In order to progress, you need to continually push your limits, both mentally and physically. I have always worked up the grades one letter at a time, sticking with the grade pyramid. Yet what is the worst that could happen if you push the bar and you get in “over your head”? You fall? You might as well just go for it.

(via Life in a Hippy Van: Stepping out of the comfort zone)

The post Leslie Timms on Stepping Out of the Comfort Zone first appeared on All Climbing.

Honnold in Tuolumne from Tim Kemple on Vimeo.

The post Climbing Video: Alex Honnold in Tuolumne first appeared on All Climbing.

As your main points of weighted contact, your feet matter. Placing them silently forces you to be deliberate and aware with your choice, placement, and movement onto and off each foothold.

The awesome power of Silent Feet

The post Silent Feet, How to Have Better Climbing Footwork first appeared on All Climbing.

Sure I went climbing regularly but I wasnâ??t really trying. I took the easy way out. I toproped whenever someone else was willing to lead. I climbed the same routes regularly. If I was leading and my knees where at a bolt I would take instead of going for it. Basically, I sucked at sport climbing because I deluded myself into thinking that I was trying, when really I was giving 50% most of the time.

via Will Gadd

The post What it Takes to Climb 5.12 first appeared on All Climbing.

Now my first jealous thought was “dammit, get back to work…”, but then I started thinking about technology and climbing. I know my agent carried some smartphone so he was probably checking his email and calling from the summit before rapping off.

Personally, while I’ve had the ability to do business while climbing (by using my iPhone at the crag), I’ve always hesitated for a couple reasons.

First, there are the financial issues. These devices are not cheap and I’m not interested in breaking one by throwing it into my pack while climbing. I know his can be mitigated with a nice case, but it’s still an issue.

The second factor is simply the separation of work from play. While I know many times working on a project or training for climbing feels like work, it’s still climbing. I’ve always believed that a bad day climbing is still better than good day working.

I’ve also been thinking about how mobile phones and other technology could be used for climbing, especially as guidebooks. Flashed is selling guides to some areas for the iPod. Mountain Project has a nicely optimized site for the iPhone. There’s also a couple climbing related iPhone apps now.

Each is a great idea, but relies on the premise that you’re willing to take your device out with you climbing.

When I look at my large collection of tattered and dirty climbing guide books, I can see that I’m perfectly happy to throw them on the ground and generally handle them with little care while out climbing. I’m not sure I’m willing to do that with an expensive electronic device.

With the relatively recent demise (and subsequent potential rebirth) of Alpinist and the launch of Dead Point Magazine (completely available online), where is climbing media headed?

Climbing guidebook services like SuperTopo and Dr Topo appear to have had some success with the PDF ebook model, but how many of you actually use them? And if you do, don’t you eventually just print them out to take climbing anyway?

Print media is not going to disappear anytime soon, but what will the future look like? Will print publications grow or should we begin to embrace the emerging digital formats? I’ll explore my thoughts on this question in part 2, but what are your opinions?

The post The Future of Technology and Climbing – Part 1 first appeared on All Climbing.

The post Merry Christmas Climbers! first appeared on All Climbing.

As more climbing blogs proliferate, one thing driving me nuts is how so many posts are written on trip reports, climbing areas, and photos with no mention of the actual climbing location!

Please, fellow climbing bloggers consider to mention the area’s location in your post. No need to give directions or beta, just provide me with a frame of reference for what I’m reading.

I understand that many times post are written for an intended audience of those the climber knows personally; but trust me, with search engines and feeds, your readership is usually larger than you think.

The post What Climbing Area Are You Writing About? first appeared on All Climbing.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on John Muir, his first ascent of Cathedral Peak in 1869, and the recent exhibit in the Yosemite Museum called “Granite Frontiers: A Century of Yosemite Climbing.”

Muir was Yosemite’s first climbing bum — a rara avis then, but a species that is not at all endangered today. Witness the queue to get a tent site in the park’s Camp Four, where bedraggled climbers with duct tape holding their down jackets together mass early every morning hours before the ranger station opens. And those are the orderly ones, not the so-called dirtbags who sleep illegally in the bushes, ignoring the regulations and spending months at a time in the park pursuing their passion. It’s not uncommon, moreover, to find climbers lined up to scale popular routes such as Cathedral Peak, although most use a rope to protect themselves from falling off the summit — unlike Muir, who trusted all to his hands and feet and steady nerves.

