Stay ConnectedThis is what adventure sounds like. Climb. Ski. Hike. Bike. Paddle. Run. Travel. Whatever your passion, we are all dirtbags. Fitz Cahall and the Duct Tape Then Beer team present stories about the dreamers, athletes and wanderers.
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Copyright: © Duct Tape Then Beer 2024
In our fifth annual "Live from 5Point" Film Festival, we interviewed Frank Sanders and Tommy Caldwell.
Frank spent his youth climbing on the East Coast. His path took a turn in 1972, when he hitchhiked west and saw Devil's Tower for the first time. Now, at 63, Frank owns and guides out of Devil's Tower Lodge. He shares the story of his journey and what it's like having found his place.
Over the last seven years, Tommy has spent months at a time focused on climbing The Dawn Wall, the hardest big wall climb in history. On January 14th, he and his partner, Kevin Jorgenson, pulled over the top of El Capitan into a swarm of cameras and microphones. He talks to Fitz about what it's like to end a seven-year relationship with a project and how his life has changed now that people outside the climbing world recognize him.
"After a summer of bussing tables and lifeguarding, I had saved up enough and I was finally going to get it. My ticket to anywhere I wanted to be," writes Anya Miller. "I was a little worried about the money, but I was in complete realization that anything I actually wanted to do in life -- literally, anything -- depended on it." Today, Anya shares the story of her first sleeping bag, and the person she became with the help of the women's medium, right-hand zip cocoon. When you can sleep anywhere, you can go anywhere.
In the golden days, dirtbags lived to climb. They didn't work, have permanent addresses or sponsors. They ate leftovers off of tourists' plates and slept in beater cars or caves. They stayed in one place only as long as teh weather allowed for climbing. Now, our modern world of fees, time limits and locked dumpsters has made it nearly impossible to live that way anymore. Dirtbagging is dying-- or at least that's what some people claim.
Join Matt Van Biene for a day on Yosemite's Camp 4 as he talks to climbers of all different ages, nationalities and backgrounds. Is dirtbagging dead or alive? And what does the modern dirtbag look like? Tune in.
"We opened my aunt's basement door and walked into the dusty room. Among cardboard boxes and carpentry tools stood a bright red bicycle. The frame had a few patches of rust. The components looked clunky and the gears grated roughly when I spun the pedals. It had no seat post or saddle. It was unrideable, but it had character," writes Graeme Lee Rowlands. He had a few months before he would move from Oakland, CA to start college in Squamish, BC. And he had decided that he would make the 1000-mile trip on a bicycle that he would build himself. He didn't know anything about building a bike, nor had he ever ridden more than 40-miles in a day. But he was determined.
"My first few days in Moab's red rock desert were like a blind date where everything went wrong," writes Hilary Oliver. "For one, it was August. My metal aviator sunglasses got so hot in the sun that I couldn't smile or they'd burn my cheeks."
Four years later, Hilary and the desert got a second chance at their botched first encounter. Over the past ten years, they have developed a relationship with one another. Now, she has to learn how to share her place with all of the other people who have had their hearts stoled by the landscape of juniper trees and red and orange sandstone.
You can find more of Hilary's writing at thegription.com
When Kevin Fedarko stepped through the door of the O.A.R.S. boathouse in Flagstaff, AZ, he didn't realize he had crossed a figurative threshold as well as a literal one. Kevin had planned on rafting the Grand Canyon for a wilderness medicine course. Then, he planned to go back to his life as a successful freelance writer. But what he saw in that first week on the Colorado River left him desperate to find a way to keep coming back. Kevin spent the next smelly, humiliating, beautiful and life-altering decade of his life developing a relationship with the Grand Canyon, writing about the Grand Canyon, and, ultimately, figting to protect it.
To learn more about the current threats to the Grand Canyon and how you can help, visit Save the Confluence and Grand Canyon Trust.
You can purchase Kevin's book, The Emerald Mile, here.
Brendan Leonard wrote and narrated this episode. You can find more of his work at Semi-Rad.com.
"My future captain interviewed me with three questions," remembers Joe Aultman-Moore. "Had I ever sailed before? No. Did I get seasick? I don't know. And, could I leave tomorrow? Yes." As Joe learned to sail while hitchhiking a sailboat across the Atlantic Ocean, he also discovered the unexpected ways in which travel could explode his perceptions of normal.
Check out "Going Into the Wild," another essay Joe wrote on hitchhiking--but this time thumbing cars, not boats, through Interior Alaska.
When Matt McKee first heard about the position forecasting avalanches for Minera Pimenton, a gold mine in the Chilean Andes, it sounded like the snow geek's dream job. But, mere hours after his plane touched down in Santiago, Matt started getting hints that maybe he had walked into a situation that more closely resembled a nightmare: a den of avalanche paths, a mine full of workers who didn't believe in avalanches and a country that looked for someone to blame if things went wrong. Today, we bring you Matt's story of trying to make it out alive.
"In the day to day tangle of life, it's easy to let go of the things that provide focus, and calm and perspective," writes Fitz Cahall. "I find that serenity so easily in wilderness. How do we carry that home?" While on a trip to Minnesota's Boundary Waters, Fitz resolved to do something back in "regular life" to try to tap into that quietness every day, for one year.
It's January. Time for our annual "Year of Big Ideas." This year, we talked to Alastair Humphreys, a 2012 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. Among other things, Alastair has walked across India and 1000 miles through the largest sand desert in the world, cycled 46,000 miles around the world and rowed across the Atlantic.
People often come up to him after his talks and tell him they wish they could go on the kinds of adventures that he does. Alastair believes that they can. Today, he explains what he's learned about what it takes to make an adventure happen. Here's to another year of big ideas, and committing to them. Happy 2015!
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