Climbing

How old is too old to start climbing? The short answer is:  "You're never too old." Well, that's a stretch but if you're a reasonably fit senior citizen and don't have any glaring health problems then you can certainly go rock climbing well into your 70s.

As a guide with Front Range Climbing Company in Colorado, I take a lot of older folks out that have always wanted to try rock climbing but live in places like Nebraska or Indiana where climbing opportunities are limited. At Front Range Climbing we make it easy for people to get out climbing since we have a kiosk in the Garden of the Gods visitor center, making it simple to book trips.

Last summer I guided Richard, a 74-year-old man from Michigan. He had been an athlete and runner for much of his life, but living near Detroit, he had never been able to try rock climbing. I took him out to the South Slabs at the Garden of the Gods for a two-hour trip and he ran up all the routes, which ranged from 5.4 to 5.9. He loved climbing so much that he extended his vacation and went climbing the next day with me. I took him up to the airy summits of a couple of the highest formations--South Gateway Rock and Keyhole Rock. Richard said he plans to return this next summer for another day of climbing.

If you're a senior citizen and have always wanted to go rock climbing, then don't despair...you can do it. Read my new article Am I Too Old to Start Rock Climbing? under Climbing FAQs and learn why you can learn to climb, where you can learn to climb, and how to grow as a climber and avoid injury.

Get the answers to more Climbing FAQs::
How Can I Rock Climb if I'm Afraid of Heights?
How Can I Climb if I'm Afraid of Falling?
Do I Weigh Too Much to Rock Climb?

Photograph above:  Jimmie Dunn, a 63-year-old Colorado climbing legend, still cranks hard routes at the Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs.  Photograph Stewart M. Green

In late April of 1336, the Italian humanist and poet Francesco Petrarch trekked to the windswept rocky summit of 6,263-foot Mont Ventoux in the Provence region of southern France. Petrarch, admiring the view from the top, read passages from the Confessions of Saint Augustine and ruminated on his experience of climbing the mountain.

Petrarch later penned a 6,000-word essay--The Ascent of Mont Ventoux--that described that experience. Because of his climbing story, one of the first records of a mountain climb, and because he climbed Ventoux simply for fun, to reach the summit and to look out across the world, Francesco Petrarch is considered the "father" of alpinism and the world's first true alpinist. While other previous men had also climbed mountains for pleasure, Petrarch's eloquence earned him that sobriquet.

Francesco Petrarch's account of climbing Mont Ventoux is fascinating. It reads like a modern climbing tale, with lots of interesting tidbits like his encounter with an old shepherd who warned him that the mountain was haunted and only danger awaited him or how to choose the right climbing partner, a section that is still apropos today.

Read more about Francesco Petrarch and his landmark ascent of Mont Ventoux in my new article Francesco Petrarch and The Ascent of Mont Ventoux -- Story of the World's First Alpinist and find out why the allegorical saga of his ascent was important to the start of The Renaissance and how it still shapes our relationship to the chaotic world out there where we climb and the inner world of our mountain experience.

Photographs above: (top) Francesco Petrarch was not only the first alpinist but also a poet, humanist, and one of the "fathers" of The Renaissance. (bottom) Petrarch enjoyed the view from the rocky summit of Mont Ventoux in 1336. Photograph courtesy Net Provence

Even in this modern age, when it seems that everywhere has been explored and mapped and almost every worthwhile rock face has been climbed, there are still lots of vertical places that have never been climbed.

Yesterday I climbed, with my friends and climbing partners Dennis Jump from England and Brian Shelton, the first ascent of an unclimbed 300-foot-high tower, composed of volcanic rock,  in a remote mountain range in western Arizona.

This was my second attempt to climb the sheer tower. In mid-April 2010, Dennis and I hiked back to it with the legendary climber Layton Kor to climb the beast. We did two and a half pitches in 95-degree heat before retreating. Layton had previously discovered the tower, dubbing it The Coke Bottle.

After our ascent yesterday we named it Tower of Kor in honor of 73-year-old Layton, not only a great climber but also a good friend and mentor. Last night we celebrated with a steak dinner with Layton. He told us that this was the first big climb he had found that he had not been on the first ascent. Even though he is unable to climb now because of health problems, he said, "Boy, it really hurts not to be able to go up there and climb that thing with you fellas. But I'm glad you did it." Thanks Mr. Kor!

Our six-pitch route up the tower required lots of different climbing skills--lots of chimneying, squeezing through holes, airy face climbing, aid climbing up a rotten face, finding belay stances, drilling rappel anchors for four rappels, climbing a lot of rotten rock sections, and avoiding heaps of loose rock. That plus a long hiking approach and a longer drive on rough 4x4 tracks to the back of beyond.

Our world is full of adventures. There are always new places to discover, new cliffs and towers to climb, new routes to be ascended, and new fears to conquer. I'm grateful to be a climber and to continue to find my own adventures out there on our wide wonderful planet.

