Climbers are a notoriously picky bunch to shop for, so keep it simple this holiday season. The editors at Climbing have been testing non-stop in 2024, and we’ve highlighted the best new gear that your hard-earned money can buy. We’ve field tested everything on the list below—from cushy socks and comfortable hardshells to innovative belay devices and ropes—and can confidently say these will earn the appreciation of the climber in your life.

Best Gifts Under $75

Camp Nano 22 Rack Pack ($40)

The Nano 22 is billed as the lightest “fully functional” carabiner in the world, and we wholeheartedly agree. There are certainly lighter carabiners out there—but they are typically much smaller and therefore a nightmare to handle when pumped or while wearing gloves. The Nano 22, meanwhile, has a surprisingly deep basket for its featherlight weight (22 grams), enabling us to clip them in a hurry when pumping out on long multi-pitches. These carabiners live on our alpine draws and cam slings when we’re shaving grams.

Arc’teryx Merino Wool Grotto Mid Sock ($30)

All but the least-kempt climbers in your life wear socks and, unlike spoiled children, will be thrilled to receive a fresh set. The Merino Wool Grotto Mid is among our favorites from Arc’teryx: its soft and comfortable Merino wool is blended with nylon for added durability over years of use, and it’s lightly cushioned for long approaches. Whether you’re hiking to the crag, cold-weather rock climbing, or powering up an ice pillar, the Grotto Mid provides a snug, slip-free fit.

Gifts Under $150

Edelrid Pinch ($120 USD/$170 CAD at the link below)

Edelrid’s new assisted-braking belay device, the Pinch, made waves earlier this year with its ability to attach directly to the belay loop—no carabiner required. (To open the Pinch, you must press a small, tilting button while the device is simultaneously rotated 90 degrees from your body.) Climbing testers were initially skeptical of the Pinch’s ability to stay locked while belaying, but after four months of steady testing, we are now confidently catching airy whippers and belaying on big walls without the added weight or clutter of an extra locker. The Pinch feeds rope just as smoothly as other popular assisted-braking devices, and offers a smoother lower and rappel thanks to a beefy handle. An anti-panic feature—which locks the Pinch if lowering too quickly—can be disarmed if preferred.

Petzl Sirocco ($130)

The beloved Sirocco helmet is redesigned for 2024 and—somehow—is even better than before. Petzl has swapped its magnetic chin buckle for a plastic one (greater security), a bulbous forehead for a slimmed down silhouette (greater field of vision), and a better ventilation layout to encourage airflow while limiting the sand and dirt and ice that inevitably falls into big forehead vents while climbing adventurous terrain. Despite these extra features the Sirocco retains its 160-gram weight in S/M, making it our favorite ultralight helmet on the market.

Black Diamond Ultralight Ice Screw ($85-$90)

With instant bite, smooth boring, and easy-action handles, there is no need to run it out while climbing with BD’s Ultralight Ice Screws. The aggressive geometry on the steel teeth gives it a bulldog bite when placed on vertical ice, and the aluminum shaft—an ample 2cm in diameter—let us re-use most screw-holes on popular climbs that resembled Swiss cheese. Add in a snappy, fold-out plastic handle, and these things practically spin themselves in. BD has shaved 45 percent off the weight by pairing aluminum and steel—encouraging us to bring a couple more up that crux pitch.

Petzl Swift RL Headlamp ($140)

The Swift RL is a brilliant headlamp for those needing long-lasting support on their nocturnal adventures. Whether you’re sessioning crispy crimps by moonlight, accepting benightment on Epinephrine, or foregoing bivy gear in Patagonia, the Swift RL’s 1100 lumens and max burn time of 100 hours will surely outlast whatever sufferfest you’ve imposed on yourself. The rechargeable Swift RL is efficient in more ways than one: its 100 grams comes with a “Reactive Lighting” sensor that examines the ambient light and adjusts its brightness accordingly.

Gifts Under $300

Scarpa Arpia V ($169)

Designed for intermediate climbers, the Arpia V is both moderately downturned and asymmetrical, and gets especially high marks in both comfort and edging performance. It’s a supportive shoe, thanks to its full-length midsole and outsole, and should be attractive to heavier climbers who need stiff, supportive shoes while standing on small edges. That said, the Arpia V still has enough shape and toe-box sensitivity (thanks to the asymmetry and downturn) to let you curl into incut edges and feel small deviations underfoot. All in all, the Arpia V is an excellent shoe for intermediate climbers looking for something that will perform equally well on face climbs in the gym or outside.

Mammut 9.5mm Alpine Core Protect Rope ($290 in 60m)

Climbing-rope security has come a long way since the days of stiff hemp cords, and Mammut has taken their ropes to a new level with the Alpine Core Protect: a 9.5mm single rope that has a second sheathe woven with burly Aramid fibers. This rope handles and catches falls just as smoothly and softly as any of Mammut’s other 9.5mm ropes, but in the event of a dangerous fall over a sharp rock edge—as often found in mountainous environments—this Aramid-infused sheath will drastically increase its cut-resistance. We’ve spent five months beating the crap out of this rope—including on Minotaur Direct (5.11+; 500m) in the Bugaboos, Mt. MacDonald’s Northwest Ridge (5.8; 900m), and Buddha Nature Direct (WI 5; 120m)—and have noticed zero premature wear. The Alpine Core Protect also comes in 8.0mm half ropes, if wandery routes are your thing.

Patagonia M10 Storm Pants ($279)

The new M10 Storm Pants is this year’s best climbing-apparel innovation. Ice climbers, alpinists, and backcountry rock climbers who need the weather-proof security of hardshell pants have historically had to sacrifice a significant amount of comfort and mobility, since run-of-the-mill hardshell pants stem and lunge about as well as a pair of suit trousers. Such a sacrifice is no longer necessary thanks to the M10, which fuses the mobility-first design of jujitsu pants with various , who has tested prototypes since 2019.

The M10 pants have a generously gusseted crotch—yes, you can do the splits in them—an elastic waistband and cuffs, a thigh pocket, a diagonal zipped fly, and little else. Coming it at just 240 grams in medium, the M10s are surely the lightest fully-waterproof pants we’ve ever worn, and have served us well while battling up ice pillars running with water and racing electrical storms in the rugged Purcell Mountains. Bonus: the M10 series also includes a . We’ve been digging the latter for its unrestricted arm mobility and low-key profile while tucked into a harness.

La Sportiva Mandala ($209)

La Sportiva’s No Edge technology is about as close to the term “divisive” as climbing technology gets: While the majority of climbing shoes have a defined, 90-degree intersection where the sole and rand meet in front of your toes, the shoes in the No Edge line have a rounded front, which La Sportiva achieved by wrapping the sole up around the toe so that it becomes toe-scumming patch on the top of the shoe. This design sacrifices some precision-edging performance, but it maximizes smedging—the ability to smear over edges and into divots—and allows you to extend on the tip of your toe like a ballerina.

With the new Mandala, the No Edge tech is paired with its most supportive shoe yet, making it an attractive choice for boulderers and sport climbers alike. Tester Matt Samet wore his extensively on a 15-degree overhanging 5.14 project in the Flatirons, while editor Anthony Walsh trusted them while onsighting 30-meter 5.11 and 5.12 limestone routes around Canmore. As Walsh put it: “I wouldn’t reach for these shoes for razor-thin edging (hello, !) or Font-style sloper problems (the !), but for everything else, they are in rotation. It’s what the La Sportiva Genius should have been.”

Gifts $300+

Coros Apex 2 Pro Watch ($449)

The Coros Apex 2 Pro is a GPS sports watch that gives mountain athletes of all kinds the ability to accurately track their training and performances. It features a touch screen made of sapphire glass and three low-profile buttons. It’s got all the bells and whistles, including geo-location data from five satellites systems, a topographic map, heart rate data, a barometric altimeter, a 3D compass, a thermometer, an oximeter, and music storage—plus specific activity tracking including the “Indoor Climbing” mode. The Coros Apex 2 Pro takes all the and brings it to a new level with an increased battery life (now 21 days with stress monitoring, and 66 hours with full GPS tracking) and a slightly larger watch face. Climbers who struggle with either over- or under-doing it in the gym will benefit from the insight and accountability this watch can offer.

