Other Stuff...
Anything that did not fit under another heading...
Contact Us
If you have comments, questions, corrections, praises, or whatever, or just want to get in touch with us, please send us E-mail (feedback at ericandlucie.com). We respond to all e-mails. Sometimes, if we're in the bush, it can be a few days (weeks?) before we get to our mailbox, so be patient.
We have Sponsors Again!
GU Sports has also agreed to help us with preferential pricing on their GU products. We've been addicted to their Chocolate Outrage GU energy gel ever since we first tried it several years ago. Eric in particular had always had trouble maintaining a steady blood sugar level on long climbs, and energy gels have made a tremendous difference. We would never get on a long route without a good supply of these. Besides, chocolate GU is just sooo yummy! We also like their Lemon Sublime during those hot summer days!
Cuckoo Covers was nice enough to agree to give us a sizeable discount on their spandex bike covers. Since our bikes will spend most of their time in the sun, rain, and exhaust gases and soot from the bus, we wanted some way to keep them protected. Cuckoo covers are tight-fitting, stretch spandex covers that look good and are easy to install on any roof-mounted bike. Hopefully, they'll survive the fairly harsh use well expose them to.
Links: Climbing, General
- Our previous trip's website
- Gary Clark's North American Classics. A very nice collection of top quality climbs with photos and trip reports.
- Brad's PiquaClimber site has trip reports and really good pictures of climbs throughout the western US.
- The Los Alamos Mountaineers. They introduced us to climbing. Great site with links, trip reports, etc...
- SummitPost is a mountain climbing oriented info exchange site. Covers mountains worldwide.
- Mountain Project is becoming THE source for US climbing beta.
- Chris McNamara's SuperTopo site has up-to-date (and free) info about various climbing areas in the Western US. His topos (which you must buy) are the most detailed ever produced (actually sometimes too detailed... the forest from the trees sort of thing).
Links: Climbing Conditions, Route Information, and Weather
Québec Ice Climbing:
- The best sources of up-to-date info are the forums on Escalade Québec.
- The well-known NEice website also has a section on Québec, and occasionally pictures of local climbs.
- Another Québec-based forum site is "Grimpe sur Glace", but it is unfortunately not used very much.
- For weather forecasts, use the links on our map of Québec.
- The comprehensive guidebook for the entire province, the "Guide des Cascades de Glace et Voies Mixtes du Québec" is available only in French... Updates for this book are available online.
- DrTopo has free guides (in English) to popular areas such as Les Chutes Montmorency, or Pont-Rouge.
- The FQME (Fédération Québecoise de Montagne et d'Escalade) is evolving into a sort of Québécois Access Fund. Access to routes in Québec seems particularly critical as both private land owners and the SÉPAQ, which manages public parks, are often forbidding climbing on their lands.
Cascades Climbing:
- The best source of up-to-date info is of course the well-known Cascade Climbers site.
- NOAA Weather forecasts for the western and eastern slopes of the Northern Cascades. They also added a new interactive mountain weather map for the North Cascades.
- Ceiling height forecasts (aviation) for the next 72 hours or so
- Webcam in the North Cascades National Park (visitor center, Newhalem, WA).
Southwestern Colorado Ice Climbing:
- Very nice Ice conditions page from Skyward Mountaineering.
- The Ouray Ice Park, a great resource for ice climbers in the Southwest. There's no better place to quickly and safely learn ice climbing. They also have a few words about current conditions, both in the park and around the area.
- Avalanche conditions report for the Southern mountains, from the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC).
- Ten-day weather forecast for Ouray, CO, from the Weather Channel.
- This Ouray web cam shows the entire town from the south.
Wyoming Ice Climbing:
- Ice conditions in Cody, WY, with pictures, from coldfear.com.
- Another conditions page at Southfork.com.
- Ten-day weather forecast for Cody, WY, from the Weather Channel.
- Downtown Cody web cam.
Canadian Rockies: Conditions
- Check out our Canadian Rockies Ice page for links to avalanche and weather forecasts, and web cams.
- The best source of local climbing conditions is the "live the vision" message board.
- Will Gadd's new page has multiple forums with conditions (winter only) and other info about ice climbs in the Canadian Rockies.
- Polaris Guiding also has a very useful conditions page on their site. Mostly general observations (i.e. not about specific routes) organized by area.
- Another message board at waterton.blog.
- Dave Stephen's site has a good collection of trip reports with pictures for a good number of climbs in the Canadian rockies.
Canadian Rockies: Weather and Avalanche Forecasts
- Access detailed forecasts from Environment Canada for several locations in the Canadian Rockies directly from our clickable area map.
- Extensive list of weather and conditions links for AB and BC, including park-specific sites
- Weather system maps from:
- Environment Canada
- The Weather Network (current and forecasted weather systems, covering 24 hours)
- Satellite image animations for Canada from:
- Weather Underground (good IR image animation, covers the last 3 hours or so).
- Avalanche bulletins from the Canadian Avalanche Association (CAA). Also accessed from our clickable area map.
Red Rocks:
- Useful beta and climbers' comments about the most popular routes on the Red Rocks section of MountainProject.
- Real time weather observations at the visitor center, and Weather forecast for Blue Diamond.
- Web cam: looking Northeast at the Calico Hills from the visitor center.
- Official site for the Red Rocks National Conservation Area. This site has detailed information about camping and climbing (including the phone number for late exit permits).
- Official site of the Clark County library.
- There have been some good news recently, but Red Rock Canyon in Las Vegas, one of the best multi-pitch climbing areas in the US is still in danger of being severely impacted by developers (even more than it has already, that is)! More info at www.redrock.org, or when at Red Rocks, stop by the Blue Diamond library or the Post Office.
Links: Climbing Advocacy, Access, Conservation, etc...
- There have been some good news recently, but Red Rock Canyon in Las Vegas, one of the best multi-pitch climbing areas in the US is still in danger of being severely impacted by developers! More info at www.redrock.org, or when at Red Rocks, stop by the Blue Diamond library or Post Office.
- The Access Fund, of which every climber should be a member.
- The Natural Resource Defense Council.
- The Nature Conservancy.
- The Sierra Club.
Links: Life on the Road
- If you have a laptop, WiFi is the easiest way to access the web while on the road. Hotspots are all over the place, some free, some not. In most towns, the easiest thing to do is simply to drive around with your laptop until you spot an open connection...
- Flying-J truck stops have one of the least expensive pay service we found, provided by TON Services.
- Directory of free hotspots by location.
- Another directory here, that includes both free and paid services.
- A new, pretty complete, forum-based state-by-state directory of RV dump sites across the US and Canada.
- So, you want your own bus? Check out the ads at busnut.com, or busconversions.com, or Coach Conversion Central. On that last link, find Paul Gaboury's second bus for sale: a gorgeous GM4905!! The conversion is almost identical to ours, which was Paul's first.