Do you want to climb your first big wall this year? If you do, time is wasting. You need to start training now if you want to have great aid climbing skills, know how to use ascenders and haul, and be in great physical shape so you can get up your wall project. If you spend three or four days climbing a big wall like El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, you'll find that it is simply the hardest physical activity you've ever done.

Read my new article Big Wall Climbing and Training Tips: How to Climb Your First Big Wall and learn what you need to do to increase your chances for success. Most climbers fail on their first wall because they under-estimate both the effort and the skills required to get to the summit.

The article details how to improve your aid skills; how to pick a first wall; why you need to train by jamming cracks and thrutching up off-widths and chimneys; why mental preparation is so important; and finding the right climbing partner for your adventure. These training tips are not only applicable to climbing a big wall, but if you follow them, you will get in killer shape and cruise shorter routes.

Okay, get busy and let me know later this year how your first big wall went. Good luck!

Read Big Wall Climbing and Training: How to Climb Your First Big Wall

Photograph above: Do lots of aid routes to get in shape for climbing a big wall like Brian Shelton aiding up El Padre on its first ascent in western Colorado. Photograph © Stewart M. Green

Last Saturday on day three at the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market, a large trade show for the outdoor industry, alpinist and climber Reinhold Messner stopped by the FalconGuides booth to peruse the books. Those of us there, including editor John Burbidge, Dennis Jump, and myself, introduced ourselves to the great climber with a mixture of reverence and awe. Reinhold Messner is, after all, a living legend. After a half hour, Reinhold left with a couple books in hand to read on his flight back to Italy.

Messner is, of course, the greatest alpinist in history. He redefined the boundaries of both the human body and the climbing experience, first by climbing Mount Everest, highest mountain in the world, without supplemental oxygen with Peter Habeler, and then by bagging all fourteen of the world's 8,000-meter (26,250-foot) peaks, finishing his last two--Lhotse and Makalu--in 1986. Also in 1986, Messner became the second person, after Pat Morrow, to climb the Seven Summits using Carstensz Pyramid as the high point of Oceania.

Reinhold Messner returned to Mt. Everest during the monsoon season in 1980 and became the first person to make a solo ascent of the mountain; again, without oxygen and by a new route. The great British mountaineer Sir Chris Bonnington later said, "That solo ascent is the most remarkable attempt on Everest ever. Add to it what he achieved later and he is undoubtedly one of the greatest mountaineers of all time."

Reinhold Messner lives in his homeland of South Tyrol in northern Italy, an Italian citizen by birth that spoke German as his first language. He lives in a 13^th century castle, has written over 60 books, and runs the Messner Mountain Museum in northern Italy.

A few years ago, 69-year-old Messner summed up part of his climbing philosophy: "You could die on each climb and that meant you were responsible for yourself. We were real mountaineers: careful, aware and even afraid. By climbing mountains we were not learning how big we were. We were finding out how breakable, how weak, and how full of fear we are. You can only get this if you expose yourself to high danger. I have always said that a mountain without danger is not a mountain."

Photograph above: Legendary alpinist Reinhold Messner at the FalconGuides booth at the Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake City. Photograph © Stewart M. Green

Yesterday was "bouldering day" at the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market show in Salt Lake City with book signings by two authors of their new bouldering books--John Sherman with the new second edition of his Better Bouldering book and Peter Beal with his new book Bouldering: Movement, Tactics, and Problem Solving.

John Sherman, also nicknamed "Verm" from Vermin, is an American bouldering legend with a 36-year career of climbing small rocks and blocks. John has bouldered all over the world, wrote the first bouldering guide to Hueco Tanks, and introduced the V-system for grading boulder problems. The new second edition of his best-selling book Better Bouldering, published by FalconGuides, is simply spectacular with over 300 color photos from the world's best bouldering areas and lots of bouldering tricks, techniques, and insider knowledge that will help you climb better.

Peter Beal, a strong boulderer living in, where else?, Boulder, Colorado, has also written Bouldering: Movement, Tactics, and Problem Solving, a very complete book about bouldering (published by The Mountaineers), that explains everything including bouldering equipment, movement and technique, tactics like resting, spotting, and doing highballs, training, and injury prevention. After glancing through Peter's book last night, I particularly enjoyed the thoughts of his contributors, including John Gill's commentary and Dave Graham's introduction.

After I get a chance to read and study both books, I will be writing complete reviews. In the meantime, I have to get down to the Salt Palace for day 3 of the OR show...

Photographs above: (Top) John Sherman signs copies of Better Bouldering at the FalconGuides book under the watchful eyes of the blue people. (Bottom) Peter Beal autographing copies of Bouldering at The Mountaineers booth. Photographs © Stewart M. Green

The Outdoor Retailer Winter Show in Salt Lake City, running from today, January 19, through Sunday, January 22, at the Salt Palace looks to be the biggest winter show ever with more vendors and exhibitors and more people--over 21,000--attending than any previous winter market and infusing over $20 million in Salt Lake's economy.

I'm attending the show as usual, hanging out at the FalconGuides booth signing some of my books like Best Climbs Moab and Best Climbs Rocky Mountain National Park as well as doing demonstration so my new Best Climbs Moab iPhone app for climbers and retailers. Tomorrow at the FalconGuides booth, iconic boulderer John Sherman will be autographing copies of the new edition of his Better Bouldering book, while John Long, another iconic climber, will sign the new edition of his The Big Juice: Epic Tales of Big Wave Surfing--not a climbing book but as Yvon Chouinard once said, "If we weren't climbers, we would all be surfers."

Literally the coolest climbing gear that I saw today at the OR show were artificial ice climbing holds made by IceHoldz, a California company that's been in business for five years. While they've been at the Summer Market, this is the first time they've had a booth at the winter show. IceHoldz are made with a plastic shell with a glacier blue backing inside. When the two layers are combined they, according to the brochure, "...actually mimic properties of real water ice." They are mounted on the walls of rock gyms, garages, and even in shops for ice climbers to practice ice axe placements. A ¼-inch pick penetration is all that's required for a solid pick placement. Some of the holds are designed to take over 3,000 direct hits. They're mounted on climbing walls with a plywood backing to avoid damage to the wall. IceHoldz are also used on Retailer Demo Boards by mountain shops for prospective ice axe buyers to give the tools a swinging tryout before plopping down their bucks. For more info, go to IceHoldz for a list or retailers and climbing gyms near you that use they or place on order on the website.

I also stopped by the Adidas booth and visited with 19-year-old Sasha DiGiulian, the best new woman climber from the United States, and picked up a signed poster of her. Sasha, who hails from Alexandria, Virginia, climbed the 5.14d (9a) route Pure Imagination at the Red River Gorge (check out a video of her ascent), taking only six tries to send the route and become only the third woman to climb a route that hard. Besides cranking hard enduro climbs like Millenium (5.14a) at Maple Canyon, she also has onsighted 5.13d. The climbing website 8a.nu calls her, along with Charolotte Durif from France, "as being the greatest female onsight climbers in history." High praise indeed and well-earned. Read more about Sasha in the March 2012 issue of Rock and Ice Magazine.

Photographs above: (Top)The FalconGuides booth at the OR Winter Market. (Middle) IceHoldz in use at the demo wall. (Bottom) Sasha DiGiulian signs posters at the Adidas booth. Photographs © Stewart M. Green