The post John Muir and the Yosemite Museum first appeared on All Climbing.

ClimbingVibe quickly lets you find the most relevant and interesting climbing content. When I started blogging on All Climbing, there were surprisingly few climbing blogs. Now there are hundreds and it’s tough to read them all (and believe me, I am trying). And that doesn’t include the various other climbing sites, portals, forums, and online magazines.

The main goals of ClimbingVibe are to make it easier for climbers to find quality posts and to promote the best climbing writing on the internet. I’ve been posting interesting climbing links and news in short “Quick Sends” posts, but there is simply too much good stuff to always get them in these. ClimbingVibe will hopefully fill this need.

Composed of short posts, ClimbingVibe items typically highlight a single link. Posts and comments on these items can be made by anyone (even anonymously), but to reduce spam numerous protections have been built in.

New visitors to the site are also encouraged to register. Registering, while not required to read or comment on posts, provides the following benefits:

• Ability to vote on posted climbing items.
• Posts and comments include the full URL to your website or blog.
• CAPTCHAs on posts and comments disappear when you’re logged in.

The site initially has a minimalist layout by design, but this will likely change quickly as the site grows.

There are some exciting features that will be released in the upcoming months as development continues. The major ones will be mentioned briefly here on All Climbing and the rest will be posted to ClimbingVibe itself.

I’m very interested in what you think. Please comment your thoughts on this and leave any suggestions to improving the site.

The post Announcing ClimbingVibe first appeared on All Climbing.

Top ten reasons to rock climb with girls:

1. Some of us have nice thin (but strong!) forearms, itty bitty wrists and long fingers; perfect for cleaning stuck nuts and walked cams. I rescued a blue Camalot on a route at Tuolumne that wouldn’t have been retrievable by any of my guy partners without some extremely creative antics and additional hardware.

2. You’ll be the envy of the other guys at the crag. You’ll be the extra-super-envy of the other guys at the crag if your female climbing partners are traditional leaders.

3. If you’re climbing with girls, you’re more likely to have other girls approach your party and chat folks up, because hey — you’re presumptively non-creepy enough for some girl to rock climb with you. And the corollary applies: you’ll spend a lot less time lost, because we don’t hesitate to stop and ask other climbers (or gas station attendants, or grocery store clerks) for directions and/or routefinding tips.

4. Food and drink. Subject to exceptions, there are usually yummy leftovers when you eat with girls. You also get to sample tasty treats like Luna Bars and that awesome vanilla cinnamon oatmeal without having the cute girl at the grocery store checkout raise her eyebrow at you for buying food with the words “for women” on the label.

5. Our overnight kits generally include such important but often overlooked items as Aleve, eye drops, fingernail clippers and chap stick with SPF.

6. When getting to know new partners, we tend to understate and/or underestimate our relative skill… which tends to lead to pleasant surprises on get-to-know-you routes instead of the epics that can occur when a new partner overstates their skill.

7. Come on, admit it… sometimes you actually like the “Lilith Fair crap” we listen to on road trips. As much as you try to hide it, we can hear you singing along.

8. If you’re really lucky, you’ll find a girl climbing partner with whom traded backrubs after a long day of climbing qualifies as sports massage and not flirting. True story. It can happen.

9. No matter how long we go without a shower, we always smell better than boys for the long drive home.

10. I’ll spare you the “climb like a girl” coaching because despite the fact that I just wrote a partly tongue-in-cheek guest post full of gender-based generalizations, the generalizations that climbers make about boys being strong, powerful and dynamic and girls being graceful, technical and static don’t sit well with me. But, to make a long story short, just like we can learn a thing or two from you… you can learn a thing or two from us.

What have I missed? Share your thoughts in the comments, or pop over to rockclimbergirl.com for more on my climbergirl life.

All Climbing thanks Sara Lingafelter for today’s guest post. You can read more from Sara at her blog RockClimberGirl.com. You can also find Sara on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/theclimbergirl sharing her thoughts.

The post Top ten reasons to rock climb with girls first appeared on All Climbing.