La Sportiva Blogs

Nice!

From the Wicked Outdoorsy Blog in a post about the greening of the outdoor industry and woories about being too profitable.

If you are squeamish about your success, if you wonder if the outdoor industry is encouraging rampant consumerism, then you are exactly the person that the outdoor industry needs, because for every company that makes up the soulful, spirited and truly unique outdoor industry, there are a hundred false brands waiting and eager to take their place. They’ll make the stuff cheaper, in brighter colors, and ready made with a special sale price. It’ll be crap, of course, made in crappy factories, and meant to be chucked out within 48 hours of purchase or one good use, whichever comes first

Snow and Cruisin

It has been an extremely snowy and busy winter. I got to spend 4 days in Little Cottonwood Canyon in February and we got some pretty good snow. Lots of fun for sure.

Got my ass kicked by these guys. I keep telling myself it is because they ski for a living but that is a lame excuse. After that I got to on a cruise for Andy's wake. A wake with a wake! We scared the shit out of some of the people on that cruise for sure. This pic pretty much sums up the cruise excursion.
Party on Garth!

Work

I work too much. At this time of year things are cranking and I am always working too late. The cool thing is the potential for great things for the next year. I get off on planning and details and then freak out about having to do too much with to little human resources. If I just quit and skiied I wonder where I would be?

the time between

Waiting for the snow to fall and the base to build is tough. October/November in Colorado is awesome for rock climbing but I am waiting for the skiing to begin! I guess you need to take time to smell the flowers or eat them in this case.

Fontainebleau!

Working right now in italy after a week of climbing in Fontainebleau. Font was sooooooooo good. The weather was a bit warm but the rock was sooooo good. Many pictures to follow. One thing I learned was that Font 7A is damn hard.

Psyched for Europe

Just sent the family off to Georgia to visit the grandparents. I am getting ready to go to Fontainbleau for a week of climbing with my brother and then we are going to Italy for work. Lots of things to do but I am so ready for a week climbing. I have not done that in over 5 years. crazy.

Fall is coming on strong in Colorado. I am so amped for snow.

Spring skiing

Had a great time skiing this spring in the front range, RMNP and the La Sals outside of Moab. Here are some pics from the season. Damn glad we strated skiing in April this year beacuse the snowpack dissappeared pretty quick this year. Got to tick Notchtop Couloir, Ptarmigan Fingers, ??? couloir on Mt Otis, Mt Baldy, Lost Lake, Skywalker on South Arapahoe, Mt Tukinikivatz (south) and I finally got to ski Mt Toll with my good buddy Andy. Be free Andy, we miss you dude! Be safe everyone, take care of your heart!

La Plata Peak

Monday I went up to Aspen to climb La Plata with Craig for his 35th birthday. Man that guy is getting old! It was a great day and we eyed the Ellingwood Ridge for the climb. This is an amazing 2 miles of ridge traverse that takes you directly to the summit of La Plata peak which is 14,385 feet. We left the car at 5:50 AM and started hiking in. We had failed to talk to each other about our route plans as Craig was reading the Dawson 14ers guide and I was reading the Roach guide. Therefore we could not agree on the approach to the Ellingwood Ridge and we missed the faint trail that exits the main trail near the trailhead.

We ended up charging to the summit on the regular Northwest ridge route and we made good time with 5000 feet of elevation gain in about 3 hours. We hung out on the ridge waiting for the clouds to clear as we were surrounded by ominous looking dark thunder heads. At the last minute we decided to take the ridge down. It was Craig's b-day after all and that ridge was spectacular looking.

We chugged our Red Bulls and started down the ridge with storms all around us. We traversed, climbed and hiked our way down in a very surreal spot of sunshine for most of the ridge while we watched the dark clouds circle around the other peaks. For a while we even followed a mountain goat through the very rugged and craggy ridge.

The ridge slowly began to takes it's toll as the up and down traversing and route finding tired us out real quick.

The weather got a lot more threatening and we had to keep moving to get off this exposed ridge so we kept on trudging on but we had to take time to stop and smell the flowers.

We finally found an OK descent and we started down the 2000 feet of ball bearing scree which was quite painful in running shoes. The skies opened up halfway down and we got soaked. We were just happy to be off the ridge and out of the lightning zone. We ate at the bottom and proceeded to get a little lost finding our way out of the valley. We entered the fatigue zone and wandered through the woods picking up Elk trails as we guessed where in the hell we were going. We made it back to the Camel Toe Cruiser and did the 10-11 miles and 6000 feet of elevation gain in 9 hours total. A very good day indeed. Happy Birthday Craig!

Oh yeah, snow!

Got up to the Elk range this weekend and climbed North Maroon Peak in the Bells. The leaves were amazing! Great climb that is around 8 miles and 4500 feet of elevation gain. Aftr hiking to the base the route goes pretty much straight up the mountain. We left the parking lot at 5:30 and the temperature was 51 degrees. I opted for shorts for the climb at this point which was a mistake.

We gained the bench above treeline right as the sun peaked over Pyramid peak and started up the steep 3rd and 4th class shelves to the Northeast ridge. This was some serious straight up hiking mixed with some 4th class moves where one waiver of the foot would put you in serious danger. The climb then follows the NE ridge for a while qweaving in and out of cliff bands with some great exposure and then onto a really steep, loose scree field that had about 6 inches of snow on it. Scare factor was high as we were all hiking in trail running shoes. We reached a section of cliff band that had a fixed rope and we climbed up that which was really about 5.2-5.4 climbing covered in verglasse and snow. Really exciting.

Once you pull through this you think you are near the top. We quickly realized that the summit was another 800 feet above us and trudged to the top in the snow. I was real cold at this point. We summited and spent maybe 5 minutes as the wind was howling and the clouds kept the sun out of sight. We considered the dangerous looking ridge to South Maroon for a fleeting moment and bailed as it looked really scary. We ran back down and shuffled through the scores of people at the bottom of the trail that were out "Leafing".

Car to car the time was 6.5 hours.

Hola

Point conception for the La Sportiva web blog site. Welcome to the land of La Sportiva. In the near future we will have web blogs by Tommy Caldwell, Beth Rodden, Daniel Woods, Galen Burrell, and various other masters of the world of gravity, speed, suffering and enilghtenment.