“You wanna go to Boulder Canyon tomorrow morning before work… check out that cliff above Vampire Wall?” asked my co-worker, Matt, on Monday. “Sure,” I said. “Great. I’ll see you at 7,” he concluded. “We can carpool.” I felt a twang of regret about my decision as the sibilant sounds of the word “seven” rolled off Matt’s tongue. But since the cliff in question was a possibly undeveloped chunk of granite, and we had the chance of putting up some new routes with our name on them, I counted it worth a morning slog. Plus, how many souls with full-time jobs get to go new-routing before clocking in, and with the boss, no less.

Speaking of jobs, I have often referred to mine, Senior Editor of Climbing, as “The most wanted job in the climbing industry that nobody actually wants.” Of course, there are many, complex layers of sarcasm and nuance in this statement (as in most statements I make), the most obvious of which is that it’s a dream job. And you’d hate it. A certain, very Eastern mindset (I’m talking Far East here, people, not Long-Island east or eastern Colorado) is required to do this job without being crippled by stress and frustration.

Many of the imagined benefits are, at least in part, present: I do get to try out all the newest gear (though much of it has to be returned, often right when I’m getting used to its feel — the iPod Touch we called in for one issue is a great example of the Tantalus’ torture I have to endure). And of course I have the pleasure of talking with, socializing with, even climbing with the people we put in the mags, some of whom I idolized as a budding young climber. (But then again, do I really get to know them? Usually our acquaintance is brief, and progresses little beyond small talk and niceties.) And then there’s the climbing. Many folks assume that the employees of a magazine called Climbing would get to climb, and all the time. While we do have occasional “office climbing days,” much more often than not we sit at our desks from 8 a.m. till 8 p.m., typing till our wrists ache and scratching red pencils down to their nubs on our contributors’ work. (Sometimes a CD of brilliant photos will come in, shot in a country where the women roam topless and tan, and the average body fat percentage is naturally low due to the local diet of papaya, fresh fish, and rice… and where rum costs a dollar a bottle. The climbers in the shots are framed against white sand beaches, wearing nothing but bathing suits under their harnesses and grinning as they clutch juggy flowstone stalactites. Ah, it’s almost enough to make your forget you’re in the office — but not quite.) But on those rare days when we do get out — and sometimes it’s only for a sweet moment — things don’t always go as expected.