Adam Riser

Adam Riser has been a climber for 11 years, guided 18 parties to the top of Mt. Rainier, and made expeditions as far north as the Northwest Territories and as far south as Peru's Cordillera Blanca. When not climbing, Adam spreads his time between downhill bike racing and backcountry skiing. He's also pretty good at ping pong.

Death By Slideshow

By: Adam Riser | April 13th, 2011
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Make your photos tell a story. Here Alex Meyer and Shingo Ohkawa wait out the settling forest fire smoke with an endless chess session.

We’ve all been there: a few days after your friend gets back from a week-long trip, he invites you and the rest of his buddies over to check out a few photos. He starts up his slideshow, and you know by the third frame that you’re in trouble. By the 30 minute mark, you’ve seen at least a half-dozen fuzzy shots of the same moose, camp from every angle, and even one shot where the camera accidentally went off in the backpack.

You are experiencing the worst post-trip torture there is: Death by Slideshow. Every frame of the entire trip is in your buddy’s presentation, nothing has been edited, and although all the shots are in chronological order, there is no storyline other than the standard, “Oh yeah, I remember that” when your friend is surprised by which shot came up. You don’t want to risk subjecting your friends to this same fate after you go on an epic trip, so put a little effort into your own presentation and get them stoked instead of putting them to sleep. Here’s how….

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Monday Slam Sesh

By: Adam Riser | April 11th, 2011
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When it comes to going down hard, it’s pretty tough to come up with a human-powered sport that gets you broken off more often than freeride mountain biking. For ten years, the crew at Freeride Entertainment gave us the New World Disorder series. NWD was the filthiest hardcore of the bike porn world. If the Collective brought us classy, artsy work that you could “read for the articles,” then NWD was the super twisted stuff that you would not admit to owning even if you were caught red handed. And when you popped it in the VCR, there wasn’t any plot. The opening credits flashed by and then you were in the middle of two people…………. sorry my editor just walked by.

Anyway, NWD 10 was the last of the series, and the trailer has some of the best mountain bike crashes ever caught on film. Enjoy.

Crossing Snow Without Snow-Crossing Gear

By: Adam Riser | April 6th, 2011
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Even the middle of summer can necessitate a snow crossing. Ben Sukow finishing the last few hundred feet to the rock in Loan Peak Cirque during a warm July day.

Crossing snow is pretty simple. Put on your crampons, grab your ice axe, and start walking. But what if you don’t have either of those things? Large, steep snowfields often guard the entrance to alpine rock climbs. And it’s not unheard of to leave your ‘poons and axe behind for one of several reasons; maybe you didn’t expect snow, or you didn’t expect the snow to be as steep as it is. Maybe you didn’t want to carry the extra weight, or maybe you simply forgot to bring the right gear.

So, what do you do when you get to the bottom of a couple hundred feet of a 40-degree snow pitch with nothing but a boulder field waiting to catch your fall at the bottom? You improvise. Read More …

The Cutting Edge: First Ascent of the Peach

By: Adam Riser | April 5th, 2011
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Earlier this season, Raphael Slawinski and Pierre Darbellay put up the first ascent of The Peach, a very impressive, all-natural ice and mixed climb in the Canadian Rockies. Raphael liked the climb enough that he went back to do a second ascent and document the adventure. If you’re a fan of watching very impressive climbers do very impressive things in very good style, then this is definitely worth watching. Thanks for posting the video, Raphael.

Second go at The Peach from Wiktor Skupinski on Vimeo.

Monday Slam Sesh

By: Adam Riser | April 4th, 2011
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As if missing his line on a 60-foot cliff drop and then tomahawking 100 feet down the slope weren’t enough, Callum Pettit took this slam one step further during a filming sesh with Teton Gravity Research. Take a look to see how to quickly things can go from bad to worse. (Just click the X in the upper right when the add appears so you can move onto the goods.)

Daisy Chain Dangers

By: Adam Riser | April 1st, 2011
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Not to flog a dead horse, but with rock climbing season coming into full swing, and I’m once again bracing myself to see climber after climber using their daily chains incorrectly and risking their lives. There is nothing wrong with using a daisy chain to clip into anchors, but you must use it correctly. If you use your daily chain incorrectly, you may as well be clipped in with your shoelaces. Here’s a very quick tutorial showing the right and wrong ways to clip in with your daisy chain.

