Rock Climbing with Rob Pizem: pizem climbing

Showing posts with label pizem climbing. Show all posts

September 11, 2014

NEW PAGE! https://robpizem.wordpress.com

It has all the links and work from this blog in an organized manner.
You might need to go back to this site for an old video that I posted on training, but everything else is running smoothly and way eaiser to find.

Enjoy the new page and enjoy the new posts.

Thank you so much for visiting my blog, I will continue to make my new one ever better!

piz : )

Thanks to my amazing sponsors: www.arcteryx.com www.camp-usa.com www.scarpa.com www.sterlingrope.com www.americanalpineclub.org www.brewersledge.com

August 29, 2014

Grand Valley Climbing: Short Walking Videos

Grand Valley Climbing Gym Update! Opens Sept 13!!!!

The gym from the outside. A new building designed for the gym, not the other way around like most older gyms. The heating, air conditioning and environment was designed to be pleasant and easy to move around in, in addition to allowing the members to see what their friends are doing!

After entering the gym, this wall will be on your right. At 44ft tall, it has been designed to be a great place for beginners and intermediate climbers learn to top rope and lead. Most of the wall is lower angle and vertical with some minor features accenting the climbing. There are about 20 top ropes that will be set which will keep everyone climbing and happy, even at the busiest times!

Still some construction going on (actually they are moving out the tools to build the walls because they are all done. Now it is time to install the state of the art Asana flooring system which will make climbing in the bouldering area worry free! Notice the free standing boulder behind the tools. It is large and in charge with great angles to climb on!

More of the bouldering area. The walls are over 10 ft tall which allows the routes to be more than 2-3 moves long! Again, the area was designed with big sweeping clean angles to allow for lots of variety in the setting. There is plenty of overhanging and vertical terrain to please everyone.

Boom! The pit at 50 ft tall (plus overhang distance). We have 40 routes up and will keep putting more on the walls. I had a chance to try some of the climbs in addition to setting a few and the wall just keeps going. It is a nice place to work on technique, endurance, leading and even falling! Notice the 10 +ft tall ladder in the lower right of the photo.

More of the pit. There are routes of all grades and styles on these beautiful walls.

This is how you access the pit. There are cubbies for your bags. Notice the lighting, there are no dark spots in this gym.

Again the rest of the pit. This wall is slightly overhanging to vertical and will allow some cool techy routes to be set.

July 28, 2014

It's Not Getting Any Easier

Contact Piz at pizem@hotmail.com for Motivational/Instructional/Entertaining Speaking Engagements, Climbing Instruction, Training and Weekly/Monthly Training Programs

Until then... Get outside and have an adventure!

piz : )

Thanks to my amazing sponsors: www.arcteryx.com www.camp-usa.com www.scarpa.com www.sterlingrope.com www.americanalpineclub.org www.brewersledge.com

I am into my 20th year of calling myself a climber. Other than playing ice hockey, I have not participated at an obsessed level in anything this long. I stopped playing hockey when I was 24 years old and realized that it wasn't as fun as it used to be. I enjoyed the physical contact and the intensity that competition brings out in folks. But at 24, I started feeling the wear and tear of the games and my body beginning to tell me that I wasn't a kid anymore.

Now I am at the same crossroad's with climbing, except that I understand how to continue climbing long into my future. I am not at competition with the team down the road, nor do I have to take on routes that will hurt me, I know what I love to climb on and the adventures that I can seek out and it is a great feeling. Knowing that my passion for the outdoors and for trying hard will never go allows me to always set goals and go for them.

I will say that staying in shape and reaching my personal climbing potential has not gotten easier over the years. Even though I am confident in my fitness evaluation and planning ability, having the time and energy to follow through is difficult. I thought that as my kids grew older and became more independent that making time for training would be easier, but it still ends up being before work at 5 am in the morning or after they go to bed from 8pm till whenever. Even with my Treadwall, I still have to train on it at odd hours! Additionally, every time that I take a break from training it feels like coming back to work after a long vacation! And we all know how that feels : )

I guess that my point is that if you want to reach your personal goals that it will always be tough. It will always mean sacrifice and you will always need a support system. Climbing or doing anything needs to be for the right reasons, as long as you have that perspective it will be a part of your life for a long time!