PAID ADVERTISEMENT BY MOUNTAIN EQUIPMENT
Mountain Equipment Oreus Jacket ($449.95)

Endorsed by leading alpinists, the Oreus jacket from Mountain Equipment delivers superior warmth, functionality, and durability in challenging environments. This versatile jacket is crafted with innovative Aetherm Precision Insulation for down-like performance with the durability and weather resistance of synthetic fill. Between warmth, quick-drying performance, low weight, and pack size, it’s perfect for alpine climbing, ski touring, hill-walking and more as an outer layer, warm mid-layer, or lightweight belay jacket.

Black Diamond Hydra Ice Tool ($310)

Ice climbing tools have come so far since the medieval days of straight-shafted instruments that it can be difficult to wade through all the modern-day options. Most ice tools have a balanced swing weight, comfortable grip, and aggressively shaped shaft to minimize pump and bruised knuckles. So where does a would-be consumer go from there? We’d point them toward Black Diamond’s all-new Hydra, which is quickly becoming our favorite tool of all time.

One of our favorite things about the Hydra is how customizable you can make it depending on your objective. Its innovative head weights are the real headline here: Black Diamond sank the weights into the head itself, rather than bolting them onto the pick, simultaneously providing a more balanced swing weight and a lower profile. Thanks to this recessed head, ice climbers can opt for simple 5-gram “spacers” if they’re climbing warm, wet ice and don’t need the extra heft. Or, if swinging into bullet-hard ice in Canada, as we did on the north-facing Stanley Headwall last winter, drop in two 40-gram headweights to let the Hydras do the work. We’ve also been going hybrid—one light spacer, one heavy weight—to achieve that Goldilocks-swing at medium altitudes.

Head weights aside, the Hydra comes with a suit of tools that would make a mechanic jealous, including a long “Alpine” spike for snow plunging, a “Micro” spike, a full-size alpine hammer, micro hammer, adze, and handle spacers. And don’t get us started on their razor-sharp picks


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On the morning of Monday, May 6, the air on the Cumbrian Coast was 58 degrees Fahrenheit and very damp.  The tide was neither in nor out, and the surface of the Irish Sea looked like a restless version of the paved parking lot where my wife and I stood. Before descending to the beach, I loosened my shoelaces, jogged a few experimental steps, and tightened the laces again. Emma was stretching her quads and fiddling with the nozzle of her water bladder. We had giddy prerace feelings, though this was not a race, or even a run, and we’d come to England because we wanted to slow down.

Above the beach, a muddy path crept up a green sheep pasture to the top of St. Bees Head, a 300-foot sandstone sea cliff teeming with birds and mist. We knew from maps and books and online research that the Coast to Coast Walk, which we were there to do, traversed the mesa-like head for four and a half miles before veering eastward for another 188.

“How are they feeling?” Emma asked, nodding grimly in the direction of my feet.

“I’m hoping they’re just nervous,” I replied.

A fishing boat was humming alone in the sea fret. Beach pebbles clacked with fright, delight, or some other rocky emotion as they were tumbled by the waves. Because it’s a Coast to Coast tradition, we spent a few minutes on the shore picking among these oblate stones until one felt right—mine a mostly solid matte black, Emma’s black with green veins. Then we slid the rocks into our packs, dipped our feet in the sea, and clicked our Garmin watches on.

“I’ll race ya,” Emma said.

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Warning: This article discusses sexual violence.

On October 30, longtime Bay Area climber Jason William Crist, 38, was arrested in Pacifica, California, and charged with nine felonies for alleged events that took place around the state between March 2019 and October 2023.

He faces 29 counts associated with sexual violence, a result of four police reports describing interactions with him in Pacifica, Presidio, Joshua Tree, and Yosemite. The felony charges include forcible rape, sexual battery, and assault. He posted bail on October 30 for $500,000.

Climbing spoke with three women who’ve made accusations against Crist. They describe how this former Arc’teryx NorCal ambassador and former Movement Climbing, Yoga, and Fitness employee had a consistent pattern. At the climbing gym in San Francisco’s Presidio park—formerly Planet Granite, now Movement San Francisco—Crist would befriend young female climbers, generally novices who didn’t know many people in the community and didn’t yet have the skills to take themselves outside. Then he would “act as a mentor or their ‘keys’ to outdoor climbing,” one woman told Climbing.

“He was teaching at the gym,” said another of Crist’s complainants. “He was teaching women and men. He had the option to teach children. It just seemed like he had a rapport from the gym and there was safety there.” But once he got the women outside, Crist would “cross established boundaries in ways that are not OK.”

“He uses climbing trips as the perfect time to hurt people,” said another complainant. “It’s a real repeat thing.”

According to this climber, there are currently ten women who have claimed to have had similar confrontations with Crist.

Crist’s arrest comes on the heels of former professional climber Charlie Barrett’s February 2024 conviction for raping a woman in Yosemite National Park—and one of Crist’s complainants said that Crist’s case was eerily similar for one major reason:

“Everyone knew,” she said. “But none of the other guys in the community would tell a girl, ‘Hey, Jason’s creepy, don’t hang out with him.’ They only told me after the assault, like, ‘Oh yeah, I knew he was a bad person, I was worried for you.’”

According to all three complainants, managers at Movement Climbing, Yoga, and Fitness were made aware that Crist—an employee of three years—had allegedly assaulted multiple employees and members, and, after those women filed police reports, launched a months-long investigation. As a result, Crist was fired this past summer and banned from all 29 Movement properties.

While one of the women with whom Climbing spoke expressed appreciation for Movement’s decision, and for the support that the Movement community has provided, others are frustrated that the information uncovered by Movement’s third-party investigators was not widely publicized.

“If Movement knew more about the assaults than anyone else,” says , a philosophy professor at San Francisco State University and the author of Golden State Bouldering Guidebook, “I’m disappointed that they sat on the information rather than sharing it with the climbing community. I don’t understand how someone could make that choice.”

In response to Climbing’s request for comment, a Movement spokesperson assured us that “Movement Climbing, Yoga and Fitness prioritizes the safety and well-being of all community members, and we take any allegations of misconduct very seriously.” But they added: “As this is an active investigation, we are unable to comment.”

Moore was made aware of the police reports against Crist when the complainants reached out to him this summer. Knowing that sexual assault cases often take years to lead to an arrest, he began actively working with the Bay Area Climbers Coalition, but they had not yet taken any action when Crist was unexpectedly arrested.

The women we spoke with noted that, while Crist and Barrett are extreme cases, they aren’t the only bad actors.

“When all the Charlie Barrett stuff came out,” said one woman, “everyone pointed at him and was like, ‘That’s terrible. Don’t be that guy. Good thing we got him. That guy’s gone.’ And I think a lot of people missed the point that it’s still happening under our noses. I don’t want this story to be ‘Got another one; good thing we got him.’ I want it to be an ongoing conversation. I want dudes to talk to their friends about how they’re treating women. 
 I want people to know that sexual assault is a reason that women leave climbing. Everyone deserves to feel comfortable and safe when they’re at the crag. I could have left climbing. And if I could have left, then I think other women probably have. And I hate that.”

This is a developing story. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű will update it as more information becomes available. 

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I have built two home walls this year. The one in my garage is 11 feet wide, nine feet tall, and 47 degrees overhanging. The one in the backyard of my parents’ house (where I spent the summer) is eight feet wide, 11 feet tall, 41 degrees overhanging, and set with a 2016 Moonboard. Building these walls was something of a culmination for me: definitive proof that, after two decades of commuting to the gym, I finally have the disposable income to train at home. Neither wall, however, is even remotely as photogenic as the 83-foot mistake currently at 16 Minetta Lane in New York City’s uber-posh West Village.

Did I just say mistake?

I guess I did.

But before I explain, let me first admit that the rest of 16 Minetta certainly looks pretty sweet—almost infinitely nicer than the roach-ridden one-bedroom my wife and I once shared in Prospect Park South. The mansion was designed by architect Adam Kushner, and it served as a primary residence for him and his family for several years. It’s 4,200 square feet across seven floors. It has four bedrooms and five bathrooms. It has multiple fireplaces, a private courtyard, multiple terraces and balconies, a private roof deck, 23-foot living room ceilings, and stylish piles of cordwood providing rustic decoration throughout. The only true eyesore, in my plebeian opinion, is the 83-foot climbing wall.

The wall begins at the basement level and “climbs” up the northwest side (morning sun, evening shade) of an enclosed, glass-topped courtyard. For the first four stories it looks much like any other pre-21st century climbing wall: vertical and brown-tinted, with tape designating certain routes. But then it escapes through a retractable glass roof. And for the next three stories, as you ascend into the air above the West Village, the wall material is glass, which offers the climber sweeping views of Manhattan and allows envious passersby on the street to compete over who can take the least-flattering butt shots.

