The River Gorge Guild

Category: The Schoolhouse


  • Three easy sustainability upgrades to make in your van

    More often than not, adventurers transition from home life to van or trailer life because they love the outdoors. How then can we be better stewards of our beloved environment, especially while living in a vehicle? That’s a big question, and there are countless ways to approach it. When it comes to making sustainability upgrades…

  • 8 awesome tips for short climbers like us

    If you’re a short rock climber, you’ll quickly realize that everybody in the world wants to give you advice. Even when these people truly do have your best interests at heart, it can be difficult for taller climbers to provide advice that’s actually helpful. As I mention in an earlier article, it’s really just that…

  • How to enjoy canned soup (as a vegan van-lifer)

    Even with the most beautiful self-built van kitchen, it’s difficult for the foodiest of foodies to maintain our eating standards while on the road. Smaller cooking and storage spaces, time constraints, and remote campsites far from groceries can put a damper on things. The first fall I spent in my trailer, I found a pick-me-up…

  • 10 climbing endurance workouts that will make you strong

    Endurance, or the ability to climb for long periods of time without tiring out, is a key skill for all climbers–even if you generally stay away from taller routes. Retaining your strength and technique until the end of a long session will help you with any kind of climbing, regardless of whether you favor bouldering,…

  • How to layer for cold-weather adventures

    We get it better than anyone. It’s winter, but you still want to get out there–gape at mountains, frolic in the fields, scale cliffsides, and go on birding walks. It can be difficult, though, to do the things you love when the elements are against you. I’m here to tell you how to totally turn…

  • How do I explain to my taller friend that rock climbing is literally so hard?

    Like many sports, climbing bestows various advantages and disadvantages upon every body type. We humans are empathetic and naturally social creatures, so we can often (at least vaguely) imagine what it might be like to live in someone else’s body. As an extremely short athlete, though, I often find that it takes a special kind…

  • Easy vegan cooking: The Great Outdoors Sauté

    We’re all aware that vegan cooking gets a bad rap. It’s famously called bougie and expensive, difficult to cook, and deficient in protein and iron. It doesn’t have to be this way, though–even (perhaps especially) in the outdoors. Ever since my first climbing trip, I’ve been camp cooking for huge groups of people and making…

  • How to accomplish your very first pull-up

    One of the biggest myths I’ve encountered in the climbing world is thus: that only someone very special can do a pull-up. You have to be an athlete, you have to be born a certain gender, you have to have a certain strength-to-weight ratio—I’ve heard it all. None of it is true. Sure, there are…