). Its mountains were named the “cursed mountains”.

In 1741 Windham and Pococke climbed to the Montenvers and went down to the Mer de Glace, then easily accessible as more than 130 m higher than now. They made the valley range known in the whole of Europe with their expedition’s tale published in 1744 and in French. They had come with armed servants as if they had been on an expedition to the center of Africa to find quite civilized villagers led by a benevolent prior.

Photography is all about light. That should be patently obvious to even the most casual observer. In fact, let me submit to you that it is patently obvious to the casual observer: Of the thirteen pages of photos I've posted on SP, almost every one of the photos below appear on the first page. Almost without exception, the remaining twelve pages of photos do not have particularly notable lighting.

However, finding just the right light can be a very serendipitous experience. That is, the studio photographer (a job I loath to think I'd ever have to do) is blessed in having virtually complete control over the lighting situation. Photojournalists are more interested in the story than in the light -- images with even mediocre lighting can become great because of their documentary value. The snapshooter simply doesn't care ("I'm not very good with a camera."). But, the good landscape photographer understands that great photography is all about the lighting, and that the lighting is under the control of God, Mother Nature, or whatever super being in which one professes to believe.

This is the equation to determine the distance of any point on, below, or above the surface of the Earth to the center of the Earth. It was derived (solved as an explicit equation) last year (2012) but I had not included it due here to it being intended as an appendix to a book by a Canadian author who contacted me about the matter. But circumstances have coaxed me into providing it now.

This equation uses the WGS 84 ellipsoid as it is the most current for defining the oblate spheroid shape of the Earth. This ellipsoid defines nominal (mean) sea level for the world by way of the two ellipse parameters a and b, the semimajor and semiminor axes respectively.

To Post or Not To Post? That is the question.

Before I go on, let me state that what follows is based on personal feelings and judgments. Although I am a site moderator, what I am going to talk about is not a new SP policy and is not under discussion as a new policy. Also, I am not going to bring it up for discussion among the staff as a new site policy. But please read with an open mind and consider this as something SP contributors might want to think about.

So...... I have deleted almost all of my pages for peaks that have no official names and no locally or historically accepted unofficial names as well. By this, I mean the many "Point..." and "Peak..." pages I had posted, not peaks unofficially named for the benchmarks found on them. In a few cases, I changed the page to a trip report or route or incorporated essential information into another page, and there are two over which I'm still pondering what to do, but most of the pages are gone. So are many of the pictures, though I left several behind if they were relevant to other pages.

Why have I done this, especially since I have long been among those who think SP's greatest value is as a source of information for obscure peaks and since I still am among those?

Admit it. Each of us who thoroughly enjoys "the wilderness" has felt – probably more than once – that we’re owed such experiences. We convince ourselves that, if for no other reason, wild places should be preserved so we can continue to indulge our desire for solitude. In this, I am as guilty as anyone. But...

Layton Kor was one of America’s greatest and most revered climbers. He came from a small town in Minnesota, born in 1938, and was a bricklayer by trade. He taught himself to climb by chopping steps with pickaxe up a clay embankment in Texas: “I’d seen the climbers in the movie with ice axes and I thought that as the way it was done”, he wrote.

In the mid 50s, Kor’s parents relocated to Boulder, where the area is abundant with rocks. He put up many routes here as a teenager, especially Eldorado Canyon, Boulder Canyon, the Flatirons and Lumpy Ridge.

By the late 1950s and mid 1960s Kor ecomplished many first ascents, including The Naked Edge, Ruper and Yellow Spur in Eldorado, the West Face of El Capitan, the South Face of Washington Column in Yosemite, the Yellow Wall on the Diamond (Longs Peak), the Cruise in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and Proboscis in the Yukon. Layton was also the driving force in opening up the American desert with first ascents of Castleton Tower, the Titan, Monster Tower, and Standing Rock in Utah, and Fast Draw and Bell Tower in Colorado National Monument. The exact number of routes he pioneered is unknown, but it goes into hundreds.

Also hooked on the "Seven Summits"? The highpoints of every continent? Not yet been on Mount Everest? Not even on Denali? And no chance ever standing on top of these? Too weak getting your ass off the sofa? You can be helped. Simply abandon the USUAL height spleen.

'Cause Everest is by no means automatically the highest mountain on Earth; it is only when you subscribe to the common, totally arbitrary convention that mountains' altitudes must be measured from sea level.

Measured from the center of the Earth, however, Chimborazo in Ecuador turns out highest, and he is even climbable for all those who really want.

Well since I was kicked out to the Guild of Radical Ice Climbing for publishing 'So you Want to Sharpen your Tools!'

I figured, 'what the hell!', I might as well get thrown out of the International Guild of Knot Tyers as well. So here is the result.

For a long time I have been tinkering with trying to tie a rope rug. Of course I could just get it professionally done and have it completed much more cheaply and quickly that I ever could but what is the fun in that?