Chris McNamara

From John Muir in the 1860s to today's super-athletes, Vertical Frontier tells the rich and captivating saga of these free-spirited climbers whose contributions to the techniques, equipment, and ethics of mountaineering enabled them to be the first to conquer Yosemite's legendary big walls. Illustrated with spectacular footage, both old and new, shot on these granite walls, the story is told by the climbers whose artistry and relentless determination helped launch a sport now enjoyed by millions around the world, including David Brower, Warren Harding, Royal Robbins, Yvon Chouinard, Tom Frost, Jim Bridwell, Lynn Hill, Hans Florine, Dean Potter, and many others. Their epic feats range from the first ascent of El Capitan, which took 45 days over a year and a half, to today's speed climbers who complete the same route in under three hours.

The Sharp End is an adrenaline-soaked journey up the world's most challenging walls: the French Alps, the Eiger, the Utah desert, the Diamond of Colorado, Indian Kashmir, Yosimite Granite, and the sandstone spires of the Czech Republic. Run-out routes, scary high-ball boulder problems, ice-covered alpine walls and all-or-nothing free-solo ascents will keep your palms perspiring.

A college student named Mike is going through a normal day in his banal life when he hallucinates a purple skunk woman.

Welcome to the wildest competition known to man -- the speed record on the Nose route of El Capitan. Yosemite legends Dean Potter and Hans Florine go head-to-head, racing up 3,000 feet of vertical rock in under three hours, risking life and limb.

A Miscellany of Places That Will Not Appear is a cataloguing of orphaned places and the unresolved, everydayness of it all. Each setting is a rumination on what it means to inhabit a place just long enough to feel a sense of regret after leaving. These places are stand ins for fragments of stories. Their meanings are left behind in the blank spaces in between.