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TNT: A Perfect Rest (Sun)Day in Fort Collins

By Local Beta, Trip JournalNo Comments

Since Spenser and I are on a budget, we have rarely been patrons of the local breweries or restaurants, even though Fort Collins is full of them. Then, Zack Macfarlane said he was coming for a visit. We were psyched. This gave us a reason to explore FoCo in a way we haven’t yet. Zack loves booze, broads, and beers. Yes, I know the booze includes beer. It was for emphasis. And, okay, Zack was also here for some climbing. Lucky enough, Fort Collins has all of the above to offer. We picked him up at the Denver Airport bright and early Saturday morning and headed straight for Guanella Pass, after a quick pit-stop at a local breakfast joint. Zack ate biscuits and gravy with a side of chicken fried steak, Spenser a carnitas benedict, and I polished off a plate of gluten-free Johnny cakes. Needless to say, it was not going to be a serious climbing day, but it was going to be a blast! Guanella Pass provided us an excellent try-hard-enough day, so we decided to take a rest day and give Zack a tour of Fort Collins on Sunday. Another love of Zack’s that Spenser and I both share is ribs. We have had infamous feasts of homemade chai-spiced (oh yea, that’s right) ribs back home in the Bay Area. Sometimes we yearn for those nights. After working up an appetite climbing, we stopped by Smokin’ Yard BBQ on our way through Idaho Springs. Spenser’s face probably gives…

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Reel Rock Tour 7 Review

By Stuff We're Psyched OnNo Comments

In two words: Good Times. Two more? As Expected. The premiere of Reel Rock 7 was held at the Chautauqua Theater in Boulder, a lovely wooden auditorium at the base of the Flatirons. The sold-out crowd of about 1,300 people struggled for seats, as many sections had large wooden support beams obstructing the view. Many ended up sitting in the aisles or standing in the back. The show opened with the usual thanks to the sponsors, and with Peter Mortimer asking everyone to stand up for a Facebook photo. On another cool note, Peter also asked everyone who’s birthday it was to join him up on stage. It happened to be his daughter’s second birthday, and also Vikki’s 26th, and the entire crowd sang Happy Birthday to the dozen or so people. Pretty cool. Then the films. The first bit was La Dura Dura, about Chris Sharma and Adam Ondra vying to establish the first 5.15c sport climb in Spain. The footage was, as per the usual, spectacular. I believe it was the Lowell brothers’ work filming, and they used a perpendicular version of the NFL’s above-the-field-on-cables camera to smoothly follow the climbers up steep terrain. The result is unbelievably smooth, and so much better than the previous generation of climbing film’s prodigious use of shaky hand-held footage shot by someone on rappel. Sasha DiGiulian and Daila Ojeda were also featured, leading the charge of female climbers knocking on the door of 5.15. The film was as much about the route as…

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Reel High Psyche

By Stuff We're Psyched OnNo Comments

It’s hard to believe that, like the long summer itself, our stay in Colorado is entering its autumn phase. As I type, Vikki is making her way to the San Francisco airport to come back home to the Front Range. That sentence right there would’ve been written backward 8 months ago…and soon we’ll be moving on, once again to join the ranks of those without mailing addresses, bathroom sinks, or rent. Our very first full day in Colorado saw us driving up to Vedauwoo with Brad and Adam to meet up with Pete Mortimer and Nick Rosen of Sender Films. They were there to gather the last bits of footage needed for their Reel Rock segment about offwidth climbing. If we needed a reminder that we were in climbing’s Hollywood state, this was it. If we had forgotten the lesson, we were reminded later on when Sender asked us to help film a short, comical bit with Alex Honnold for the PGA tour. In between all the star-gazing, there’s been plenty of training, bits of working, and a lot of climbing outside with new and old friends. And now everything is coming full circle! We cannot frickin’ wait for Thursday, September 13th, when Reel Rock 7 premieres at the Chautauqua Auditorium. As always, it promises to be an incredible show. Sharma vs. Ondra, The Shark’s Fin with Renan Ozturk and friends, and of course, Honnold defying odds and gravity. But this year’s special. Not only might (and I repeat: might) there…

