Tag: covid 19

  • RunOut #44: Covid, BLM, and Favia Dubyk

    RunOut #44: Covid, BLM, and Favia Dubyk

    You may feel like these are uncertain times. But one certainty is that we’re living through history. Right now. A historic pandemic and the biggest civil rights movement of this generation.

    And then there’s climbing, which just sort of feels like the least important thing.

    In Ulysses, James Joyce writes that history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

    It seems as if many people are actually, genuinely beginning to wake up this nightmare and speak its name. Wake up to the injustices of our society. Something feels different to me about these protests. A lot of people who might normally shrug their shoulders have been forced to stop ignoring the uncomfortable truths: that we’re living in a system with two sets of rules. One for people with white skin, one for people of color. One for women, one for men. One for the rich, and one for the rest. And that we really need to come together to fix this.

    This is Andrew Bisharat, and you’re listening to The RunOut. I’m here with my co-host Chris Kalous, and today we’re going to try to unpack this painful, fraught, and historic moment by speaking to one of the most delightful, interesting, and intelligent guests we’ve ever had on our show.

    That would be Dr. Favia Dubyk. She is a pathologist from Albuquerque who is working on the frontlines of the pandemic. She’s also a cancer survivor, a strong climber, a veteran of American Ninja Warrior, and perhaps most important, she’s a strong voice for climbing, and one of many voices that people in climbing media, such as myself, could always be doing more to amplify.

    Chris and I really loved this conversation. Please make sure you follow Favia on Instagram since we reference her feed copiously during this show. Her handle is “@felinefavia.” Without further ado, Dr. Favia Dubyk.

  • RunOut #43: So, Can We Start Climbing Again or What?

    RunOut #43: So, Can We Start Climbing Again or What?

    When I was a young dirtbag, living out of an old sedan, sleeping on my crashpad in a $25 Walmart tent for children, drifting around from one climbing area to the next on what little money I had, I wrestled with the typical questions that keep many young newly college grads awake at night.

    What would I do with my life? What would I become? What would come next?

    Despite these lingering existential concerns, I held fast to my dirtbag lifestyle. Although I had aspirations to do more than just climb, I was also mostly happy sleeping in that stupid purple tent. There was a certain comfort in knowing that even if I failed to amount to anything else in this life, if everything went to shit, I could always go back to doing this—living in a tent, in Yosemite, climbing forever.

    Now even that security has been taken away. Yosemite remains closed. Campgrounds are closed. And many climbing areas are asking out-of-towners to stay away.

    But other climbing areas and corners of society are tentatively opening up, albeit not with a green light, but more of a yellow. Proceed with caution … but do proceed.

    Heightened uncertainty is the flavor of the year. We are actually living in the question, to paraphrase the poet Rainer Marie Rilke. For us, that all-encompassing question is, well, is it ok to start climbing again—or not?

    This is Andrew Bisharat. I’m here with my co-host Chris Kalous. And in this episode Chris and I wade into the murky waters of this question and attempt to parse our strange new reality, which I fear we’ll all be living with for quite some time.

    Hope you enjoy our dialogue and are even listening to it as you drive to discreetly climb somewhere safe while exercising best practices.

    Featured image by Keith Ladzinski.

  • Runout #42: Climbers in Iso: Kelly Cordes

    Runout #42: Climbers in Iso: Kelly Cordes

    Hello friends. It’s time for another edition of Climbers in Iso, our pandemic podcasting mini-series in which Chris Kalous and I, Andrew Bisharat, reach out to our fellow climbers to check in and see how life under lockdown is going.

    To quote Cormac McCarthy from his book The Road, “Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.” That just about sums up what a full month of self-quarantine feels like for many of us.

    But not today’s guest, who is just now really hitting his stride.

    Today, we’re speaking to one of the saltiest bastards in climbing, Kelly Cordes—a distinguished alpinist, writer, and online provocateur. I say salty bastard … but he’s also salt of the earth. Few people in climbing possess the authentic charm and charismatic delight of Kelly Cordes, even when he is in one of his notoriously misanthropic moods.

    I hope you enjoy this conversation, and please reach out with feedback. For one, Kelly loves seeing people write comments about him on the Internet, so don’t be shy. And if you have any suggestions for who we should be talking to next for our Climbers in Iso mini-series, we’re taking names and numbers now.

    Let the games begin. Here’s Kelly Cordes.