Rock Climbing – Ice Climbing – Ski Mountaineering
Community Pillar is about as traditional a route you will find in Red Rocks, attacking the most obvious weakness on the 800 foot north face of Magic Mountain with six straight pitches of wide cracks and chimneys, no lead bolts or bolted belays, and several unapologetically bold runouts - a true cult classic.
Group Therapy is a popular 800' 5.7 just north of the super classic Tunnel Vision (5.7+ R, 800') on the Angel Food Wall. While the climbing was nowhere near as memorable as its neighbor, we still thought it a great day.
Joshua Tree National Park is Bobbi and I's favorite place for single pitch trad climbing. In 2025 we spent five months in and around Josh, and climbed some 130 pitches. The three routes which defined our season were Run For Your Life (5.10b R), Falcon and the Snowman (5.10c R) and Illusion Dweller (5.10b).
On February 9th our month-long Teton high pressure curse finally broke. Jed Porter and I snuck out for a few afternoon laps on Chicken Knob, bagging an interesting line I've been eyeballing for years - "Alta Dena North" - another complex, forested, and route finding intensive Teton Canyon couloir. Bobbi Clemmer and I returned two days later, because it was just that good!
The past week Bobbi Clemmer and I have been climbing ice in Cody, Wyoming. Our first three days, we climbed four classics in the Boulder Basin/Lower & Upper Bench area - Bozo's Revenge (WI3+), Sendero Illuminoso (WI4), Animal Rights Activist (WI4+) and Hunter Creek Pillar (WI5).
On January 15th, 2026, I skied a potential first descent on the North Face of Housetop Mountain, the most alluring and rarest skied north face in the west Tetons. It's difficult to know exactly what has and hasn't been skied on the heavily gate-kept west slope, but longtime area record keepers and ski mountaineers believe the line to be previously unskied.
On January 13th, 2026, I completed the first descent of The Blue Line, possibly the last unskied couloir in the Apocalypse area of Prospector's Mountain. The route features a 700 foot hanging couloir with 50 degree skiing above massive exposure, culminating in a 650 foot horizontal traverse across an unlikely ledge system to merge with the Son of the Apocalypse Couloir, a 3,300 foot descent in full.
The "Banana Couloir" is really not a couloir, but rather, a 3,300 foot slide path of epic proportions. The entire descent is pure "fall line", sustaining an average slope angle just above 30 degrees with no pitches steeper than 38 degrees, making for a incredible moderate objective catered to fast and fluid skiing.
I've skied the Boyscout Couloir two... or three... or four times over the years - I forget - because every time has been in marginal snow that should've been excellent. Today was my first time nailing this quirky 2,200 foot line in soft conditions, and today the snow was downright heroic.
On December 31, 2025, Julian Winston and I skied the Chouinard Couloir from 12,200 feet, 300 feet below the summit. We turned around due to firm snow conditions, a usually buried rock step that would've forced downclimbing, and overhead hazard from falling rime ice.
Ten Thousand Too Far 