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Gym Round-up

By Gym Climbing, Stuff We're Psyched OnOne Comment

You’ve probably heard of Boulder, epicenter of the US climbing scene, as well as Movement, The Spot, CATS, and the Boulder Rock Club. All four gyms are located within a very small area, yet they thrive. We actually haven’t been to any of them yet. Travel north along the Front Range and you’ll come to Fort Collins. There is a climbing community here, but not quite so big as in Boulder. There are three climbing gyms: Inner Strength, Miramont, and the CSU climbing wall. We haven’t been to the last one, but the other two are quite frequently visited. I know, I know…we left on an epic roadtrip and now we’re pulling plastic? To be honest, it’s a lot cheaper than the $50 in gas it takes to get to RMNP. So here’s a quick comparison of the two indoor crags we’ve been to in FoCo. Inner Strength Inner Strength was opened 18 years ago by Mike Hickey, and features topropes, lead walls, and two bouldering areas. Overall it’s a fairly small space, but it does have a fairly steep lead cave. I’ve been volunteer-setting the bouldering there for most of the summer, and have met some awesome people there. It’s also quite close to home, which makes it a convenient stop-off for a quick burn. The cons: there are no, I repeat, no supplemental equipment to train on, except for hangboards. No weights, pullup bars, bands, or even a stretching area. Also, they have one of those featured walls that…

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Time to Try Hard

By Climbing, Staying Healthy, The Exterior, Training, Trip Journal4 Comments

I’ve just fallen in love with the concept of training. I don’t enjoy training…yet. And yikes, if you know me, you know that’s a crazy sentence. Like Spenser mentioned in the last post, we’ve been in Colorado over two months. Since being in Colorado, Spenser and I have kicked up our training several notches. Through this, I’ve realized that my quit threshold is extremely low… What is a quit threshold, you ask? I see it as the moment you lose your “grrr,” when you stop trying hard. It’s completely psychological. You could do one, two, or even three more push-ups/crunches/squats, but you choose not to. You essentially give up. You know that the extra effort won’t kill you, so why do you stop? The negative impact is not solely felt in your training, this attitude will eventually permeate throughout all your actions. It could mean that you will not make that last move on the climb you’ve been projecting, or that you will lack the mental gumption to study hard for class that you need to excel in. So here we are. In Colorado, surrounded by ridiculously strong climbers. Living with Brad Jackson, a training master. He knows how to train smart, not just hard. So…exactly why are we not taking FULL advantage of this? When this realization finally hit me, I felt like quite a bonehead. The past 2 months have been the most active months in my entire life. Hiking to and from Rocky Mountain National Park, at high altitude, training hard…but…

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Project Spray

By Bouldering, Climbing, Trip JournalNo Comments

We’ve now been in Fort Collins for a bit over two months. Where, indeed, has the time gone? In terms of climbing, it has gone to finding and working projects, while trying to sample as many easy and moderate classics as possible. If you take a peek at our Facebook photos, you’ll see some of the places we’ve visited during the summer. Mostly we go alpine bouldering due to the warm weather, though even at 10,000+ feet of elevation the temps have been quite warm, often reaching the mid 70s. Upper Chaos, Lower Chaos, Emerald Lake, Moraine Park, Lincoln Lake, Mt. Evans Area A, The Abyss…the list goes on. Yet we often do the bulk of our climbing in the warmer parts of the day, when the tips still slide around on edges and slopers stay slick. Since we haven’t had prime conditions, sending projects has been less of a priority. What we ought to do (or should’ve done two months ago) is invest in a couple of lanterns, so that we can stay past dark and exploit the chilly evenings. In other words, we should take a lesson from a particular blog title…but we have been fully enjoying our time meeting and climbing with new friends, exploring areas and shopping for projects. Bouldering at one’s limit requires several factors to align properly. One must be in good shape, with proper rest beforehand (the older I get, the more time off I need after training or climbing). One must be…