Just the other day I actually got my three year old to wear his climbing harness. The initial sell of it was not successful this past winter, but yesterday I was able to get him to wear it and have a good time. My future climbing plans involving making sure that my kids are exposed to it while the focus is being outside and enjoying nature. If they like climbing then great and if not they will at least have tried it out.

Check out the link of my son getting used to hanging in a harness! http://youtu.be/1pIrgvdtLsk

April 29, 2014

Playing in Golden

Playing at the Clear Creek water park.

Orson is a tank, no terrain will stop him.

Jane and top Jimmy

Don't fall in little one : )

Orson thinking about climbing the net that his older brother just tackled.

Rowan and Zack getting dirty.

More car seat time with the boys.

April 17, 2014

Climbing in Gateway

I have always wanted to try this route that Joe Mills got the ffa of in Gateway.
Mike B and i went out on a COLD day and froze our butts off while checking it out.

Hiking up the talus.

New SCARPA Vitimins taking me up the hill.

Mike fighting the cold of the first pitch. The second goes through the roof and to the left.

The third one is the crux. Overhanging .75's oooh the toughest cam for me to climb. It was nice to get worked!!

Hanging out on the wall. We needed the big jackets on this day.

Great climbing and a good time : )

Perfet placements for those .75 inch cams!

Zion New Routing Part 1

The team, two crackpot climbers Andy Reather and Mike Brumbaugh.

I can't take them anywhere, they always get lost!!

However we did find some attractive spots!

Rapping down the wall. Find a large tree. Tie a figure eight in the Sterling Rope and retrace it. Rap and let the exploration begin!
I went down the wrong crack at the beginning and had to jug back up and move the rope over to the actual crack that we wanted to explore. What a pain!

The view of Angles Landing.

We finally got inside the monster chimney. It was wide, dirty and awesome!!The right side of this picture turned out to be an amazing 5.12- splitter that was originally partially aided.

The monster chimney looms above. 900ft tall route all ready to be climbed!!

Western Colorado Climbers Coalition Black Light Comp

Here are some poor images of the festive night at the Grand Junction Climbing Center.
We (WCCC) were doing a fundraiser for a purchase of more wall in Unaweep Canyon.
We had a great turnout and had a great time climbing in the dark.
I believe we raised about 1300 dollars which is HUGE!!
Thanks everyone for donating and buying raffle tickets and having fun!!

Special thanks to SCARPA and CAMP for the goodies too!

April 8, 2014

Next Slide Show! April 30th Colorado Mesa University

Check the Link out for information about my upcoming slide show!

It is about new routing on Tehipite Dome in Kings Canyon National Park, California.
Hope to see you there!!!

https://www.coloradomesa.edu/op/wnw.html

Taking My Students on their First Outdoor Climbing Day!

Testing their meddle on a little OW.

Some short sandstone to play on, learn how to use their feet and belay safely.

The lie backing king!

Adventuring 101, my kids will know how to get down and dirty in order to ascend a route!

I' Back! And I'm Psyched!

Jenga Tower from last fall. Not sure of the real name (A. Burr Photo)

Yosemite Trash picj up day in the rain. (A. Burr Photo)

Another tower summit with A. Burr and Jesse!

OW, yeah I do those too! Some tower, somewhere, A. Burr Photo

February 21, 2014

Zion Fun... I think

Contact Piz at pizem@hotmail.com for Motivational/Instructional/Entertaining Speaking Engagements, Climbing Instruction, Training and Periodization Programs

Until then... Get outside and have an adventure!

piz : )

Thanks to my amazing sponsors: www.arcteryx.com www.camp-usa.com www.scarpa.com www.sterlingrope.com www.americanalpineclub.org www.brewersledge.com

We went out to new route and all we found was dead animals. Was it a good sign?

I was not really psyched with my first anchor. The rock was bad and it took lots of bad placements on soft rock to just get here! Sterling Ropes all ove the place!!

Ben joined me after I hauled the haul bag up the wall. He was nice enough to jug next to it and help it get unstuck!

It was a jungle out there!

A wall hauler and a new static line from Sterling Ropes!

The views can not be beat while on a wall in Zion!

Me and my impression of Gene Simmons!

On the way down we were able to get down just by rappeling off trees! What a day. We made it up about 800ft only to find the loosest, rock that I have ever climbed, so we rapped back down to the back packs and headed out in the dark.

Good thing my ropes were 70 meters cause we would not have reached the bottom of this chimney/offwidth.

Standing under the choss!

Just following the beta for the route!