The other option is to get yourself a Metolius PAS, which is essentially the same thing as a daisy chain, but it uses individual and independent full-strength loops, so there’s no way to clip in wrong.

P.S.: I realized when I watched this that I slipped up and said “where you would normally girth hitch your rope” when I meant to say “where you would normally tie in with your rope.” Please do not girth hitch to the rope when climbing.

Off-Season Training with Steve Smith

By: Adam Riser | March 30th, 2011
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Everyone trains differently. No way is the best way, but some ways are better than others. Canadian downhill racing badass Steve Smith broke onto the scene a couple years ago and has been crushing ever since. This didn’t happen on accident; Steve trains long and hard to be this fast. At the World Cup level, riders train all winter and come into the race season in better shape than most people ever achieve. Steve uses with a combination of downhill riding to stay loose and comfortable, sport-specific weight training to stay fit, and enduro riding on his moto to simulate the full-body stress of downhill races. Check out the vid for some training tips and some pretty good riding footy.


More Mountain Biking Videos

The Art of Car Camping

By: Adam Riser | March 29th, 2011
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There are few things better for the soul than hanging by the campfire.

It’s really hard to say how much time I’ve spent living out of vehicles. During my first season as a river guide, I lived in an old Jeep that eventually burnt to the ground. Then I downgraded to a crappy Pontiac Grand Prix with a hood that was duct taped shut. The year before I became a mountain guide, I made a huge upgrade to a $1000 ’89 Ranger with a canopy that was about six inches longer than the truck bed.

Since moving to Utah, I’ve camped out nearly every weekend during the springs, summers, and falls. Let’s see … 13 years of climbing and mountain biking with, let’s say, 25% of the weekends in the rig, plus four whole summers, is about 700 days of car camping in a little over a decade. In that time, I’ve picked up lots of tricks that can make a campfire next to the car feel like home.

Remember, the more comfortable your camp time, the more energy you’ll have to get after it during the days. Here are a few things to keep in mind…

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Monday Slam Sesh

By: Adam Riser | March 28th, 2011
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If you’re like the rest of us here, then Monday mornings aren’t exactly your favorite times. All you want is for it to be Saturday again. You want to be out riding, climbing, hiking, or just about anything but sitting in an office. But you know what always cheers us up? Passing around a video of a good old-fashioned slam session.

So, we introduce the first installment of the Monday Slam Sesh. Today, we had a hard time decided between this segment of a particularly sketchy corner in a UK cross country bike race …

BUCS 2011 X.C Carnage! from Joe Bowman on Vimeo. (thanks NSMB)

… and this great security camera shot of a poor office worker losing the plot. Read More …

Rope Coiling 201: Pre-Stacked Butterfly Method

By: Adam Riser | March 25th, 2011
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Last weekend was the first rock climbing trip of the season. I showed up at a crag with a group of friends and geared up for the season’s first crack. One of our crew offered up his rope for my lead, and when I pulled it from his pack, I saw a nice, neat coil.

Unfortunately, my friend had done what too many climbers do: he started his coil by holding both ends of the rope. While this method creates a nice, neat coil, it also necessitates re-stacking the rope at the bottom of every route. In the 20 minutes it took me to untangle and re-stack the rope, I could have been climbing the day’s first pitch.

So, learn the lesson well: instead of starting with both ends or the middle of the rope, start at one end and work your way to the other. Or, check out the video below for a slightly different coiling method that ensures a perfectly stacked rope every time, goes very quickly, and lets you backpack the rope if you need to.

There are about a million ways to coil a rope, and they all have their advantages. Share your favorite method in the comments section.

Accident Analysis: Ice Climbing Fall

By: Adam Riser | March 24th, 2011
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I just stumbled across a post by Will Gadd (one of the world’s most accomplished ice climbers) on his Gravsports blog which provides accident analysis on a video showing a nasty lead fall.

If you’re an ice climber (whether you lead or toprope), then this is definitely worth taking a good hard look at. You can watch the video below, but I strongly recommend you go to Will’s post to read his analysis, as it will teach you as much or more than the video will. Thanks Will for posting this.

Fall. from Jeffrey Butler on Vimeo.