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The Game

By Road Trip Beta, Stuff We're Psyched On5 Comments

I have driven across the United States of America, around many of its cities and towns, and as of now, halfway back to California. Since buying Bert for the road trip in February of this year, we’ve put about 17,000 miles on him (our diesel fuel bill requires scientific notation). Since I do about 95% of the driving, I’ve spent a lot of time at the wheel. How much? Well, there is a lot of sitting in the car at stoplights, and an awful lot of cruising on the freeways at 55-60. Let’s just say it averages out to 40 MPH, which is probably nowhere near the actual figure. 17,000 miles ÷ 40 miles/hour = 425 hours Aside from callused buttcheeks, what those hours have given me is a lot of time to think, listen to various podcasts, surf country/Jesus radio stations, and contemplate vanishing points and how they relate to highway lines. The daily commuter probably spends even more time behind the wheel, unfortunately relegated to a similar or identical path dictated by expedience, rather than refreshed by ever-changing scenery. Unless navigating to a previously unvisited destination or jockeying with Boston cars, driving doesn’t take much mental exertion besides the minimum spatial awareness required to keep the wheels between the lines, the speedometer needle within acceptable bounds, and the vehicle away from obstacles. This leaves the real thinking structures of the brain free to design solutions to the world’s problems, play tricks with math, construct the perfect imaginary boulder,…

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Sometimes I Hate Climbers

By Stuff We're Psyched On4 Comments

I often wear cargo shorts (or cargo pants when it’s cold) to go climbing. This is fairly new for me. Besides the usefulness of always having chapstick at my fingertips, I find that wearing cargo pants makes me a better steward of the environment. Allow me to explain… Bouldering in Rocky Mountain National Park is, as I’ve mentioned before, beautiful and relatively remote. I still remember when the Druids in Bishop were too damn far away to bother with. Now, that 45-minute hike at 6,000 feet sounds like a rest day. Upper Chaos involves about 60 minutes of hiking (after 90 minutes of driving, if you live in the Front Range), with an elevation gain of about 800 feet, just to reach Lake Haiyaha. Then there’s half an hour of talus-hopping to get to your project. Suffice it to say, one does not simply saunter up for an evening session after a full day at the office. This is not your roadside crag like Santa Barbara’s Painted Cave or any of the Yosemite boulders that you can see from your car. The obvious benefit of this fairly rugged approach, besides stellar cardio conditioning, is that the bouldering areas are near-pristine. Marmots and pikas pop up like prairie dogs, and cavernous holes threaten to swallow brushes, shoes, and climbers. To the north and south are steep, streaked alpine walls containing thousands of unclimbed boulders, a glacier, and some crystal clear alpine lakes. Even without climbing in my life, Moraine Park, Chaos Canyon,…

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TNT: Bert Gets a Rump Remodel

By Road Trip Beta, Trip Journal4 Comments

While I’m here editing the next video, my man is in the backyard nailing and screwing. Don’t worry, I’m not jealous…he’s just putting the finishing touches on Bert’s new storage system. I really like handy organization products. I’ll admit, maybe a little too much. Spenser likes to be organized, just in a I-don’t-want-to-look-like-I’m-trying way, while I love gadgets and gizmos that makes me, I believe, super mega organized. Even though we differ in our modes of organization, Spenser and I could easily agree on this simple plywood storage system for the bed of his big red truck. This weblink helps you choose manageable storage spaces. Building a storage unit for the bed of the truck was the first step of us getting road-ready once again. I found this handy, albeit incredibly corny, video and all we had to do was adjust the measurements. With the assistance from the video production company near Austin, we got the best tips about how to record every moment easily. An important thing they did not mention in the video is the thickness of the plywood they used. We ended up using 3/4-inch plywood for the frame – we wanted to make sure the frame would be sturdy enough to hold us  since we plan to use it as a bed (with crashpads on top, of course) whenever we will be unable to take the trailer with us. We are on a budget, so we figured we could save some cash and use 1/2-inch plywood for the drawers….

