The latest from Rock and Ice

• Weekend Whipper: “Disco Duck” (5.10a), Little Cottonwood Canyon, UT
  Disco Duck seems an appropriate climb for this whip to have happened on: Tyler Patchel looks a bit like he's dancing as his feet search for purchase in the nothingness below him, a bit like a backwards running-man dance move. "Disco Duck traverses a lot and I was at the end of a 10-foot crux […]
• The Choss Pile: Why You Should Play Dead
  The author, Owen Clarke, literally playing dead. But thinking about death in climbing---and taking those lessons to our daily lives---is what he's getting at here: "That awareness of the omnipresence of death and that faith in our systems and ourselves is something many of us would be well served to take from the wall and […]
• Illya Bakhmet-Smolensky Sent 5.14d When He Was Just 13 Years Old. Who Is He?
    When Ukranian climber Illya Bakhmet-Smolensky sent Chromosome X  (9a/5.14d) at 13 years old, in 2018, he set a record for the youngest person to climb the grade—besting Adam Ondra and Ashima Shiraishi marks by mere months. It was not Illya’s first hard climb at a young age: he climbed 8c (5.14b) when he was […]
• Ascent Article “Leper Chai,” by Jeff Long, Nominated for Best Mountaineering Article, Banff Mountain Book Competition
  Jeff Long's story "Leper Chai," which appeared in Ascent 2020, has been nominated for Best Mountaineering Article in the 2020 Banff Mountain Book Competition. His is one of three articles up for the award, along with "Denali, A Universe," by Jan Harper-Haines, and "Melting Giants," by Benjamin Ribeyre and Erin Smart, both published in Alpinist. The opening […]