Funny

"Showed up in a swami belt, refused to use a belay device, and made fun of my figure-eight knot. One star."

The most difficult challenge we climbers have ever faced is not the Dawn Wall. It’s explaining rock climbing to non-climbers.

Most climbers know their ape index, but do you know how to calculate your sloth index? And what about your snake index?

14 climbing clips, all free on the internet, all funny.

Climbing is built on the honor system, which is super easy to take advantage of. Seriously. Here’s how to do it.

"If I know anything about fashion, which I don’t, it’s that it's a cycle. Let us thus peruse climbing's long and ugly fashion journey.

Climbers possess a handful of traits that are potentially attractive to your business

Sometimes the hardest part of climbing is not climbing.

The route is all but in the bag, just as soon as everything starts going my way.

"After those first few days, I noticed that he hadn’t used the bathroom—he’d been too afraid to remove his harness leg loops. On day four..."

Put both arms behind your head, and grab a double gaston. It’s not great, but it’s OK. Hang off that and wrap your right leg around the left side of your body. Way further than that.

If you’re an aspiring trad leader, this document will provide you with more bad advice than you can shake a rack of hexes at.

Gotta collect 'em all.

I’d like to propose the following DIY tools for staying fit. By embracing the current hipster ethos of artisanal, hand-built, small-batch wares, we can still stay fit easily and with very little cash outlay.

Follow this handy flowchart to find out if you’ve earned a day off.

And how to combat this noxious trend of empty-and-meaningless humblebrag effluvia...

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

By “Kevvie” Corrigan, age 15

"Maybe this is shallow, but you’ve let yourself go. When we first met, you were hangboarding three days a week. These days you’re lucky to get in the gym one day"

Brace yourself for the half-mad rantings of the world’s saltiest, crustiest, least-patient-ever climbing partner.

Sendhaus™ is the premier facility for affluent millenials that heard rock climbing was a great workout.

"I have a 'two degrees of poop' separation theory, that every climber either has a poop story of their own or a story about a friend somehow getting covered in poo." (From 2015)

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

"Notice I didn’t mention aesthetics. I’m not climbing a painting. The only aesthetics I worry about are the graphs of my sends on 8a.nu and the topography of my chiseled back muscles."

"I used to be a bit of a rock climber myself. Now I haven't so much as touched a hold in—gosh, how long has it been?—four or five weeks."

For sale: Offwidth rack, used once.

A lot of people love ice climbing. This one is for those of you that don't, but go anyway.

Everyone’s a critic.

The hippest new month is “Don’t-Try July,” when your best bet is to do as little as possible so you’re not a burned-out strip of human beef jerky come August.

ANSWER MAN knows climbing. (And he knows it.) Here he answers three questions: (1) when can you excavate landing zones? (2) What are best practices for simul climbing? (3) What's the best thing to do when you find old tat on a route?

While it certainly helps to climb 5.15, you don’t actually have to.

Whether you’re a climber from Southern California or from Northern Vietnam, these will probably be familiar, and they probably changed the way you do business.

Sandbag: (noun) A route of substantially elevated difficulty in comparison to others of the same grade. (verb) To suggest a route of such character to a friend.

Check out Owen Clarke's author page.

Knee pads, better shoes, better chalk, internet beta, and other reasons you might be tempted to downgrade a climb.

Climbers and gamers share a lot of the same qualities: obsessiveness, dedication, hours spent avoiding real life, a propensity for tantrums and unnecessary insults, poor social skills… Which got me to thinking: Why don’t climbers import gaming terms into our lingo, to freshen up our slang?

It's too beautiful. It's not crowded enough. You're better off at your local gym.

Check out James Lucas's author page.

Check out Rex Dangerman's author page.

Check out The Editors's author page.

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

Check out Bennett Slavsky's author page.

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

Check out Rex Dangerman—Sports and Fitness Editor at New York Extreme Men's Fitness Magazine's author page.

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The ties that bind

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Check out The Editors's author page.

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

Check out Matt Samet's author page.

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This list, compiled in the early days of quarantine, looks past the big films (Free Solo, the Alpinist) and instead suggests a few excellent but lesser-known films. Climbers Steve Bosque and Jim Disney suggested a few for this list. The ultimate selection was mine. At the time of compiling, all the films were available for free (somewhere) on the internet.

Check out The Editors's author page.

Check out The Editors's author page.

Check out The Editors's author page.

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

Check out The Editors's author page.

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

Check out The Editors's author page.

Check out The Editors's author page.

Check out The Editors's author page.

Check out Andrew Burr's author page.

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Check out The Editors's author page.

Please peruse our Kinder-Klimberz party packages

Check out Zoe Leibovitch's author page.

Check out Adam Nawrot's author page.

Check out Andrew Burr's author page.

Check out The Editors's author page.

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

Check out Adam Nawrot's author page.

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

Presenting Cragsters, a series of illustrations and descriptions by Adam Nawrot of climber-types. Cut ’em out, collect ’em, laugh, cry, or rage—just remember, don’t judge, because we’ve all been one type of Cragster or another.

Check out Kat Lin's author page.

Check out The Editors's author page.

Check out Kevin Corrigan's author page.

Check out The Editors's author page.

Presenting Cragsters, a series of illustrations and descriptions by Adam Nawrot of climber-types. Cut ’em out, collect ’em, laugh, cry, or rage—just remember, don’t judge, because we’ve all been one type of Cragster or another.