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The New Hotness: The Abyss

By Bouldering, Local BetaNo Comments

On Sunday (8/12) we were lucky enough to get a tour of a new area up on Mt. Evans called The Abyss. Rachel, Jered, Adam, and Mordy cruised up the hill with Vikki and I to meet Jon Glassberg and some other climbers, and we hiked in to the boulders. The Abyss is named for Abyss Lake, which is near the peak of Mt. Evans and is visible from the talus field. Most of the problems are given a nautical themed name, and by Jon’s approximation there are 80 or so established boulders, all contenders for the highest altitude V_ in the country. I think you end up parking at around 13,000 feet. The best part is probably the hike. It’s a 20 minute flat (flat!) hike across some pleasant tundra to the top of the talus, and from there you choose your own level of involvement. A few established lines sit atop the hill, and they continue all the way down to the valley floor, where a Lincoln Lake-sized boulder field sits, apparently called The Winds (the hillside we were on is called The Bends). The potential for moderates is enormous, but the development has focused mostly on harder lines. We were able to put up three new problems in a casual afternoon. The rock is similar to Lincoln Lake, mostly solid with a bit of choss and exfoliation. As with most areas, more traffic will help it clean up. Jon was there filming for an upcoming movie that…

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Downsizing & Leaving Papi

By Stuff We're Psyched On, Trip Journal4 Comments

Today we leave Papi with heavy hearts. Okay, okay, we are moving only 5 miles away and we’re probably going to see our roommate, Adam Papilion, even more than we already do.  Nevertheless, we are a still a little dewy-eyed: the house on Constellation Drive was our first stationary digs since we left on the road trip over 5 months. And…moving is always a hassle. We ended our tenancy at Adam’s with a grilling feast, followed by a Breaking Bad marathon with pureed banana ice cream in hand (and mouth). It’s dairy-free and incredibly addictive. Like crack. Seriously, try it at your own risk and don’t blame me when you realize you have hit rock bottom after punching the white-haired elderly lady because she took the last bunch of overripe bananas from the sale section at King Soopers. So we packed up all our personal belongings (which we are very proud to admit fit nicely into the tiny new trailer) and moved into our good friend, and Adam’s heterosexual life-mate, Brad Jackson’s house. Thankfully, Brad has a nice dirt patch on his front lawn, which was maintained beautifully using the best lawn spreaders, where the new trailer fits perfectly. As I briefly mentioned above, we found the perfect little 10′ trailer, hand-crafted by Bill, an animated tiny-house craftsman from Lafayette, Colorado. Bill was planning on keeping this gem to himself, but life circumstances prevented him from doing so. It’s exactly what we have been looking for, so thank you, Bill, for laying…

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Alpine Stylee- Colorado So Far

By Bouldering, Local BetaNo Comments

Edit: The V7 corner thingy that I couldn’t recall the name of at Guanella Pass is called “Corner Matters.” Four stars, BTW. Also, the arete Alana is pictured on is called the Aspen Arete. The heat and visual homogeneity of the midwest drives one to seek satisfaction in overindulgence. The endorphin junkie must get a fix, but exercise is too sweaty, or inconvenient, or expensive. The only recourse is stretch receptor activation, an ancient technique that I believe dates back to our hunter-gatherer days wherein one adds as much calorie-dense food to their abdomen as possible without literally busting a gut. The midwest is where dreams of climbing go to shrivel, fester, or immolate (depending on the particular type of scorching heat one encounters). Colorado, then, is where your psyche actually has trouble keeping up. Do you see all the boulders in Chaos Canyon? Now count them. I’ll wait. Coming from a chosspile like Santa Barbara – where we would climb every section of rock possible and then some out of sheer boredom – one arrives in Rocky Mountain National Park and gets totally overwhelmed by…well, take your pick: the beauty of the scenery, the length and brutality of the hikes, the stunning nature of the lines, the amount of unexplored wilderness, the amount of unclimbed rock in well-established areas, the altitude, the sheer difficulty of so many of the boulders… And I haven’t even mentioned the Front Range bouldering that sits at the far west end of the Great…

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A Bit of Catch-Up

By Trip JournalNo Comments

I started this post on Sunday. It was Spenser’s birthday and we were both catatonic from stress, unable to celebrate as we should be. Birthdays are difficult, I find you often end up doing what everyone else wants to do rather than what you want to do. Yes, it’s your birthday and you can cry if you want to, but you are essentially bringing everyone down with you when you do. So, forget it. Spenser had tweaked his neck bouldering last week and was not in the mood to celebrate. Neither of us were in the mood to start dealing with all the nagging pieces we still have left over from the original RV Project: mostly, selling Ernie and finding our new home. The trailer is on Craigslist and RV Trader, no bites so far and it’s exactly half way through the month of July…but I don’t really want to start thinking about that yet. I decided to go back in time and debrief about our long, straight, and steamy road to Colorado (and not steamy in a good way). Alright, forget about Colorado for a second and back to New York we go… During our time at the Gunks, I climbed higher and got more exposure than I ever thought I would be comfortable with. Despite all this, living in the back of the truck with thunderstorms taking us off the rocks every afternoon and the chigger larvae infestation under my skin had started to get the best of me. I needed a…