Photographs above: (top) Brian Shelton climbs atop The Dragon's Tooth, a massive chockstone, half-way up the tower. (bottom) The Tower of Kor stands 300 feet at the end of a high ridge. Photographs © Stewart M. Green

Climbing efficiently and gracefully is all about having good footwork. Use your feet well by placing them softly and quietly on footholds, making small steps rather than giant high steps, and using your legs to push rather than your arms to pull and you're going to get up a lot of hard routes.

Good footwork when you're climbing helps you trust your rock shoes on small holds and gives you confidence that you can move upward from solid foot placements with both balance and precision. Follow the six tips for better footwork in my new article 6 Tips for Better Climbing Footwork -- Improve Your Climbing Movement Techniques and start climbing better, higher, and harder.

Read more about climbing movement and technique:

• 6 Tips for Better Climbing Footwork
• Learn How to Read the Rock and Improve Your Footwork
• 6 Performance Climbing Tips

Photograph above: Training guru Eric Horst uses great footwork to climbing "Diamond Life" at Bubba City at the New River Gorge. Photograph © Stewart M. Green

A few days ago 26-year-old Menna Pritchard, the single mother of Ffion, a 2-year-old toddler, posted a photograph of herself and the child top-roping a climbing route in Wales. The child sits in a baby carrier on Menna's back as she climbs. She wears a helmet to protect her head while the child does not.

The photograph, which many people originally thought was two images PhotoShopped together, has caused a furor in news media across the world, and the resulting stories have hundreds of comments, mostly negative ones slamming Ms. Pritchard's lack of common sense.

The headlines tell the story:
"Crib notes: Mom goes rock-climbing while carrying toddler--confident or careless?" MSNBC Today.
"Is she off her rocker? Anger at mum rock-climbing with toddler strapped to her back." The SUN.
"Mum defends rock climbing toddler." The West Australian.

Parenting is about common sense, it's about keeping your children safe in a dangerous world until they are old enough to begin to make personal decisions about safety. Taking a baby or toddler climbing in a baby-carrier that is not designed for climbing is reckless, irresponsible, and yes, just plain stupid.

Yet Menna Pritchard stubbornly defends her actions, saying "Life is about risks." Yes, life is risky. Climbing is risky too. Everyday we assume the risks of living while driving to work, crossing a street, and all the other countless things we do that can go wrong in an instant. A child, however, doesn't have the experience in the world to make those judgments about safety but instead relies on her parents to make commonsensical decisions.

Ms. Pritchard also says that Ffion encouraged her to keep climbing, saying, "Up Mummy, up!" Menna wrote on her blog that she stopped climbing when she "felt we'd gone far enough," and added, "Some people would say I'm taking more risks than are necessary, but I am very conscious of safety." She also noted that a climbing helmet was unnecessary on the route and wore hers only "out of habit," implying that the child didn't need a helmet despite the fact that she wore one.

She continued by writing that top-roping "is the safest form of climbing you can do. I was also in a beach environment surrounded by experienced climbers. Health and safety legislation and the sue-and-blame culture mean so many people are nervous, so afraid of getting into trouble, and taking small risks."

All this from an unapologetic young lady who admits to have been climbing for less than two years, but is currently studying for an outdoor recreation degree at the University of Wales. She concludes, "The idea is that it's fun and exciting for Ffion too and hopefully I am inspiring her and giving her access to the outdoors."

We want our children to be adventurers in the world, to seek outdoor challenges and learn to move about the world with all its dangers with confidence, but also with safety. Taking a child in a carrier pack on your back on a rock climbing outing is not only unsafe but it really doesn't teach a child how to navigate the world.

I'm a lifelong climber so it was natural that when my two sons were youngsters in the early 1980s, I took them with me when I went bouldering. That's bouldering, not rock climbing. While I worked on boulder problems on the small rocks with buddies like Bob D'Antonio, our kids climbed on their own small rocks and while doing that they began to learn how to use their bodies to climb as well as the effects of gravity when they inevitably fell off. Never were they in danger of falling a long distance or playing and climbing below a cliff face where rockfall could possibily occur.

As they got older and wanted to begin actual climbing, they wore body harnesses and wore helmets. When we went climbing, I regularly told them that climbing may seem like it's always fun but it's not, because every time you go climbing there is the possibility that bad things can happen to you and your climbing partner. That's being a responsible parent. That's teaching your children how to step into the world with confidence but also how to understand and assume the risks of risky behaviors and activities like rock climbing.

I'm all for moms and dads to go out and pursue their vertical adventures, but in this case it appears that Menna Pritchard didn't think through the implications and risks of taking her young daughter climbing in a sack on her back. Young Ffion would be better served by playing on the sand beach below the crag at Three Cliffs Bay on the Gower peninsula, scrambling about on small boulders in her own fashion, and watching mummy climb the big cliff on a top-rope. In good time she might learn to love climbing and just might live long enough to drag her old mum up Cenotaph Corner at Llanberis Pass.

For more thoughts about Menna and Ffion, read Jannette Pazer's blog post "Climbing Mom, Menna Pritchard, Climbs With Toddler on Her Back--Big News?" at her CliffMama website.

Photograph above: The photo that caused all the fuss...Menna Pritchard climbing with baby Ffion on her back in Wales. Photograph courtesy Menna Pritchard.

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

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