Granite Volume 1.

There is an elemental question that all climbers are asked, and ask themselves: why do we climb? Answers have ranged from the iconic - ‘because it’s there’, to the physical and mental growth we experience, to the spiritual and social connections we find within the community. Yet we so often forget the elemental answer to this question. If we, as rock climbers, are the subject, then the object is rock. We climb to connect, in the most literal sense, with rock. To interact sensorially with stone.

To trust the friction of cold, biting crystals with numbed fingertips on a shaded alpine face. To be cradled by perfectly sculpted piece of stone furniture atop a desert boulder. To feel the satisfying pain of hands worn raw and flecked with blood after a well-fought climb. To breathe in a smell as clean as a frigid stream, or acrid with the gunpowder scent of rock smashing against rock. To listen to a landscape as silent as a crypt or loud like a thousand sticks of dynamite. Sights gentle and curvaceous or angular and sinister. As dynamic and multi-faceted as any complex, living thing, but with a presence more permanent than anything else we can point to on our fair planet.

To trust the friction of cold, biting crystals with numbed fingertips on a shaded alpine face. To be cradled by perfectly sculpted piece of stone furniture atop a desert boulder. To feel the satisfying pain of hands worn raw and flecked with blood after a well-fought climb. To breathe in a smell as clean as a frigid stream, or acrid with the gunpowder scent of rock smashing against rock. To listen to a landscape as silent as a crypt or loud like a thousand sticks of dynamite. Sights gentle and curvaceous or angular and sinister. As dynamic and multi-faceted as any complex, living thing, but with a presence more permanent than anything else we can point to on our fair planet.

In the hierarchy of stone, one rock reigns supreme. Granite. The world’s largest big-walls, most iconic peaks, most inspiring climbing routes. From El Capitan to the unmistakable skylines of Patagonia, only one material is hard enough, strong enough, proud enough to stand tall as surrounding peaks crumble to sand under the relentless onslaught of erosion and time. When massive glaciers retreated from the last ice age, little was left standing but the walls of granite that failed to fail under the pressure of immeasurable weight and relentless carving. The most beautiful stone in the world’s most iconic mountain ranges is granite.

This collection, then, is a love letter to granite. Captured through the eyes, and the practices of a climber, ranging from the high peaks to the desert boulder fields of Washington and California. The pursuit of beautiful movement through the landscape presented these vistas. And in them, the climber, and the lover of line, form and texture can find much to study; to look closely at the  micro and macro sculptures that inspire a deeper exploration. An exploration which can gradually unlock the rest of the fringe benefits. First the stone. Then the physical, mental, social, spiritual growth. Long before, and long after the heroics and failures of our short time as climbers on this planet. Impervious, imperial, impartial, the objects of our affection and obsession. An ode to granite. 

"No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied - it speaks in silence to the very core of your being." ~ Ansel Adams