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Just Like The Pros- On Set With Bob Scarpelli and Peter Mortimer

By Climbing, Stuff We're Psyched On, Trip Journal10 Comments

[I’m trying something new, posting the photos at the end of the article. Check-m-out.] I’m not going to start this blog post by apologizing for not updating. We’ve been busy with logistics (check this original site) and if you have a problem with that then we can fight to the death by the fires of Colorado. Click here to find the best lawyer to fight for your cause. Which is where we are, and where we will be for several weeks. We even moved into a house! The RV (Residential Versatility) Project continues, and despite the record highs in Fort Collins, we couldn’t be happier to be in the epicenter of USA Climbing, which everyone knows is not Capen Park, Missouri. The Front Range is to the climbing scene what Hollywood is for the celebrity rehab scene. Case in point: We dropped the trailer in Brad’s driveway on Saturday. (Remember Brad, the chiseled hand-stand-walking offwidth master with laser-eyes, whom we met in Hueco?) On Sunday morning, we drove an hour north to Vedauwoo, WY to meet Pete, Bob, Nick and Becca. Pete is Peter Mortimer, who, along with Nick Rosen, runs Sender Films. Becca is a Sender employee until the fall semester at USC rolls around. The three Sender folks were filming for this year’s Reel Rock tour, specifically for a segment about off-width climbing. Brad had told them about the RV Project crew, and luckily for us, Sender was happy to have us along. Bob is Bob Scarpelli. We…

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5.10×10 and Hunter’s Rocks, PA

By Bouldering, Climbing, Trip Journal3 Comments

Watch out Alex Honnold. The new speed-climbing trad-masters are in town, and your reign on top shall not last long. In a remarkable display of endurance, guts, and athleticism, two relatively unknown climbers managed a feat heretofore unimagined at the Shawangunks. “We used to joke about how someday, Wolfgang Gullich’s grandson would be able to climb ten 5.10 routes in a day at the Trapps,” says guidebook author and Gunks veteran Dick Williams. “What these two did will inspire generations of future climbers.” Okay, so Dick Williams didn’t really say that, or at least not in reference to us. Here’s what really happened in our last few days at the Gunks. Also, mega-congratulations to Alex and Hans, for making the old Nose record look foolish. Vikki picked up a shift on Sunday, June 10, so we spent the day working at Bacchus, a pub with internet and hundreds of beers to choose from. While there, I saw on Facebook that Murph had a list of 3-star 5.10s he wanted to tick, and a few messages later we had a plan: Tackle ten 5.10s in the Trapps (the main cliff of the Gunks) the very next day. In contrast to the rain and humidity we’d been having, Monday turned out to be perfect. Temps were in the 60s, a breeze was blowing, the sun was kept at bay by the stratus layer, and it was dry. We met at the Bistro Mountain Store for coffee at 8:45, had breakfast, and headed…

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HP40 II!! and Getting Traditional in the Gunks

By Climbing2 Comments

Finally! It’s up! Please enjoy, like, share, etc. etc. etc. Also, we finally did it. The social media trifecta has been completed, and we now have a Twitter account. Follow us at @thervproject, or else… Looking down the list of posts, it’s been a while since we updated you on the whats and wheres of our trip. In the spirit of keeping an online, public diary, let’s lightning-round our way through the past two weeks. Vikki and I departed Farley and drove to Providence. We met my parents, my grandfather and his wife, and my brother on Friday afternoon for the first in a series of massive, delicious meals. Throughout the weekend I indulged in many mortal sins, including gluttony, lust (college campus, nuff said), and envy. This was the second graduation in two weeks for us. We are a few years out of the college scene, and it was interesting to think back on my own college years and imagine the sense of infinite potential, of a whole world ahead that was dark and mysterious, like the part of the Starcraft map you haven’t explored yet. We saw students excited about the future, nervous about the future, and students who totally deny that the future even exists. I can relate: I never ever wanted to leave college, and I will probably go back to school when this road trip ends!