Pretty cool, huh?

Sure. But you’d think an architect with an $20 million home would have invested in a slightly more interesting arrangement of wall angles (dead vertical being perhaps the single worst angle after dead flat), and a slightly more thrilling set of holds. In photos, the vertical wall is, admittedly, broken by a few large volume, but is it even possible to climb its weird slug-shaped overhang without dabbing against the facade of the building? And those holds! They look like used gym holds from the 90s—chalkless, slippery, and ergonomically fucked. ( gorgeous wood grips would have fit the home’s timber-themed decor far better.) When I first looked at the pictures, I immediately thought that while the house looks like it was designed by someone who knows a thing or two about houses, the climbing wall looks like it was designed by someone who knows almost nothing about climbing.

This is sort of—but not exactly—true.  According to a 2021 about 16 Minetta in Gripped, Kushner began rock climbing in the 1980s and used day trips to the Gunks as an “antidote” to the urban bustle. He never led harder than 5.6 trad, and he never followed harder than 5.8, but he was emotionally devoted to the sport, and he’s since translated the meaning it brought to his life into a design element in his architecture, even (according to Gripped) incorporating a wall used during the X Games into one of his earlier projects.

In this sense, Kushner’s home wall seems designed to serve more of a metaphorical function than a physical one. I mean, it literally begins in a forever-shadowy basement courtyard, pierces a glass ceiling, and loses even the visibly restrictive nature of—well—a wall by turning translucent. It is, quite literally, an escape from the confines of a closed-in city home.

Yet I łŠČčČÔ’t help but sense that the climbing wall’s upward-reaching, unenclosed nature also—and ironically—mimics a famous feature of one of history’s most restrictive architectural structures: the high towers of a Disney-style castle. This makes sense to me. Because city mansions are a bit like castles, designed to make the wealthy feel separate and safe from the commoners in the street, and the climbing wall at 16 Minetta is little more than a 21st century version of the high tower from which a king, or a prince, or cloistered maiden might gaze while simultaneously submitting themselves to the admiration of those below.

Accidental? I think not. “The city park is right across from us,” Kushner told Gripped in 2021. “We certainly draw a crowd.”

The appropriation of climbing and climbing walls by non-climbers isn’t particularly new. Hollywood has made hay out of misrepresenting the sport for decades. And artificial climbing walls—or their genetically tortured cousins—have been popping up in fairs, parks, weight gyms, and cruise ships for decades, attracting kids and scorn and in seemingly equal measure.

But what’s interesting about Kushner’s version at 16 Minetta is the combination of utility and location. This isn’t a state fair. This is a home. Which means that this wall is something that Kushner and his family looked at, and lived next to, for years. And though the wall’s design is pretty mediocre from a climbing standpoint, it is functional. You can lead climb or top rope. You can crimp, drop-knee, or pump off huge greasy volumes. And according to Gripped, the wall hosts—or did in 2021—some relatively challenging routes. While Kushner remains a novice, his son took to the sport pretty well and set climbs as hard as 5.11—though, judging from photos, it seems he either didn’t use chalk or, for cleanliness reasons, wasn’t allowed to, so who knows how hard the climbs actually were.

Of course, the thought of Kushner’s teenage son spending hours hanging on his family’s wall, testing moves, setting 5.11s, and mocking his old man—that makes me happy. But it also makes me a little lonely on his behalf. Because when teenagers find climbing, they generally find a community to go along with it. But I suspect that having a wall like this in your house would inspire the opposite. Does that make him a Rapunzel figure—trapped in his high tower, in need of escape? Probably not. But for most of us, gyms are social—and it’s that part of their functionality.

I have nothing against Kushner. If he and his son are happy lapping a vertical wall while the plebes ogle them from the street below—fine. But regardless of how dysfunctional the wall is from a climber perspective, I do think it’s there’s something meaningful about the fact that Kushner’s home climbing wall is being marketed as a central design element of an $20 million mansion that Kushner (a famous and influential architect, remember) considers “deeply philosophical” and “the culmination of [his] dream.”

Meaningful how? I don’t know if I can answer that in any concise and singular way. Perhaps it’s meaningful in the same kind of way that $1,590 Louis Vuitton chalk bag was meaningful: an implication that our sport is now mainstream enough to be mined for symbolism by people who don’t actually engage in the sport. Or perhaps it’s meaningful in the same way that Eddie Bauer’s to fire all its climbing athletes and replace them with Instagram influencers is meaningful: a reminder that, in our late capitalist society, semblance is more marketable than the real thing. Or perhaps it’s meaningful in the same kind of way that recent climbing gym are meaningful: a reminder that our gyms, which were once owned by climbers and run for climbers, are now overseen by executives whose fundamental allegiance is not to their customers or the employees but to the already-wealthy investors who expect the gym to maximize their returns. In other words: a reminder that our sport is now quite literally being defined by wealthy people who have no emotional investment in it.

Indeed, in a full-circle moment, Kushner has been part of that process, too. His architectural firm, , and his construction company, the , led the of Brooklyn Boulders’s former home, at 575 Degraw Street in Gowanus, for the Brooklyn Bouldering Project. Brooklyn Boulders was my old local gym, so I can attest to the fact that it was a dilapidated tear-down. There were no showers or saunas or yoga rooms. The roof often leaked. In the winter, frigid air plowed through single pane warehouse windows, and in summer, the place smelled like someone was trying to roast old socks in an oven.

But I’m old enough to remember the days before Brooklyn Boulders’s management ran it into the ground, when BKB—back then the only commercial climbing gym in the city—was a legitimately beloved training hub whose densely set walls and wide range of difficulties attracted folks like Ty Landman, Phil Schaal, and Ashima Shiraishi. So it’s a little sad to know that Kushner Studios and the In-House Group finalized that gym’s long transformation into something very different: a mirror image of every other chichi commercial gym out there. Yoga studio! Coworking space! Yet another gigantic facility that doesn’t have very many problems because we don’t want to pay our setters but we’ll attempt to disguise that by splashing colorful macros across the walls and then quiet dissent from core climbers by throwing a Tension Board 2 into one corner!

Perfect. Just what our sport needs.

But I’ll tell you this: If you gave me 16 Minetta, I’d at least consider tearing it down to build a real rock gym. The sort of core community center that, for a few years, Brooklyn Boulders managed to be. Maybe we can shape some good old timber crimps from those piles of ornamental firewood.

Related:

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My main memory of the Olympic Sport Climbing event in is that it was (a) confusing, and (b) a shambling mess. I came away feeling that the organizers’ incomprehensible decision to jam two totally different sports together—speed climbing, with its emphasis on moving quickly up an easy route, and lead and bouldering, with their emphasis on —ended up creating an event that was unfair to just about every athlete participating in it.

Luckily, there are two major differences between the Olympic Sport Climbing event (singular) that debuted in Tokyo three years ago and the Sport Climbing events (plural) that we’re watching in Paris this week.

Speed Is Now Its Own Event

Paris 2024 has two Sport Climbing events, with speed athletes competing for one gold medal while Boulder & Lead athletes vie for another. Is this a big deal? Emphatically yes. In a 2021 article I wrote that to ask a speed athlete to compete in Boulder & Lead is less like asking a 100-meter runner to compete in the marathon than asking a short track speed skater to compete in figure skating—two radically different sports that happen to involve ice. I still believe that. And, as evidence, I point to the fact that no athlete in Paris is competing in both the Speed and the Boulder & Lead Combined events.

Someday, perhaps, the Olympics will emulate the IFSC World Championships and give Sport Climbing four medals (Speed, Boulder, Lead, and Boulder & Lead Combined). But for now, simply carving Speed off makes sense. Many athletes excel at both Boulder and Lead. Janja Garnbret, Adam Ondra, Jakob Schubert, Colin Duffy, Toby Roberts, and Anraku Sorato have all won World Cups in both events—and a majority of the climbers in the Olympics have podiumed in both at the World Cup level.

The Combined Format Has a New Scoring Structure

Because Speed is no longer part of the Combined event, the Combined event’s scoring in Paris relies—intuitively—on athletes accumulating points based upon how far they climb up the boulders and lead walls.

