[This Sharp End story originally appeared in Alpinist 90 (Summer 2025), which is now available on newsstands and in our online store. Only a small fraction of our many long-form stories from the print edition are ever uploaded to Alpinist.com. Be sure to pick up the hard copies of Alpinist for all the goodness!–Ed.]
I’M INCREDIBLY LUCKY TO live in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, near Aspen, Colorado, an indisputable world-class destination. I have backcountry skiing, ice climbing, Class V+ whitewater, 5.15 sport climbs (yes, plural), sandstone splitters and untold nooks and crannies to explore at the drop of a laptop. Still, I know a part of me to complain: “BORING!”
I want to jet to Alaska and fling myself against the walls of the Ruth Gorge; dig through rime mushrooms to Patagonian summits; sink my fingers into the picturesque Digital Crack above Chamonix. My hometown sometimes feels so pedestrian. The itch to freeze my ass off and cheat death on the other side of the world is nearly constant.
At the end of the day, though, it’s only lack of imagination that dulls my vision. If experiences that test my limits and lead to fresh perspectives are the desire, I can easily find some action like that between now and tomorrow.
Fact: While jotting notes for this article on a trail fifteen minutes from my house, I spooked a juvenile moose from twenty yards away. The quiet evening forest erupted in a cacophony of splintering wood before I realized what was happening; I looked up in time to meet the animal’s dark, wide eyes as it tore through the brush.
It is something of a miracle that my wife and I are able to make a living in this costly region. Mandi has spent her entire career in public schools, and I have spent mine as a journalist—both are notoriously underpaid professions. When it’s time to plan a getaway, we pull out our local trail maps. I’ve spent most of my life around these parts and there are still so many places I’ve yet to visit. It’s usually the four-wheel-drive roads that dead-end where the topo lines scrunch together that lead us to our favorite new spots, often no more than three hours from our front door. Sure, the surrounding hills are less dramatic and the rock quality is not nearly as good as it is at the iconic destinations. But having the fresh air and wildflowers all to ourselves easily rivals waiting in line to climb a crowded classic. On these trips to nowhere, we’ve plucked wild raspberries for breakfast and found unclimbed rocks an easy stroll from camp, including an offwidth roof crack that would be sought after if it were at a popular crag.
This past spring, Josh Wharton, one of the world’s top alpinists, told me about a satisfying first ascent that he completed with Jackson Marvell on Wheeler Peak in Nevada in 2021. The frigid 2,000-foot route took the ace climbers two attempts. “It was an equally cool, if not cooler, experience to many things I’ve done in the Greater Ranges,” Wharton said.
It’s not always necessary to get far from a major road to find unique challenges, either. In 2012 my friend Craig joined me to attempt the first winter ascent of a 700-foot limestone wall just off Interstate 70. It was plastered with snow and verglas from a recent blizzard and we came within 140 feet of the top before a stopper crux, darkness and a minor frost injury encouraged retreat.
In 2017 my friend Jack and I ascended a buttress on the teetering north face of a 13,200-foot peak east of Aspen. We hoped maybe there would be some worthwhile technical climbing. We ended up simul-soloing detached pillars up to 5.8 because the rock was so loose that placing protection and using a rope would have been more dangerous. Yet it remains a bright day in my memory for the laughter, discovery and freedom we enjoyed together.
I’m lucky to live where I do. Yet if I suffer the itch to circumnavigate the globe, I can only guess how climbers living in the flatlands must feel.
The good news is that we live in a nation with public lands and natural wonders in pretty much every direction. That is, assuming our public lands aren’t auctioned off by the Trump administration, which appears to be a real threat at the time of this writing, when thousands of employees critical for managing these lands are being laid off. [And by the time this article was posted online, legislation had been introduced in the US Senate that proposes selling millions of acres.] In this age of global warming and short-term exploitation of our environment, I say it’s high time for us to better advocate for what we have close to home.
[This Sharp End story originally appeared in Alpinist 90 (Summer 2025), which is now available on newsstands and in our online store. Only a small fraction of our many long-form stories from the print edition are ever uploaded to Alpinist.com. Be sure to pick up the hard copies of Alpinist for all the goodness!–Ed.]