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TNT: 6 Essential Rules of the Road

By Road Trip Beta3 Comments

Being able to climb across the United States has already been an experience we will never forget. Getting from California to Texas to Alabama (…and so on…) has also been memorable, but more of a memorable headache. The logistics of planning a road trip from state to state can get overwhelming, this is one of the reason we recommend to check these guys out so you can get perfect vehicles. We’re hoping to ease this pain with the tips and helpful websites we’ve accumulated on our travels. We’ll continue to update this post as new tips ‘n’ tidbits come up! 1. Get a smart phone. To be more specific, get a Verizon smart phone. In our experience, Verizon has the best service across the United States. This is important because if you don’t have service, you won’t have access to the internet so your smart phone is essentially useless (except for possibly chucking at your travel partner when you get into a tiff). This will cost you about $50 more per month than a regular phone, depending on what type of data plan you go with, but it’s worth it. My Samsung Galaxy has been our lifeline. You can certainly go without it, but this allows us to plan as little as possible. UPDATE: I wrote this post before we arrived in New Paltz, NY. Verizon and New Paltz do not get along. Apparently, Sprint and AT&T are the carriers to have here. Everywhere else though, Verizon. I swear. This…

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Farley Ledges

By Climbing, Local Beta7 Comments

Vikki and I spent the weekend in Boston watching Alec graduate and eating way too much food. There’s nothing like a Chinese family celebrating the success of its offspring to stop your diet plans in their tracks (we’ve been striding towards eating only plant-based foods). We did manage to visit Rock Spot Boston and drop off samples for Kevin, the retail manager. While there, we happened to meet Metro Rock gym manager John, who was at Rock Spot because he was avoiding the crowds! Apparently, MR is gigantic, but much more of a “scene.” After the weekend, we drove out to Farley. Vikki picked up a shift along the way, so we didn’t get there until Wednesday afternoon. A hilarious thing happened while hunting around for a place to stay, but I’ll relate that story later. The denouement is that we didn’t actually make it to climb until Thursday morning.

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TTFN, Ta Ta For Now

By Trip Journal3 Comments

I tried many clever titles for this post: “Bye-ron,” “Byron Be Balling Back in Bloomington,” “The Glass is 2/3 Full,” and others you probably don’t want to know about. In the end, I chose a simple, easy, and I believe accurate phrase from Winnie the Pooh. I have an announcement to make. As some of you already know, Byron will no longer be a part of the RV Project. I’m not going to give you the boilerplate “pursuing other interests” explanation, as there’s way more to it than that. While our on-the-road phase might be over, our friendship is not, and that is why the “For Now” part of the title is important. Please read on.

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Bloomtown to Beantown

By Trip Journal2 Comments

Vikki and I have driven a lot of miles lately. From Bloomington, we dropped off the trailer in Edinburgh, IN for repairs and drove all the way to the New River Gorge in the beautiful state of West Virginia. As the primary driver, I have to give Vikki what some refer to as mad props for her navigation skills. She stays awake, she pays attention to the road and can direct me anywhere, and keeps the snacks handy. We only had one day in the New, and let me tell you, it was not enough. Imagine the Red River Gorge, but with a more blocky, bouldery style of climbing on lighter-colored sandstone reminiscent of HP40. We arrived at some ungodly hour, like 3AM, and camped at the free camping below the Summersville Dam. It was our first night without the Pilgrim, and we slept, Bishop-style, on crash pads underneath the stars. We slept in pretty late, and we didn’t get to the crag until the early afternoon. Unfortunately, Vikki’s stomach was on the fritz again, and she was only able to do a few laps on the best 5.7 sport climb of all time, Hippie Dreams on the Orange Oswald wall, before calling it a day. She stayed and belayed, but wasn’t able to try hard. Summersville Lake is amazing. A 15 minute hike leads you to a stream and a waterfall, with a wooden ladder bringing you to the Coliseum, or as I like to call it, the Madness Cave of…

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