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

While driving across Colorado today, I heard on the radio that an ice climber had died after a fall on Bridalveil Falls near Telluride in southwestern Colorado. This evening my friends Cliff Powers and Brian Shelton with Front Range Climbing Company called me and said that the climber was our friend, colleague, and fellow guide Jack Roberts. Jack, who owned Jack Roberts Climbing Adventures guide service, also ran a lot of climbing trips for Front Range Climbing in northern Colorado.

Jack Roberts, a 58-year-old climber living near Denver, Colorado, was simply a living legend. Jack was a great ice climber who had climbed frozen waterfalls and ice chutes and big mountains all over the world in his 41-year climbing career.

I have always respected Jack for his skill at climbing that frozen white stuff, but I think I respected Jack more for his superb rock climbing skills and all the great ascents he made, especially back in the 1970s. During that time, Jack, a southern California rock jock, made the second ascents of a bunch of hard Yosemite big walls--Mescalito, Cosmos, Tangerine Trip, The Shield, and Zodiac on El Capitan and Tis-sa-ack up the middle of Half Dome's Northwest Face.

On Sunday, January 15, Jack Roberts was climbing Bridalveil Falls, an almost 400-foot-high (150-meters) Grade 5 ice route up one of Colorado's biggest waterfalls. Jack, in his guidebook Colorado Ice, which details most of the state's ice climbs, calls Bridalveil Falls, "A climb of legendary stature and beauty" and "A Colorado and indeed an American classic."

Jack was leading the second pitch, a long steep pitch up a pillar on the right side of the falls, when he fell 60 feet about 12:20 p.m. Jon Miller, his belayer and a guide for San Juan Outdoor School, called to two hikers below. They summoned the San Miguel County Search and Rescue group, who responded with 18 rescuers.

San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters said the location where Jack fell is "not easy to access. You have to traverse the canyon and a fair amount of ice to get there, and we had to access it all by snow machine. The fellow he was with did the best he could. (Roberts) was conscious for an hour or so, but his injuries were just too severe."

The Telluride Daily Planet reported on the accident: "...the victim, who had fallen to the end of his rope and hit the wall, had managed to place an ice screw in the route so his partner could lower him onto a shelf...As the SAR workers were taking Roberts off of the shelf onto which his partner had belayed him, he began experiencing shortness of breath and went into cardiac arrest. A paramedic treated Roberts unsuccessfully for 40 minutes, using an AED, CPR and cardiac medication."

Jack had a possible broken hip as well as internal injuries from the fall. The Telluride Daily Planet also reports that Emil Sante, San Miguel County Coroner and a member of the SAR team, "thinks internal bleeding may have played a role in his death."

Sante told the newspaper, "This had nothing to do with the ice conditions. This was a fall, and he wasn't the kind of guy who fell, so we're investigating how it happened. He said himself that he didn't know how he fell. We have a few ideas about what may have contributed to the fall and the speed of his death, but they're just hunches."

Jack Roberts resided in Boulder, Colorado. His wife Pam Roberts was traveling in Cuba this winter while Jack was spending much of the winter ice climbing in southwest Colorado.

Deepest condolences from both myself and all our guides at Front Range Climbing to Pam and the rest of Jack's family. We're going to miss Jack's infectious enthusiasm for climbing as well as his smile and Hawaiian shirts.

Photograph above:  Jack Roberts was a skilled ice climber, alpinist, and rock climber. RIP Jack...we're going to miss you. Top Photograph © Claudia Lopez Photography. Bottom Photograph courtesy Jack Roberts