I credit the American Alpine Club (AAC) Sierra Nevada Section (SNS) with introducing me to two of the best kept secrets in the Sierras: the Lost Trail Lodge and ice climbing in Coldstream Canyon.
I first joined them for the annual event in February 2007 and then again over the weekend of January 29-31, 2010. [...]

While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to keep California State Parks open, he didn’t stress how drastic some changes would be to deal with the 14.2 million dollar reduction in the Park budget.
A summary of the service reductions in store for most of California’s 278 state parks was created by the park superintendants to highlight the major [...]

Man, I love what American Alpine Institute is doing over at their blog. They keep putting up these great little how-to instructional articles and videos with tips, tricks and basic skills. Even if this is stuff you already know, it's important (and fun) to review every now and again.
Here's a complete list of the [...]

There seems to be some sort of stigma in the US attached to the idea of guided climbing. It must be something related to our collective sense of individualism (how’s that for a conundrum?). Americans seem to think that hiring a guide is somehow a cop-out – like the climb doesn’t "count" or something.   
I’ve [...]

Of course I’m pretty sure that the actual top 10 climbing towns are all in California and Nevada, but here’s a list of runners-up in the September issue of Rock & Ice. To be fair, they did include South Lake Tahoe. So they’re not totally off.
New Paltz? Never heard of it. Favetteville? Nope. [...]

I had a hard time deciding on a title for this post. Runners up were (the last being my favorite):
- I Feel Like an Idiot- Two Days of Scree Scrambling at 12,000 feet- Summitpost approach descriptions suck

My climbing partner and I met in Bishop around 1:00 (he coming from LA, me from SF) [...]