In Tokyo, where Speed was included, this cumulative scoring structure couldn’t work, since nearly everyone gets to the top of the speed wall. Instead, Olympic organizers devised a ridiculously confusing system in which, at the end of each discipline, climbers were given points correlating to their finishing rank. The combined score was then reached by multiplying the results from each of the disciplines—with the lowest three scores earning medals. (For example, Adam Ondra placed fourth in Speed, sixth in Boulder, and second in Lead in the Tokyo Olympic final, so his combined score was 48 (4 x 6 x 2). Alberto GinĂ©s LĂłpez won gold with a score of 28, having placed first in Speed, seventh in Boulder, and fourth in Lead.) The frustrating—but also sort of fascinating—thing about the multiplication structure was that scores changed drastically with slight variations in finishing order. Whenever a climber passed another climber’s high point on the lead wall, for instance, everyone else’s scores changed too, which made following the event intensely anxiety provoking. Reporting on it for Climbing, I watched with a notepad and a calculator at hand, always half convinced that I’d made an error and was entirely misunderstanding the state of the competition.

In Paris, the scoring is far less convoluted—but it’s still got complexity. The TLDR version is that scoring is based on how far you get up each of the four boulders and the lead route in each round. How logical! But in reality it’s not quite so simple, so if you’re not familiar with that yet, read our article

All this is very cool (and good for the sport) for three reasons:

Speed Climbers Don’t Get Shafted

Before 2016, when Sport Climbing’s inclusion in the Olympics was first announced, Speed walls were quite rare in commercial climbing gyms in the United States—and speed climbing was generally considered some weird aberration popular only in Iran and Indonesia and various post-Soviet nations. As a result, U.S. viewers tended to interpret Speed’s inclusion in the Tokyo Combined event based on how it might pollute the results generated by the Boulder and Lead events that we actually cared about. We tended to forget, in other words, that for the speed specialists and their fans, Tokyo was a total disaster. Since their discipline did not prepare them to do well in Lead or Boulder, the math was against them, which meant that only three speed climbers made the finals—two by winning semis outright, the third (France’s Anouck Jaubert) by also topping two boulders in the bouldering round. In finals, Aleksandra MirosƂaw easily won Speed, but—as she and everyone else understood would happen—was trounced in the other two rounds and therefore, despite setting a new world record, did not medal.

This year, that’s not the case. Aleksandra MirosƂaw is back, and she’s still the best speed climber in the world, and if she performs in quarter finals and finals like she did in Monday’s semis (where she broke her own world record twice and is pushing the time down toward the 6 second mark), she’ll certainly have a medal to hang on her wall.

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The Combined Event Gains Credibility

In Tokyo, only one male speed specialist, France’s Bassa Mawem, qualified for finals—but after winning the early Speed rounds and ensuring his final slot, he ruptured his bicep on the semifinal lead route. As a result, Mawem wasn’t able to take place in finals, which basically meant that the remaining seven men, all of whom were specialized boulderers and/or lead climbers, suddenly found that their speed skills actually mattered, which threw a ton of randomness into the event. Ultimately, it was by winning Speed that Alberto Gines Lopez—who finished fourth in Lead and seventh in Boulder—took Olympic gold, and it was by doing surprisingly well in Speed (he placed fourth) that Adam Ondra was, , in gold medal contention.

Because of the important role that Speed ended up playing in the men’s field, viewers were left feeling like there was a real disconnect between the event’s ostensible purpose (identifying the best climber on that particular day) and the tests to which climbers were submitted. If you’d subtracted the Speed event, for instance, you’d have gotten very different results, and would have needed a different way of identifying victors. (Nathaniel Coleman won Boulder and came in fifth in Lead; Jakob Schubert came in fifth in Boulder and won Lead; Colin Duffy came in fourth and third respectively; who would have won?)

Retroactively removing Speed from the competition isn’t particularly fair, of course, since Speed was part of the competition whether people like me like it or not, and since randomness (sometimes in the form of injury) is actually one of the more interesting elements of competitions. Without it we’d get bored. But the event’s structure did lead a lot of people to essentially dismiss the results as the fluke byproduct of an Olympic bureaucracy that categorically misunderstood what climbing was about and therefore structured a competition such that it was impossible for the results to actually reflect who the best climber was. “Cool,” they thought. “Now let’s go back to valuing World Cups.”

Such critics should note, however, that, in the Olympic bureaucracy’s defense, things went far better in the women’s field, where two speed specialists—Aleksandra MirosƂaw and Anouck Jaubert—managed to qualify for finals and then took first and second place in Speed. This, as organizers no doubt intended, left the Bouldering and Lead rounds to operate more or less as their own competition. We turned a blind eye while the speed climbers pretended to try on boulders and routes far harder than they’ll ever climb, and then we watched Janja Garnbret crush absolutely everything as expected.

The Competition Is Easier to Watch—and Understand

One of the great problems with Tokyo, as noted above, was that it was incredibly hard to understand the state of the overall competition while watching it—which was annoying for climbers like me, but potentially off-putting to non-climbers, who had to endure watching a strange (to them) sport described via a and scored via an incomprehensible (to everyone) scoring system. Now, thanks to the new scoring format, it’s pretty easy to follow the state of the competition. Sure, if you’re an English major like me, you may still want to keep your calculator handy—but for the rest of you, it’s just addition. How hard can it get?

Note: If you’re interested in an in-depth analysis of why the Tokyo Olympics kinda sucked in a fascinating way, check out my 2021 story,   It describes how Adam Ondra went from probably winning gold to taking sixth  place when, thanks to some brilliant climbing by Jakob Schubert, he came in second rather than first in Lead. It also, as the title suggests, demonstrates how the speed specialists were even more disadvantaged by the combined structure than the lead climbers.

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Though he’s just 24 years old, Kai Lightner has been a kitchen-table name in the rock climbing world for more than a decade. After years of steady performance in the competitive youth circuit, Lightner took the outdoor world by storm in the spring of 2013, when during a four-week period he sent his first four 5.14s—including Southern Smoke (5.14c). He’s been in and out of the headlines ever since, climbing other hard 5.14s, winning a Youth World Lead Championship, and taking multiple golds at both Youth and Open Lead Nationals.

But talent wasn’t the only thing that set Lightner apart: he’s also Black. And as one of the first African American climbers to reach such a high level in the sport, Lightner found himself something of a poster-child for diversity in the climbing world, and the outdoors more generally. Yet while he won comps and acquired sponsors, appeared in Reel Rock segments and major corporate ad slots, Lightner’s experience with the wider climbing community was
 complicated.

In straight terms: “We encountered a lot of bullshit,” Lightner remembers.

Meanwhile, members of the climbing world used him and his accomplishments as evidence that climbing didn’t have a diversity problem—something that does justice to neither the demographic facts nor Lightner’s experiences in the sport. “There were multiple points in my career where I was like, ‘Well, we’ve reached the end of the road,’” he told me in an interview in March 2023, “but then, miraculously, something would come up and it would help me push through. So I find it funny when people use me as an example of diversity in the sport. Because I am not the rule, I am an exception—and I barely got here.”

While in college, Lightner chose to step away from competitive climbing, at least temporarily. “I’ve always wanted to look at how I could impact the community in a more holistic way, but when you’re in the grind training for competitions, you’ve got to have your head down. College gave me the opportunity to lift my head up a little bit, see what I could offer the climbing community.”

Then, in the summer of 2020, while Lightner was still a student at Babson College, George Floyd was murdered. Suddenly Lightner found himself the corporate climbing world’s “go-to person” for anything pertaining to race in the outdoor industry. “There I was behind the scenes,” Lightner remembers, “helping [companies] craft their DEI statements
 and I realized I could be more effective if I organized this work under an organization like .”

We about Lightner when he launched Climbing for Change, a 501c3 nonprofit devoted to expanding diversity across all levels of the climbing community, in late July, 2020. But that was a long time ago. So we thought it was time for a catch up. In our conversation, which has been condensed and edited, Lightner talked about his own experiences with racism in the climbing world, blew apart some common misconceptions about how climbing is accessible for people of color, and, in spite of it all, expressed a real and honest optimism about the future of diversity in the outdoor industry. We also talked about how Climbing for Change has evolved over the last two and half years and—of course—about his current climbing and training goals. (Hint: no comps!)

INTERVIEW

Climbing: Let’s start with your early years: What was it like to be not just a very good rock climber at a very young age, but a very good rock climber in a sport where there really weren’t many other Black athletes?

Lightner: It was difficult in a lot of ways. I did a lot of questioning of my identity. On the one hand I enjoyed this sport so much, but on the other hand, it was a sport that had made itself pretty exclusive to people who looked like me. When I told people that I liked to go rock climbing, people questioned my Blackness, people questioned my sanity, and my family questioned my safety. So it was scary in the beginning. And we encountered a lot of bullshit that made me question whether I belonged. 

