On Monday I drove out to Stanley, Idaho and met back up with Cedar to head out to the Elephant’s Perch. It’s a 1200 foot granite cliff in the Sawtooth Range with supposedly good climbing and beautiful scenery.

After a week of sport climbing around Wyoming, I drove out to Grand Teton National Park and met up with Chris Farrah for some much needed alpine suffering.

Spent the past 6 days raging up mountains and hanging out with friends in the Cirque of the Towers in the Wind River Range. In 4.5 days of climbing, Cedar and I summited Pingora, Wolfs Head and Warbonnet 3 times each via different routes and managed to bag a full traverse of all 11 summits in the cirque in 13 hours with many leisurely rests along the way.

I took this photo at a crag in Palestine while on a trip to the Middle East in February of 2020. I had just spent nearly a month traveling and climbing in Israel and Jordan and the day before my flight to Barcelona, a friend of a friend who I had never met, picked up my buddy and I from a hostel in Jerusalem for a day of climbing.

We spent the last couple days camping out in Barrah canyon after sharing a ride out there with some climbers from Colorado. They were headed to Barrah finish a rebolting effort on a route called Merlin’s Wand and we offered to help.

Almost every day for the past month I’ve stared up at this piece of rock. My big objective for this season in Yosemite was to climb NIAD (Nose in a day) aka climb 3000 ft straight up the middle of El Cap in under 24 hours.

Matt Tufts came out to Yosemite for a few days and after a day of cragging at Sentinel Creek, we decided to quest up the West Face of the Leaning Tower. Matt had climbed one other multipitch in his life but he had with him a pair of Jim Bridwell’s old ascenders and plenty of stoke.

We did it! After belaying Mac on his first trad climb 3 months ago, we successfully summited Half Dome via the Regular Northwest Face in under 32 hours. I had to work in the Central Valley on Thursday which was perfect since that put me almost halfway to the Valley.

We didn’t bring a tent as the plan was to open bivy in the parking lot. It turned out there was 6 in of snow in the parking lot and I forgot my sleeping bag at home. I still managed to get about 4 hours of sleep. The approach was cold and snowy, then the sun hit and it was hot and snowy.

This is tail of overconfidence and large ego resulting in failure. The original plan was to start the climb Saturday, and finish Sunday. I was feeling so confident that I suggested we just start Friday night and finish Saturday. I got the valley around 6pm met Mac at the Ahwanee and racked up.

This was an epic day… the kind of day that makes me love climbing. We started climbing at 6:05 am and made good pace simulclimbing the first half of Royal Arches. It was the first time I used a Micro Traxion and it made everything feel so much safer.

As I was sitting in my office on August 7, 2018, I was already in vacation mode. I peaked at Instagram around lunch time and noticed that Yosemite NPS had just posted that they were planning to open up highway 120 at 1 pm. Perfect timing!!!

Kurt, Billy and I spent an incredible 4 days in the Yosemite high county. After hitching a ride up to the edge of the plow line, not far from Tioga Pass, with a Cal Trans operator, we skinned into the Tuolumne ski hut with a gallon bag of cookies, good food, and supplies to ski and climb.

I just got fired from my first job out of college so what better way to celebrate than to climb Half Dome in the middle of the week. With two days of trad climbing under my belt, I felt confident enough to give Snake Dike a go with my friend Graham Green. Graham is a chef and therefore isn’t on the typical weekend warrior plan.

I drove out to the edge of Yosemite on Saturday with Roger Romani with the hope to get at least one more day of skiing in for the season. The snow was melting fast, but we had heard there were still a couple skiable lines out by Tioga Pass.

With a record snowpack, the thought of skiing Mt. Whitney was quite enticing as spring rolled around. I asked a handful of friends if they were interested in going but no one seemed to be keen.

This is the only trip report included on this website that was fully written years after the event. As I look back at my life outdoors, this trip feels pivotal and therefore worth including as it was perhaps the genesis of my life moving uphill.