Cliffs of every rock type and size adorn Colorado's peaks and plateaus, offering the rock climber a spectacular arena to pursue the vertical craft. Thousands of crags and cliffs are scattered across Colorado, yielding every type of climbing experience form big-wall aid routes and long, multi-pitch free climbs to short overhung limestone testpieces and fiercely difficult boulder problems. Rock Climbing Colorado is the only guide available that covers all the major climbing areas in the state with routes ranging form 5.0 to 5.14-including big cliffs and faces of Rocky Mountain National Park and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison to the smaller crags and outcrops of Pikes Peak, Boulder, Rifle, Shelf Road, Elevenmile Canyon, and much more. In all 37 areas covered, this guide provides first-hand information for area overviews and climbing histories, route betas and topos, as well as detailed maps, and photos. Also included are suggestions for equipment and approach and descent information as well as listings for shops, gyms, and guide services. Rock Climbing Colorado is essential for planning your next trip to one of Colorado's premier climbing areas.
I've been a freelance photographer and writer since 1977, based in Colorado Springs and traveling all over the great American West as well as the rest of the United States and the world in search of memorable images and experiences to write about and to lead people toward. Since the mid-1980s I've worked as a contract photographer and writer for FalconGuides/Globe Pequot Press, writing 20 books and photographing a few more.
My books include Rock Climbing Colorado, Rock Climbing Europe, Rock Climbing Utah, Rock Climbing Arizona, Rock Climbing New England, Scenic Driving Colorado, Scenic Driving California, Scenic Driving Arizona, Scenic Driving New England, KNACK Rock Climbing, Best Climbs Moab, Best Climbs Denver and Boulder, Rocky Mountain National Park Pocket Guide, and Back Country Byways.
My work has also been published in lots of other national and international publications. I'm also the Guide to Climbing at About.com, a New York Times Company.
Along the way I fathered a couple of amazing kids--Ian and Brett, climbed and adventured in a lot of places that I never could have imagined, and had a lot of fun. I've had my hands and my heart full. I'm grateful for that.
I write and photograph because of what is in front of me, to honor everything beyond in the world which is great, interesting, mysterious, and always changing. To be a writer and photographer is to see newly every day, as if for the first time, the essence that illuminates and lives within the earth. Every subject redefines me and allows me to discover harmony, reconcile disparities and inequities, and to find shape, symmetry, and truth in the chaos of life.
As a writer and photographer I seek to record my life and times, my vision of the world and its natural beauty, its other creatures, and my fellow human beings, and to find affirmation in life through belonging, wholeness, and living. I always think of the reader and the viewer over my shoulder, the person who sees my vision and reinterprets it in his own experience.