One thing that people don’t always appreciate is that, sure, there are plenty of people without jobs or a steady income who make climbing and travel work on a shoestring budget—but doing that requires community, it requires access, it requires knowing people who also do the sport. But if you don’t know anyone, and you don’t know the gear, and you don’t know where to camp, and you have no history of entering communities like this, it’s really difficult to piece things together enough to get started in sports like climbing. 

The only way I made it in the beginning was that people saw my talent as an athlete and helped me along the way. There were multiple points in my career where I was like, “Well, we’ve reached the end of the road. We łŠČčČÔ’t afford to do more. This is it.” But then miraculously something would come up and it would help me push through. So I find it funny when people use me as an example of diversity in the sport. Because I am not the rule, I am an exception—and I barely got here. So I understand fully why there are not enough people of color in the sport, and that’s why I’m trying to close those gaps and give opportunities to people like me.

That actually reminds me of the book publishing industry in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s: it was wildly undiverse back then (and still has work to do) but people kept saying that this lack of diversity wasn’t a problem because Black writers like Toni Morrison and James Baldwin and Jamaica Kincaid were getting published and winning prizes. Do you feel like that’s something the climbing community has done with you—like: “Of course we’re a diverse sport. We’ve got Kai Lightner”?

I think history repeats itself. And I definitely think that I’ve been used to promote the message that the sport is diversified despite the underlying lack of diversity. As one of the only professional African American climbers, when people are trying to promote that message, my literal image gets used—but it’s just not telling the whole story. 

This is not solely a climbing world problem. People use Barack Obama to say that the country is no longer racist. People use singular examples of Black excellence as examples that the whole system is changing, just because that one person made it through. I mean, we hope that that person opens doors in the future, but these people are the exceptions, not the rule. And the fact that nearly every one of them has a ridiculous story of extreme tenacity shows that the barriers are still hella high. They’re getting attention because they are exceptional, but why are they exceptional? Because they stand alone. We have a lot of work to do to make success like that more consistent.

Have you seen significant DEI change since you started climbing or is the record more mixed? 

I think that there’s been good work done, but I also think that there’s continued work that needs to be done to make it sustainable and fully impactful. We’re seeing more marketing and ad campaigns featuring diversity, but it would be nice to see more people of color in positions of leadership and power where their voices can be a little louder. So there’s work to be done. But the initiative and conversation is there. I mean, ten years ago this wouldn’t even have been a conversation. So there’s been progress in that respect.

What have you identified as some of the biggest barriers that our community faces when trying to make the sport more diverse?

The big ones we’ve tried to hop over at Climbing for Change are cost, access, and stigma. It’s expensive to participate in these sports. And not everyone can visit these areas or feel safe when they do. A lot of the outdoor areas that climbers celebrate have deep histories of racism that have steered people of color away from wanting to recreate there. So I think the work isn’t just to make the sport more accessible but also to make the wider environment more accepting of people who look like us. And that’s a big job. I don’t think in my lifetime I’ll see that fully worked through. But it’s got to be chipped away at somehow. And that’s the job I’m taking on at the moment.

When did you first decide to start Climbing for Change: it was in 2020 right?

All through my career I’ve done grass-roots community work, trying to make outdoor recreation more popular and available to communities of color, but in 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement was going on and there were all these tensions, I became everyone’s go-to person for PR statements or business advice. Companies were asking me “What have we done wrong” or “What can we do better? How can we help?” and there I was, behind the scenes, consulting with companies, helping them craft their DEI statements or allocate funding. And I realized I could be more effective if I organized this work under an organization like Climbing for Change.

What were the organization’s early days like?

So in July 2020 we got a 501c3 and hit the ground running. We launched a few grant programs and our first physical program, in Atlanta, working with the local government and Stone Summit Climbing gym to create a sustainable access point to climbing for local communities of color. We used city resources to provide free transportation to the gym, and we partnered with Kevin Jorgeson and to build a climbing wall at a recreation center in College Park. We were able to do that within six months of launching. Which was God’s work, trust me. It was a lot of effort. 

How have things gone since then?

Since January 2021, we’ve been able to work with our high profile donors like Clif Bar, Adidas, and Black Diamond to offer 10 different grant programs, each of them targeting different aspects of diversity in climbing. We’ve awarded over $136,00 in grants to 87 different individuals and organizations. And we’ve consulted with countless small businesses in the outdoor industry. We want people of color to look at this space and not just see themselves in the people climbing or skiing or hiking with them; we want them to be greeted at the door by people who look like them, see ad placements featuring people who look like them, and see people at the top making the decisions who look like them. 

What are some of those grants like?

Our mission statement, our goal, is to diversify the outdoors from top to bottom. targets a different part of that mission statement, but I’ll highlight three of them. The first is the , where we aim to encourage BIPOC individuals to become leaders in the outdoor industry. In doing that, we’ve been able to help 31 people get route setter certificiations, single pitch instructor certifications, wilderness first responder certifications, and so on. These certifications help them become leaders and guides who can help others get outside. Through that grant, we’ve also funded some big projects like the Black Out Fest, which is the only festival in the United States that focuses on celebrating Black people in rock climbing, and the FAMU , which is the first outdoor club at a Historically Black College or University. 

We also have our , which helps individuals move from indoor to outdoor climbing—something that I know from experience is a big leap. In that process we were able to fund 14 people to attend the at Ouray earlier this year. And we sponsor groups from places like to do outdoor bouldering trips outside.

The third one I want to highlight is our Project Based Opportunity Grants, sponsored by Adidas, which provide a conduit for corporate organizations to get talent from diverse pools of people. One of the big complaints we heard in 2020 was companies saying that they didn’t know where to find more diverse employees. But if you’re still pulling talent from Primarily White Institutions or spaces that don’t have any history of diversity, you’re not going to have a large pool of people to pull from. You need to be looking at HBCUs, or career fairs in diverse communities, places where intellectuals of color congregate. So with the Project Based Opportunity Grants we’ve tried to help bridge that gap, working  with HBCUs and other diverse organizations to create job opportunities.

You’ve devoted a lot of your life to being a great climber and expanding that sport for other members of your community. How do you pitch climbing to non-climbing communities who might be distrustful of it for those reasons you mentioned above?

Climbing is a lifelong relationship, not just with themselves and the sport but with nature in general. And it teaches so many fundamental lessons. Even as a kid I had to learn important adult lessons through climbing, such as how to transfer your failures into learning experiences, or how to slowly chip away at a goal that is too big to fathom at the moment but will slowly become possible as you improve. 

It also teaches you a lot about community. At every level you’re relying on someone else. When they belay you or spot you, your life is in their hands, and that helps develop a level of trust that can break down certain barriers. When you’re putting your life in someone’s hands, it doesn’t matter what color their skin is or what kind of background they have. Instead you see them for who they are. And I think that’s not something that a lot of other sports give you.

Climbing also gives you a level of physical and mental focus that really helps with self esteem. A lot of the grants we give out with Climbing For Change are to people with PTSD or ADHD, and for some of these people, climbing is the only thing that helps them focus and center themselves in life. Because not only do you need to be physically engaged while climbing, you’re constantly also problem-solving in real time. 

Lastly, I just think that climbing is a super holistic, lifelong, special sport. You know, it’s crazy: I’m not competing anymore, but I feel like my work is just beginning. There are so many genres of the sport. You’re never finished with climbing. And as you get older, you develop newer skills and can lean on different aspects of your physicality and mental game; you become mentally stronger and technically sounder. A lot of the best climbers I have been in the sport for decades and have so much to give to the next generation.

What’s your climbing like these days? Are you training for comps or for outdoor goals?

I’m not currently training for comps. I’m old. [Laughs]. But seriously, if I stepped back into competitions, I’d be one of the oldest in the room. So my calling and focus has been outdoor climbing. I graduated from college in May of last year, and I spent the summer and fall focusing on Climbing for Change. But I’ve been training all through the winter, and now that spring is coming I’m really excited to test myself outside in a way that I haven’t been able to before. Most of my outdoor climbing before now has been in short windows of time, during spring break or fall break, in between school and competitions. But now I have the time, so I’m going to do a trip to Spain, and I’ll do some trips to Colorado to try some multi-pitch climbing. But I also just want to climb outside more often and get used to regularly being in the dirt, because I’m not used to it at all.

