Climbing News from the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market in Salt Lake City

I spent last week at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City. The show, held in both summer and winter, offers over 1,000 exhibitors who sell their outdoor products to brick-and-mortar, catalog, and on-line retailers. Over 30,000 folks attended this summer's show.

This massive orgy of goodies includes lots of climbing equipment from all the manufacturers, including Black Diamond, Petzl, Trango, Five Ten, La Sportiva, and Mammut. This show didn't feature a lot of brand new products but instead a lot of equipment with new tweaks and twists. Like the new Petzl GriGri, which now accommodates ropes from 9mm to 11mm in diameter. I'll write more later about some of the products I saw at the show.

Besides looking at products, I spent most of my time at the Falcon Guides booth. I did a couple book signings for my new books KNACK Rock Climbing and Rock Climbing Colorado and visited with retailers and other climbers who stopped by, including photographer Keith Ladzinski, Lauren Lee, Steph Davis, Chris Sharma, and John Long, who was signing copies of the new edition of How to Rock Climb, the best-selling climbing instructional book of all time, and Eric Horst, who signed and gave away his new book Maximum Climbing.

Photographs above: (Top) Chris Sharma, best rock climber in the world, and training guru Eric Horst. (Middle) Steph Davis, rock soloist and BASE jumper, signs the Women of Rock calendar at the climbing wall. (Bottom) Falcon Guide's best-selling team of climbing authors John Long, Stewart M. Green (your guide to Climbing at About.com), and Eric Horst. Photographs © Stewart M. Green