Adventure Marriage in Moab
I recently was married to my life partner Sadie Skiles in adventure-style with a few close friends at an Elopement in Moab / Canyonlands. I normally don’t write about such things but I thought it might be useful to others looking for an active-elopement ideas and a great way to share some stunning photos.
read more …Adjusting to Climbing in the Eastern Sierra
I’ve spent almost three years out here in the Eastern Sierra and its been a big climbing adjustment. Before, from the San Francisco Bay Area, the process was frequent, hard gym climbing, one season of the pure crack style in Yosemite followed by the foothills season of mostly crack practice. However, out in the Eastern Sierra I’ve found much more of a face-crack style of routes that has had me evaluate my generally weak face-climbing skills. Also, adjusting to a different seasonality of climbing that doesn’t involve Yosemite Valley (which is inaccessible for the best seasons from the Eastside).
read more …Art: A New Aspect for Climbing
One of the things I remember most from Meru is not about climbing at all. It is Renan Ozturk painting a large vibrant canvas outside his tent of the surrounding mountainscape. Outdoor art has always inspired me. I felt creating art alongside outdoor experience made the whole thing greater than the sum of two parts. In the hard year of 2020 isolationist COVID, this was the silver lining of my year.
Good Bye Social Media, a Digital Trashcan Fire
This week I am deleting my Facebook accounts and will no longer post to instagram. These platforms haven’t worked for small unique contributors like Backcountry Nomad and have lost their ability for creating positive community long ago.. I will continue my Backcountry Nomad blog here at bricepollock.com documenting my adventures since it has been a wonderful live-journal and will be a fun place to share experiences.
read more …An Adventurers Guide for Driving to Alaska
My recent trip to Alaska had a lot going on. I worked as a digital nomad for three weeks and took three weeks off, established a new mountaineering route, hiked, kayaked, climbed and played around with drone videography. More than any of that I started getting a good taste of Alaska and understanding how to travel around it and what each region has to offer.
read more …30 Pitches, 20 Costumes, 12 hrs of fun
Every year I do something fun to celebrate my Birthday. It started with Half Dome cables in 2012 and continued to include backcountry river fording adventure in the Eastern Sierra and an overnight at the top of Royal Arches. This year I co-conspired with the lovely Sadie Skiles to climb 30-costumed pitches in a day for my 30th birthday.
I’ll be the first to admit, this isn’t really that impressive compared to Alex Honnold’s 290 pitches for his Birthday in 2014, but hey. He didn’t wear any costumes.
read more …Acknowledging and Overcoming Psychological and Stress Injury in Climbing
One of the most striking parts I remember about Free Solo, featuring Alex Honnold trying free solo 3000 granite feet of El Cap, was when he was filling out his mental health questionnaire before an MRI to measure his fear tolerance. He was discussing in classic Honnold fashion about how much of a no big deal free soloing is, but then pauses on a question. “Am i depressed… huh…” he contemplates.
Offsetting Adventure: How to Pay the Climate Cost of Travel
Low-Efficiency Transport 😉
I live my life in nature, with the environment, so I’m especially invested in conservation, keeping things wild and #protectpublicland. I bicycle everywhere, eat mostly vegetarian, don’t fly that much and only rely on a car to go to the mountains so I have felt particularly good minimizing my climate impacts. However, driving tens of thousands of miles and flying tens of thousands more over the last year made me start to worry I had unbalanced this equation. People who earn more, produce more carbon and by taking a sabbatical with so many flights, I definitely felt like I was #livingThatLife. What to do?
How to Climb Yosemite 5.10 Trad
Will starting pitch two of 5.10d Serenity Crack
This last year I’ve been trying to break into 5.10- trad. Being the stronger climbing partner of my team, that often meant pushing myself on lead. However, decking from blown gear last August lost a lot of my lead head and confidence to climb, even at the levels I was previously confident. However, I’ve had a resurgence over the last month of not only getting my confidence back but pushing into 5.10 trad. I’m really proud of myself and feel empowered by what I’ve learned.
Do You Know the True Cost of #vanlife #nomadtravels #sabatical ?
Interactive map of my last 270 days of travel.
Going full time traveling to visit all the national parks, live simply, seek wilderness and travel the world has been sold as the ideal dream and fully living life in many a social media account. I too was allured towards these ideas and ten months ago decided to try it out. I had a clear idea of all the amazing things I would do and see but in retrospect less of an idea about the true costs. Both financial and personal. Let me give you all the details…