Has your training changed with that new focus?

Funnily enough, it’s changed quite a bit. With comps, you’re really training all different types of skill sets. You basically have to walk into a competition with a full toolbox even though you know that you will only need to use two or three items in it. Whereas if you have an outdoor project, you can study that project, train for that project, and come prepared for what you need. That’s a very different mindset for me, but it’s been very fun. Outdoor climbing also puts more emphasis on muscle memory and learned movement rather than walking into a comp over-prepared and super strong and hoping that it works out. It’s a bit more predictable, which I can appreciate.

Anything you want to add?

Climbing for Change also accepts through their links. No donation is too small. One dollar, five dollars, ten dollars. The only way that we can provide the grants that we give is through the money we get through donations. It’s accessible on the website.  

Steven Potter is a digital editor at Climbing. He’s been flailing on rocks since 2004, has successfully injured (and unsuccessfully rehabbed) nearly every one of his fingers, and holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University.

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1. The mountain of my dreams

I have a confession: When I was a wee little teenager searching desperately for a way to validate my wee little life, I wanted to climb Mount Everest.

Shameful, I know! But I was just a kid. And this was back in the blissfully ignorant early 2000s, less than a decade removed from John Krakauer’s best-selling apology for the high-altitude mountaineering industry, and more than a decade before that ominously totalitarian moment when Ueli Steck (one of the great alpinists of the 21st century, RIP) was literally assaulted for daring to play around on the commercial South Col route on his own schedule, without a guide.

Back then, I knew nothing about the high-altitude traffic jams, the historically marginalized Sherpa guides, or the fact that the mountain’s once-somber basecamp was turned each spring into a litter-strewn amusement park where the prayer flags and pujas add exotic local color to such big-city features as constant helicopter traffic and drunken dance parties.

Nor did I know that bottled oxygen effectively drops a mountain’s experiential elevation to anywhere from 24,000 to 10,000 feet, on flow rates and exertion levels, which is why professional badasses like Ecuador’s Carla Perez, who’s done Everest with and without supplemental oxygen, believe that “if you start with O2 at 6,500-meters, that is what you have climbed: a 6,500-meter mountain. 
 From a sporting point of view, an O2 climb is not valid.”

Luckily, I was cured of my Everest dreams when, at the ripe young age of 15, I excitedly revealed them to the sport climber friend who’d brought me to Rumney and taught me to tie a figure 8.

“Everest isn’t climbing, dude, it’s hiking,” he said, before promptly showing me what the real thing looked like by onsighting a fully bolted 5.11c.

(An overhang! Wow!)

Regardless of my embarrassing early-life ambitions, or perhaps because of them, I was delighted to find out that Everest’s Nepalese trade route—the South Col route—is finally where it has long deserved to be: on AllTrails, a very popular mapping app for hikers, mountain bikers, and OHV enthusiasts.

“Proceed cautiously on this 27.7-mile out-and-back trail near Khumjung, Province 1,” says the AllTrails description. “Generally considered a highly challenging route, it should only be attempted by experienced adventurers. This is a very popular area for backpacking, camping, and hiking, so you’ll likely encounter other people while exploring. The trail is open year-round and is beautiful to visit anytime.”

Year round! Who knew?

2. A brief (but important) caveat

But before I bash Everest too much, let me acknowledge a few things. The mountain is quite big. And it’s quite steep. And its altitude is quite real. Several years ago, Cory Richards (the first American to summit an 8,000-meter peak in winter) that climbing Everest without supplemental oxygen is “a legit undertaking” and “a profound exercise in tenacity” even when attempted with the fixed ropes via the trade route. I trust him; he’s done it with and without oxygen, and he even a new route on the Northeast Face of the mountain. I’ve also read enough of those harrowing 1980s memoirs to know that even with supplemental oxygen, Everest is a dang serious endeavor when attempted from, say, the 11,000-foot Kangshung Face or the rarely repeated West Ridge and its famous variation, the Hornbein Couloir.

I also want to acknowledge that Everest is fascinating. My own father was drawn to it, attempting the mountain (with guides) back in 1991. I was raised on his stories, and I still occasionally stand in the hall outside my childhood bedroom and ponder the photograph of him standing on the wind-swept North Col. Even now, 33 years later, a quietly mystical lilt enters my dad’s voice when he talks about the expedition—and it’s a mysticism that I also recognized in the voice of Cory Richards, when he told me that, for him, the mountain isn’t just a mountain, it’s an idea that “connects the planet in one singular point [and] transcends cultural differences and borders.”

So even though I’m a wee little sport climber, mockable in all ways, I still apply too much idealism to Everest to quietly accept the theme-park images that flow off the peak each spring season. Given the mountain’s understandable allure, I don’t want to begrudge people who want to go suck oxygen in high places, but I wish that their well-publicized “climbs” weren’t cheapening the accomplishments of the truly talented, die-hard alpinists who are still out there doing very cool new things on the world’s highest peaks—especially since the mainstream media seems to have so much trouble distinguishing between the two.

OK. I’m done.

3. Now to the main event

There are many wonderful things on Everest’s AllTrails page, including a conspicuous lack of summit photos and, to my amazement, some genuine-looking reviews. Alexander Pancoe, for instance, writes, “Summited May 23rd 2019. The culmination of 4 years of training both technically and physically. Went with șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Consultants. Amazing challenge physical and mental. Come prepared. Amazing. Challenging. Be prepared.”

Fair enough, Alex, if a little repetitive. Nicely done. Why șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Consultants over Furtenbach șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs’s deluxe Signature Expedition package, may I ask? Was it the $215,000 fee? And did you consider Nims Purja’s outfit as a way of channeling more money into the local Sherpa economy? Oh, you thought Nims was a creep?

The 2021 summitter Susan Yao, meanwhile, writes that “previous climbs at extremely high altitude would be necessary,” even though a little bit of internet research that she herself prepared for Everest on the not-so-extremely-high Denali (20,310ft) and Aconcagua (22,837ft). She usefully adds that, even though it’s “hard to think” in the Death Zone, prospective climbers nonetheless “need to know your limits [because] two people died on my summit day.”

Heavy stuff. But it’s good to remember that well-prepared people do die up there. (Just a few weeks ago, an unlucky guide and his client fell down the Kangshung Face after a combination of overcrowding and warm temperatures contributed to a cornice collapse on the summit ridge.)

For every Alex or Susan, however, there are ten or twenty delightfully irreverent forgeries, some of which, if taken seriously, would be very impressive. Jazz Man, for instance, says, “We dropped a car in Tibet and did this as a through hike, which added some drive time (252 hours). The trail down the North Face was not well marked, recommend downloading the AllTrails map. Great views and no bugs!”

Right on, Jazz Man! That’s impressive as heck. But you descended the North Face rather than the North Ridge? I’ll certainly not be following your GPS track. Also, did you know that was probably illegal? China has occupied the north side of the mountain since it invaded Tibet in 1950, and, because they can, the bureaucrats over there tend to withhold through-hiking permits. You should probably avoid traveling to China any time soon.

Toby Ugbele, meanwhile, didn’t enjoy the experience much. “Way too much snow,” he writes, and “don’t even get me started on the hills.” But the discerning reader starts to doubt that Toby has actually stood on top of the world when he complains about having “literally climbed the height of a passenger aircraft.” Because that’s a little misleading. Sure, the summit’s at 29,000 feet, so he might have climbed “to” that height; but unless you’re doing something actually impressive (a sea-to-summit climb), your total elevation gain, according to AllTrails, will be a mere 13,126 feet, not including, of course, acclimatization climbs.

Ugbele did appreciate the cafe at the summit, as do many other reviewers, though there’s confusion about whether it’s best classified as a cafe or a tea house. There’s also disagreement in the OHV community as to whether you can park your Prius at the South Summit or whether getting there requires a vehicle with all-wheel drive. Lots of hikers agree that microspikes are helpful, and some even urge the use of poles, though a sadistic minimalist named Matthew Cote claims he “did just fine” in his crocs and that the trail really ought to be rated “moderate to easy.”

Claims like this get less-fit reviewers all riled up. “NOT A BEGINNER HIKE!” Kimo Keltz exclaims. “The reviews on AllTrails was a LIE. I had a very hard time with this and spent too much money on it!”

Keltz’s might actually sounds like a real review except that, when reporting on conditions, he helpfully notes that there’s “No Shade,” which, duh, it’s the mountain’s southern aspect that we’re reviewing here, people. But the no shade thing comes up again and again. (My favorite is Jared McGee’s syntactically incoherent three-word masterpiece: “Two words: sunscreen.”)

