Awesome.

There still are rushing rivers in my dreams;
There still are grinding boulders in the streams;
      There still is mountain madness,
      Thund’ring down in reckless gladness
—Tho I’m safely in my bed in town, it seems.

There is still a shining world of ice and snow;
There still are steps to slog and miles to go;
      There still are fragile bridges,
      And windy fearsome ridges,
—Tho the city sounds about me all say “No…”

There is still a threat’ning avalanche to round;
There still are blinding fog banks, summit bound;
      I can find no safe belay
      Yet the suns ays “Do not stay”…
—Then I wake to find I’m home on level ground.

I’ll be toiling up sublime eternal heights,
I’ll be threading huge seracs by candle lights,
      I will pause where none may pass
      By some bottomless crevasse…
—I’ll be dreaming that I’m climbing… many nights.

by Clark E. Schurman

To put it simply, tumplines have been around for a long, long time. Do they work? Probably. Chouinard likes ‘em, and actually sells them online. Might be worthwhile to experiment a bit with one and see if it can’t straighten out my posture a bit.

Gotta love the hi-def shooting skills of Mr. Chuck Fryberger. Looking forward to this one.

Fun little animation on the history of Canada’s answer to the REI co-op, also known as MEC. Via Drawn.ca.

An inspiring and entertaining bit of expedition climbing that managed to pull in a well-deserved 2011 Piolet d’Or. These guys seem like a lot of fun. Climbers Nico Favresse, Olivier Favresse, Seán Villanueva and Ben Ditto head out with 75 year-old Captain Bob Shepton on his 33-foot sailboat in search of unclimbed big walls rising out of Greenland’s fjords. Catch the whole 5-part video series over at Patagonia.

Fitz Cahall is slaying it. It’s been a real trip watching his list of projects grow, from simply noticing his articles in climbing rags, to the last few years of The Dirtbag Diaries, to The Season, Tracing the Edge, and Fringe Elements. Just last week or so he and his wife Becca released a more personal, emotive project called The Love Letter, which follows the pair in an epic trip across the Sierras and ponders on the importance of wilderness in one’s everyday life. It works well – and definitely a different approach as far as these little outdoor adventure narrative pieces go. Fitz is a darn good storyteller, and I’m already looking forward to his next project.

P.S. – If you have a love letter to share with a person or place, you can do so on their Facebook page…

Beautiful work from Camp4Collective. Story, emotion, characters, location – it all works. Can’t wait to see more of what these guys pull together in the future.

From The New Way of the Wilderness

Great movie title, and a great trailer. Looking forward to this one, even from my desk here all the way over in snowy Bozeman, Montana today.

While this post somewhat varies from the implied typical subject matter of this site, I think I’m going to include it anyways and open things up a bit into the wet stuff out there as well as the mountain topics. There’s too many commonalities and histories and players to not keep it all circulating here, so keep your eyes peeled for more of this kind of stuff as I come across it…

Beckey’s Bible.

A staple of probably most PNW climbing bookshelves or dashboards in one form or another since the late 40′s. Fred’s still out there, writing and climbing and doing his thing, and thanks to his exhaustive work on the Cascades, so are a lot of folks. Malcolm Bates did a nice little personal article about the guide in Volume 5 of the Northwest Mountaineering Journal.

Desert River from Nicholas Waggoner on Vimeo.

If the conquest of a great peak brings moments of exultation and bliss, which in the monotonous, materialistic existence of modern times nothing else can approach, it also presents great dangers. It is not the goal of grand alpinisme to face peril, but it is one of the tests one must undergo to deserve the joy of rising for an instant above the state of crawling grubs. On this proud and beautiful mountain we have lived hours of fraternal, warm and exalting nobility. Here for a few days we have ceased to be slaves and have really been men.

It is hard to return to servitude…

Lionel Terray was one of my first favorite climbers, simply because of his ability to convey such familiar feelings about the sport so eloquently.

Stay tuned…

How slick is that? An unexpected pleasure. A big thank you to Mr. Jeff Thrope for the post and write-up. There’s 2 posters left at the moment if anyone’s still hunting down early Christmas presents, but stay tuned as there’s more on the way.

*UPDATE – all sold out at the moment, but more soon…

It is impossible of course to provide an entirely satisfactory explanation for any recreation. The predominant motive in any human activity varies according to the temperament of the individual. Mountaineering provides good exercise in pleasant surroundings, a sense of satsfaction in overcoming difficulties, the joy, akin to dancing, of controlled rhythmic movement, a stimulating contact with danger, a wealth of beautiful scenery and a release from the tiresome restrictions of modern life. The expert likes to practice or display his skill. Some confess to having been drawn to climbing by a physical inferiority complex engendered by their failure at school to hit a ball straight and far. These motives are probably sufficient in themselves, and they certainly form the basis of many other sports. But in the deep devotion to any form of active endeavor there is generally something else we seek. In the case of mountaineering it is a kind of personal identification with the hills themselves, which comes of intimate understanding and strenuous contest and which brings with it a wealth of philosophical content. Above all, in my view, the attraction lies in the memory of those rare moments of intellectual ecstasy which occur perhaps on a mountain summit, perhaps on a glacier at dawn or in a lovely moonlit bivouac, and which appear to be the result of a happy coincidence in the rhythm of mind and scene.

From Upon That Mountain.

Pretty much sums it up.

In the meantime, this series from photographer Jordan Manley really resonated with me and provided no small amount of stoke this morning. Amazing locations, super-tight editing, and a great eye for angles and adrenaline.