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Tall Tales
An exclusive, online only, collection of climbing fiction compiled by Amanda Fox and the Climbing Magazine Team. To have your work in this department please contact amanda.fox@skrammedia.com
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 A Strange Occurrence on Mount Zirkel
By Richard F. Fleck - As close to Wyoming as could be, I rambled through the Park Range forests at the base of Mount Zirkel and began to climb some rocky ledges until the pines began to thin and I paused to stare into the limitless rolling plains of the big North Park fringed with snowy Never Summer peaks to the cloudy east.  Hagues Peak - A Case of Altitude Sickness
By Richard F. Fleck - Only twice in fifty years have I come down with altitude sickness, once in the Wind Rivers and once here on the flanks of Hagues Peak A bit after we peered far down to Crystal Lake and a little before our final scramble up the last three hundred feet. Perhaps I hadn’t eaten quite enough at breakfast or perhaps it was coming across a dead Clark’s Nutcracker flat on a rock, but my head began to pound ...  A Snowy Night in Northern Montana
By Richard F. Fleck - On a very snowy night camped at MacDonald Lake, we shiver in our sagging tent as winds snap aspen branches overhead and we wonder just why we chose early June and not July to camp in Glacier Park where early summer is nothing more than a late-winter.  EL QUENTO de la CHEWY
The Story of Chewie Part Three - Crossing The Border with his gringo sidekicks and Meztiso compais -By David Sweetland - I began this rock climber saga on the dirt road heading into El Gran Trono Blanco, the Baja, California, big wall, a trip I took with my closest friends many years ago. We did a grade V but needed the help of a local - Chewie - to both get us to the Great White Throne, and then up the route (Chewbacca is a fine alpinist).  Three Front Range Haiku
By Richard F. Fleck - Twin Sisters - Through golden aspen We climb to top to see high Gray block of Longs Peak. Squaw Peak - Winding past lodgepoles, We quickly ascend loose slabs To summit in space. Devil’s Head - We slip on dark ice In slanting woods until steps Take us up highest ridge.  View from Togwotee Pass
By Richard F. Fleck - There you stand and stare but your mind cannot even start to decipher what raw vision reveals. Huge slabs of granite protrude like fingers poking the sky through layers of snow so high in space, so high above the sagebrush and glacial kettle holes and larger blue lakes sparkling in sun reflecting upside- down images giving your mind twice as much to absorb.  At First Light
Cody hiked up the trail that circumnavigated the basalt quarry. He hiked in the dark of the early August morning, rope and gear stowed in his backpack. The creosote steps were far apart, built too tall by city volunteers, and Cody pushed down on the tops of his knees to help his quad muscles as he lurched up the oversized staircase.  Snowy Range Sundown
By Richard F. Fleck - Nothing better than to be Walking a trail above the trees And looking out across the way To distant mountains and other Northern snow-patched peaks At the end of the day When an orange-gold sun Sinks beneath the tundra  A Medicine Bow Peak Ritual
By Richard F. Fleck - Each Labor Day for ten years straight my family and I would climb to the sky from Lewis Lake following a winding trail through patches of willows hiding gurgling streams with clear and icy water feeding roots of marsh marigolds and patches of bright and shining glacier lilies.  Heavy Summer Snow Atop the San Francisco Peaks
By Richard F. Fleck - Two German climbers signed out on the log writing that the snow was too deep and they finally had to turn around. “But that was yesterday,” remarked one of my friends as we shouldered our packs hit the trail where we rapidly gained a view of the entire Snow Bowl with lesser crests of the ancient volcano comprising the sacred San Francisco Peaks that rose forever skyward in glistening whiteness.  Deep Down the Kaibab Trail
By Richard F. Fleck - Deep within the spruce and fir, I make my camp along the North Rim, but before I eat my supper, I walk over to the nighttime edge of the Grand Canyon to peer three or four thousand feet down to see a tiny flickering campfire way below that will lure me down very early the next day from a chilly forty degrees into heat of mid-summer and then some— from Canadian forest to Mexican desert with shoulder-high prickly pears and Spanish bayonets  CROSSING THE LINE - The Mexican Guide - Part 2
By Preston Tierradulce - Climbing isn't always about the crux, sometimes it is about the journey. At Lovers Leap, a Northern California crag, that trad climbers paradise, The Line is a three pitch 5.9 masterpiece. Steep, thin, often a first lead a testpiece of confidence for the apprentice - it's all technique, no technology here will save your ass. Or the first lead could be a noviates nightmare. At the U.S. Mexico Border, we climbed across The Line one night knowing we could be arrested.  Arizona High
By Richard F. Fleck - Thin gray cirrus clouds streak the sky as we amble through a meadow of purple lupine and black-eyed susans with dark and pyramidic Humphreys Peak rising upward another 3000 feet. We enter sweet pine forest floors springing forth with mushrooms of every shape and color, white columbines and purple penstemon.  Atop Kings Peak
By Richard F. Fleck - Once on the summit of King’s Peak, highest in Utah, we notice a scarcity of flowers but a richness in diversity of rocks from granites to shales to quartzites and sandstones, all of reddish-brown hue.  Haystack Ramble
By Richard F. Fleck - From Geyser Pass through the woods, we emerge into a bright green meadow covered with all sorts of alpine flowers high in the La Sal Mountains of Utah. We rest just beneath the rocky slabs of Haystack Peak and search the tundra for rayless daisies that are known to grow  The George Washington Chronicles - Part I: The Colonial Years
George Washington and the cherry tree is first presidential mythology. Fiction and fabrication. But the Revolutionary War stories, the Potomac, well, those are as true as Indian Creek Splitters. Ole George had quite a life. He worked as a surveyor at 17, inherited Mount Vernon at 20, and married Martha Dandridge Custis (a widow and a few months older) at age 26. Together they cultivated hemp and tobacco. They built a political career. They managed the affairs of their plantation. But - a little known fact - they were also gym rats.  A Mellethin Sunrise
By Richard F. Fleck - I crawl out of my sleeping bag at Geyser Pass high in the La Sals just before sunrise to walk out into the meadow and look across at Mellenthin Mountain, dark and gray, but with a tinge of light near its summit, and as the sun rises, the mountain’s north face turns into a fancy’s show box with  THE MEXICAN GUIDE at EL GRAN TRONO BLANCO
By Preston Tierradulce - If you want a climbing article, a pitch-by-pitch travelogue on this secluded place, this story ain't for you. I'd rather tell a saga of our encounter out there, with a saint of a man on this rugged section of Baja. This piece is a review of a fellow who jumped out of the chaparral and helped us survive. This tall tale is a tribute to our friend who taught us the meaning of a simple Spanish word that few north of the border really appreciate or understand: simpático.  Grandmother Spider Mountain
By Richard F. Fleck - Early in the morning we walk upwards through a slanted forest of aspen and fir and take delight in seeing a blue bird flutter in open meadows quite soft underfoot. We approach grassy hummocks reminding me of ever-so-green Ireland along the Irish Sea.  A Close Encounter in the Manzanos
By Richard F. Fleck - The sky remains cobalt blue and the pines barely whisper as I amble along the crest of the Manzanos overlooking Albuquerque’s tiny city streets, but I suddenly stop in my tracks when I almost stumble across a crude grave of cottonwood branches twisted into a circle |
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