Toby Ugbele isn’t the only one to feel a bit let down by the Everest experience. Joey Dann says it’s “overrated af,” but I get the sense he’s just trolling the people who paid for more expensive guiding services, since he goes on to speak warmly of the international community he found in the mountains: “We met an awesome couple from Austin, Texas, at the top.”

Others lament the trash on the trail, the fake bodies left lying around to scare the children, the presence of an REI, the lack of an REI, the lack of cell service, the poor air quality, and the fact that there seems (Joey Dann again) to be “a higher peak in the distance.”

Both dogs and grandmothers are apparently plentiful, though some people claim the former aren’t technically permitted (one star!). Others note that the snow depth was challenging for their four-legged folk, and there is one report of a black and white border collie named Scooper missing on the mountain, so keep an eye out. Lastly, if you’re hiking with grandma, please don’t simply discard her oxygen bottles when she’s done with them. Pack it in, pack it out, and all that.

None of this is real, of course.

But what is apparently real is that these fake reviews are pissing some people off, which has sparked an interesting little war in the review section. The affront ranges from Cornelius Walker’s quietly puritanical, “No one monitors these reviews? Pretty moronic and juvenile comments. Be adults,” to Jason Moulton’s “I didn’t complete or do this trail. I just want to say, GROW UP! All these reviews are fake! I can name so many people who have died on this expedition. Not one of you hooligans has hiked Mount Everest. You all need to grow up. There are no restaurants on the mountains. Without sherpas and proper gear, you will likely die! This is the tallest mountain in the world!”

Wow, none of us had any idea!

A few fake reviews later, this same Jason Moulton pops up again, this time writing, “Dude someone’s going to read these reviews, believe it and die on the mountain. Stop doing this guys, you are a disgrace to the mountaineering community and I hope at least one of you realizes what happens on the mountain and what you could be setting up for someone.”

This of course seems pretty unlikely. Everest may have been dumbed down by commerce—indeed, I’m pretty sure that as long as you’ve got two legs (or the equivalent technology), $100,000 of pocket change, a decent V02 Max, no polyester or plastic allergies, a surfeit of spare time, and a willingness to overlook the crowds, you can train for and climb Mount Everest—but you łŠČčČÔ’t just strap on your Chacos and go try Everest, not even if you’re filthy rich.

A sage and satirical defender of truth named Josh Plunkett articulates this better than I was able: “You joke reviewers should be ashamed! Someone with zero background knowledge could read your joke review, miss the obvious sarcasm, spend hours and thousands of dollars gathering gear, partner with a lackluster guide company that does no background check, travel to Nepal, get a climbing permit from the Nepalese government, hike the 80 miles into Everest base camp without meeting a single informed climber [sic: it’s about 40 miles each way] and THEN get hurt on the mountain all because you said it was easy! Their death is on your hands
 jk these reviews are great. Keep em coming and disregard the misinformed who think active Everest climbers use AllTrails.”

Naturally, this gave Jason Moulton a case of keyboard rage.

On April 9, 2024, he left a review consisting entirely of one line: “You wrong Josh Plunket.”

And four days later, having gotten no reply, he added, “So get off AllTrails where you scarcely belong.”

Youch.

But then it gets sad. Getting no response from Plunkett, and with the distasteful jokes still pouring in around him, Moulton finally, on May 5, washes his hands of the whole thing by giving either Mount Everest or the AllTrails page a one star review. His parting line: “Good job peopless” [sic].

Which, ironically, reminds me a bit of how the core climbing community came to feel about the mountain: it was beloved until it became a junk show. After which: one star.

4. Saved by the bots

But for those of you actually worried that Jason Moulton has a point, don’t be afraid! It’s no longer possible to accidentally attempt Everest thanks to fake AllTrails reviews. AllTrails’s new AI-generated “review summary” helpfully informs guileless readers that Everest is “not a joking matter” (oh no!) and that many of the following reviews have been flagged as fake and sarcastic and have the potential to “mislead inexperienced hikers” into trying the mountain and perishing cold and alone far before their time.

I’m in. Let’s do it. You pay for the oxygen. I’ll pay for the beer.

Related:

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At midnight Mountain Time on January 30, the public comment period closed for two proposals from the National Park Service (NPS) and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) that would ban fixed anchors (bolts, pitons, snow pickets, slings) in America’s Designated Wilderness areas.

I’ve written a lot about and around this subject; so if you want a full treatment, read But here are the three essential facts you need to know about the proposals and their implications:

1. Fixed anchors would be banned unless individually proven otherwise. 

By leaning into a clever bit of legalese, the NPS and USFS are trying to re-classify all “fixed anchors” as “installations.” Since “installations” are explicitly banned from wilderness areas unless deemed otherwise on a case-by-case basis, all fixed anchors would be banned too. This essentially inverts the formula that the NPS and USFS had previously used to manage fixed climbing hardware: Previously, climbing anchors were considered legal unless there was some reason (generally archeological or environmental) to disallow them; now climbing is illegal unless the park goes out of its way to decide otherwise.

As Erik Murdock, Interim Executive Director of Access Fund, told me several months ago: “If this proposal passes, all fixed anchors will be considered illegal until they are provided an exception. The wilderness administrator can provide that exception. But they may not if they don’t want to.”

2. This is not simply a problem for sport climbers.

The term “fixed anchors,” as defined by the Forest and Park Services, does not just apply to bolts. Instead, it includes all forms of permanent or left-behind protection. In addition to bolts and rap rings, it includes slung trees, stuck nuts, snow pickets, pitons, and any safety gear a climber happens to leave behind—even in retreat. A ban on permanent gear would effectively ban getting down off of thousands of cliffs and mountains around the United States.

To look at the potential implications of this, just look at North Cascades National Park, where anchors are banned in order () to “preserve a wilderness experience that reflects a raw style of mountaineering in a range that has changed little since Fred Beckey made first ascents of now-popular peaks.” What that means, however, is that descending climbers are generally forced to avoid rappelling clean rock faces and instead descend via steep, avalanche-prone couloirs—and without the legal right to leave behind snow pickets as protection even if they deem it necessary.

3. Opposing the proposed ban does not mean supporting grid-bolting. 

The vast majority of climbers have historically been great advocates for wilderness spaces; indeed, climbers and climbing organizations almost uniformly agree that the placement of anchors—especially bolts—in wilderness ought to be overseen by land managers. But climbers think that anchors are compatible with the wilderness areas we have helped to create.

Lifelong rock climber and former Colorado Senator Mark Udall, for instance, helped bring federal wilderness protections to huge swaths of Colorado, including parts of Rocky Mountain National Park, and when he did so he considered climbing a legitimate use of that wilderness. For that reason, he has outspokenly opposed the NPS and USFS’s attempt to twist the language of the Wilderness Act to ban climbing.

In an article published by this past November, Udall wrote: “As the primary sponsor of the Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness and Indian Peaks Wilderness Expansion Act, I want to be absolutely clear: Nothing in those bills was intended to restrict sustainable and appropriate Wilderness climbing practices or prohibit the judicious and conditional placement of fixed anchors—many of which existed before the bills’ passage. I used fixed anchors to climb in these areas, and I want future climbers to safely experience profound adventures and thereby become Wilderness advocates themselves.”

And there you have it: even the people who created these wilderness areas are opposed to the USFS and NPS’s attempt to manage them.

You can read Access Fund’s guidance on these issues .

Learn more about how you can support the Protecting America’s Rock Climbing (PARC) Act

NOTE: The deadline for public comment period has now passed. But you can still support wilderness climbing by supporting the Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences (EXPLORE) Act, which is currently in congress and includes language overtly protecting wilderness climbing and fixed anchor use.

—Steven Potter

The post The Park Service Wants to Ban All Rock Climbing in Designated Wilderness appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Climbers are taking aim at a controversial policy that would impact the permanent bolts, slings, and other safety anchors that are located on climbing routes inside designated wilderness.

Earlier in November, the National Park Service and National Forest Service released draft directives for approving and managing these fixed anchors—but the plan calls for the climbing infrastructure to be reclassified as “installations.” This wording technically makes them illegal under the 1964 Wilderness Act, which protects huge swaths of backcountry. Under the proposed rules, local forest supervisors and park superintendents could then review and approve or deny each bolt after following a requirement analysis. 

The public has 60 days (from November 17) to comment on the proposals and .

