Warning: This post is a review, or as it turns out, a non-review of FUDs–female urination devices, in outdoor-industry speak. It’s about pee funnels. If you don’t want to read about the trials and tribulations of women trying to pee standing up in the woods or on a climb, stop here.
As I told my friend [...]
Filed under: Climbing, Such as it is on September 4th, 2009 | 3 Comments »
One rainy evening during our final weeks in Chamonix, we met up with guides Adam and Caroline George for a drink at a chic little bar. Caroline asked who I’ve worked with at Climbing magazine, and I asked what topics she’d covered for Climbing.
“My first story was about post-expedition blues,” she said.
I’d never heard the [...]
Filed under: Climbing, Such as it is, Workation France on August 11th, 2009 | No Comments »
I was sick of being sick.
We’d been in France for about a month, and I’d been sick most of that time. Just as I started to feel better, I came back from visiting our friends in Hamburg with an upper-respiratory gunk. In late June, a bright morning sun shone over Chamonix and I glared out [...]
Filed under: Climbing, Such as it is, Workation France on July 4th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
If you live away from the mountains, the only time you hear about a climbing accident is if something big goes down on Mt. Everest, or if the Today Show picks up an amazing tale of survival from a fourteener hike gone wrong. But when you live in the mountains, climbing and skiing accidents appear [...]
Filed under: Climbing, Workation France on June 1st, 2009 | 4 Comments »
I have two posts on the Betty Ice Ball floating around the interweb right now:
1. Your standard event rehashing with a fun anecdote thrown in from yours truly at Climbing magazine, and
2. Five things you get more of when you climb with Chicks, posted at All Climbing. Thanks, Tom, for letting me be your guest [...]
Filed under: Climbing, Such as it is on February 12th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Last year, my husband took up skiing again after a long absence, and after taking a class with the Colorado Mountain Club, he went out with our friends for a seemingly innocent day at a resort.
“I’m pretty sure Mark and Judy were trying to kill me,” he reported upon his return home, grinning broadly in [...]
Filed under: Climbing, Such as it is on January 13th, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Ice climbing is pretty stupid.
Non-climbers, I know what you’re thinking: Duh, any idiot can see that it’s a ridiculous sport. Non-climbers lump ice climbing in with other relatively stupid activities, like deep-water scuba diving into a cave with sharks, or pretty much anything Bear Grylls does in your average episode of Man vs. Wild: Now, [...]
Filed under: Climbing, Such as it is on November 20th, 2008 | 12 Comments »
When we arrived in Chamonix in June, I peered up from under my umbrella in search of the mountains. I knew they were there. I sought out breaks in the clouds up the valley, or a window up above, where the Aiguilles (needles) should have been poking at blue sky. But there were only clouds [...]
Filed under: Climbing, Such as it is on September 3rd, 2008 | No Comments »
The rock was rotten. Each time I grasped a hold, I wondered if it would pull away when I cranked on it.
Ben, Jeremy and I were clustered around the bottom of an exit chute near the top of our snow climb up Skywalker Couloir on Sunday. The chute, a snow-collecting break in the band of [...]
Filed under: Climbing, Such as it is on July 9th, 2008 | 3 Comments »