Outside Online Guests: Todd Skinner

You Are Here:

Home >> Outside Online Guests: Todd Skinner

Today's Question
How do you make primitive snowshoes? answer

What should you do if you get lost driving in a snow storm? answer

Today's Question
What is the greenest ski and snowboard on the market? answer

Can I really damage a coral reef with sunscreen while snorkeling? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Todd Skinner on top
Yeah, he's cocky--cowboys are like that. But with Salathé and Trango down and a 60-mile valley of African rock to go, he's on top of his world.

The buzz

Skinner on the very sharp end at the South African crag he currently is developing with an international
group of climbers.

Last August Skinner free-climbed Pakistan's Trango Tower, an ominous, 20,467-foot Himalayan slab of granite. Combining the complications of high altitude with nearly featureless vertical rock, Trango is considered the most fearsome big wall on the planet. By the end, Skinner had burned out three partners and spent 60 storm-battered, nose-bleeding days on the rock face.

What's new
Wintering and training now at Hueco Tanks outside El Paso, Skinner has begun rebuilding the fast-twitch strength his oxygen-starved muscles lost during the Trango epic. Home to North America's most technically difficult short routes, Tanks is the perfect venue for Skinner to get back into 5.14 condition. In April, he will travel to an undeveloped South African crag called Cedarsburg. He and a small group of international rock climbers will spend two months there developing new routes on what he describes as the finest rock he's ever seen. Somehow, he also finds time to squeeze notoriously funny and outlandish slide shows into his schedule.