Opponents of the rule argue that these land managers are already under-resourced and short staffed, and the process for reviewing and then approving climbing anchors—many of which have been fixed to routes for decades—could take years. Below is an explainer for why some in the climbing community feel the proposed policy misses the mark.

How it Works

Both the NPS and NFS directives explicitly acknowledge that climbing is a legitimate use of wilderness. But both of them go on to propose that “fixed anchors”—a term which encompasses all forms of permanent or left-behind protection, including everything from bolts and rap rings to slung trees, stuck nuts, and snow pickets—should be categorized as “installations,” a term historically used to describe objects like paved roads, fire towers, buildings, bridges, and landfills. According to the 1964 Wilderness Act, installations are ipso facto prohibited in wilderness, but they can be permitted on a case-by-case basis through a process called a minimum requirement analysis (MRA).

Controversial Wording

With the use of “installations” to define anchors, the NPS and NFS essentially propose a guilty until proven innocent structure for them. Instead of assuming that anchors are permitted but subject to approval, the directives assume that every fixed safety anchor in wilderness—even those that pre-date the Wilderness Act—is illegal, and therefore subject to either removal or non-replacement, until the local land manager finds the time and budget to conduct an MRA and decide their final fate. 

While climbing organizations like Access Fund agree that the placement of anchors (particularly bolts) in wilderness should be overseen by land managers, they oppose the idea that anchors ought to be considered illegal unless proven otherwise. “In the past, the way climbers have used anchors in wilderness has been allowable unless they’re causing [negative] impacts,” says Erik Murdock, Interim Executive Director of Access Fund. “But this is flipped on its head. If this proposal passes, all fixed anchors will be considered illegal until they are provided an exception. The wilderness administrator can provide that exception. But they may not if they don’t want to.”

Who Will Decide?

Both proposals note that climbing is a legitimate activity in wilderness, and that administrators ought to take this legitimacy into account when conducting their MRAs. This essentially means that officials would weigh climbing’s public value and historical relevance at any given crag against its perceived impacts on a climbing area’s “wilderness character.” This subjective process could lead to significant inconsistency from year to year and wilderness area to wilderness area. The : yes. : no. Or vice versa. 

Will El Capitan Close in Two Months?

No. The directive explicitly states that climbing will continue to be allowed on existing anchors until those anchors can be subjected to an MRA. 

Clarity Still Needed

Given the fact that land managers are woefully understaffed and under-resourced, and given the fact that the process of proving a given anchor’s compatibility with wilderness will require significant time and resources from those land managers, it’s unclear how the NPS and NFS realistically expect to weigh in on the tens of thousands of routes that currently sit within the wilderness areas they administer. Will they wait until a climber or local climbing organization identifies an anchor that needs replacing, then conduct an MRA about the replacement and go from there? Or will they take a more active approach—as recommended by the NPS managers in Joshua Tree last year—and actively search out routes and anchors they randomly deem non-compliant and chop them? 

Potential Lawsuits

Another implication is legal. Things defined as “installations” in a wilderness context are subject to lawsuits. Any user—or any anti-climbing wilderness organization—can point at an installation that has not undergone an MRA and sue for its removal. This same legal mechanism was used by Wilderness Watch in 2010 to condemn an 80-year-old fire tower in the Glacier Peak Wilderness in Washington. Despite the fact that the tower both pre-dated the Wilderness Act and had been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1988, the tower was ultimately condemned by a federal judge and slated for removal—only to be saved by an act of federal legislation (introduced by one of Washington’s senators and signed into law by President Obama) that superseded the judge’s ruling. If the installation definition were to be applied to bolts, slings, pitons, rap anchors, and so on, groups like Wilderness Watch could use the same mechanism to gradually strip necessary anchors from Yosemite, the Black Canyon, the Tetons, Acadia, and thousands of other federally administered wilderness crags around the country. 

Which brings us to another topic: 

A Better Solution

The Protecting America’s Rock Climb Act (PARC), which is explicitly designed to ensure sustainable climbing access in designated wilderness, enjoys significant bipartisan support. If passed, it would force both the NFS and NPS to explicitly allow the regulated use, placement, and maintenance of fixed anchors in wilderness areas, and would prohibit all federal land management agencies from fundamentally disallowing standard climbing practices and protection in wilderness. Want to support wilderness climbing? Write to your congressional representatives .

Who Wrote This?

The NFS’s , which is admittedly less fluent than the produced by the NPS, at one point notes that a “Forest Supervisor may authorize the placement or replacement of fixed anchors and fixed equipment in wilderness
 in areas where impacts on the rock face are occurring due to the use of rock hammers to chip hand holds or foot holds into the rock.” 

Italics mine because what in the nine circles of hell do they even mean?

Is the forest service really suggesting that the climbers—a largely self-policing and conservation-minded community whose constituents unanimously agree that chipping handholds and footholds is the opposite of what we want to see happening on our rock—just need to start chipping in order to justify our rappel anchors? Or was this document written and edited by someone whose knowledge of climbing history and climbing ethics is so mediocre that they conflated the chipping controversies of the late 1980s with the clean climbing revolution that began with Yvon Chouinard, Tom Frost, and Doug Robinson in the early 1970s and has largely guided our wider community’s relationship to rock ever since? Either way, it’s pretty shoddy work on the part of the Forest Service. And it’s pretty frightening to think that these people are in charge of climbing’s past and its future. 

Steven Potter is the digital editor at Climbing. 

The post Rock Climbers Are Fighting a Proposed Wilderness Policy. Here’s Why. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Climbing and Eldorado Climbing Walls have teamed up to raise $20,000 for Paradox Sports, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that works tirelessly to expand adaptive climbing accessibility.

Each year, Paradox connects roughly 350 people with physical disabilities to climbing. They work with climbers with amputation or limb differences, blindness, hearing impairments, spinal cord injuries, neurological conditions, traumatic brain injuries, and post-traumatic stress disorder, among others. Paradox does this with the help of a variety of funding sources—but roughly 10% of their revenue comes from individual tax-deductible donations.

We’re hoping to raise $10,000 for Paradox Sports by October 25. By doing so we’ll unlock an additional $10,000 match from Eldorado Climbing Walls.

The first 100 people to donate more than $50 will receive a custom-made 20-ounce water bottle with art depicting Ouray ice climbing.

Where do my donations go?

• $50 covers the cost of a one-day Colorado-based skills clinic for an adaptive climber.
• $100 covers the cost of adaptive climbing equipment that we supply for our participants on national trips which can include shoes, ice picks, crampons, harnesses, helmets, and adaptive systems
• $200 covers a scholarship for a 2.5-day Yosemite Valley skills trip for an adaptive climber

About Paradox Sports

Since its founding in 2007, Paradox Sports, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, has worked tirelessly to expand accessibility in our sport. They do this by hosting for adaptive climbers and veterans’ groups, introducing hundreds of people with disabilities to the sport every year; they run designed to help adaptive climbers increase their skills in a community setting; they for gyms, guiding services, veterans-affairs facilities, and university programs around the country, sharing the latest adaptive climbing practices so these organizations can better serve their local adaptive communities; and they sponsor individual athletes through their Adaptive șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Fund.

About Eldorado Climbing Walls

Eldorado Climbing Walls has a commitment to quality products, to doing things and treating people the right way, and to the ongoing success of our customers. Eldorado has the widest range of climbing wall products available anywhere – modern woodies for indoors, stunning artisanal concrete for outdoors, and a bevy of do-it-yourself panels for those home climbing walls. From a few DIY panels for toddlers, to the largest man-made outdoor climbing walls on the planet, to our latest climbing creation – Kinetix Action Towers, we have a solution that we think you’ll love. The employees at Eldorado all feel pretty lucky to be doing what we’re doing, and we graciously look for ways to give back to our sport and our community. Today we are paying it forward to 1Climb, Paradox Sports, and the Boulder Climbing Community – inspiring non-profits that Eldorado is proud to be able to support. Learn more at .

About șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Interactive Inc.’s Find Your Good 

Climbing‘s parent company, șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Interactive Inc., believes in supporting and partnering with nonprofit organizations dedicated to inclusivity, increasing outdoor participation, fighting climate change, and protecting our planet. We support 14 nonprofits who work to protect the planet and grow outdoor participation among youth and underrepresented groups in cycling, running, climbing, hiking, skiing, sustainability, and wellness communities. Learn more .

The post Bring More Adaptive Climbers to the Crag by Supporting Paradox Sports appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.