'Why aren't you on 8a.nu?' my friend Chris chided me for what felt like the five-hundredth time while we were cragging one day in Boulder Canyon.

And so, I set up a Mountain Project alias as 'Pinklebear,' eventually adding a photo of a pink teddy bear with giant red glasses that my buddy Kevin had posted on Facebook.įor years this was the Mountain Project profile I used until, in late spring 2023, I killed off Pinklebear as coldly and without remorse as a mob Don ordering a hit on a rival boss. Around that time, I was also working as the editor at Climbing, and I wanted to reduce my online presence to keep people from pitching via personal channels. From 'Hot Pinkler' came 'Pinklebear' and 'Pinklebear's Pavilion,' and then my friend Derek and I put up a route called Pinklebear in the Poudre Canyon in Northern Colorado. The profile got a few hits and LOLs, but it was mainly a vehicle for my own amusement. The name had been inspired by a fake profile I'd set up a couple years earlier: Hot Pinkler, who was four feet tall, weighed 300 pounds, and liked to speed-walk around the local shopping mall while wearing a fanny pack (in front, of course-the better to access his breath mints, notepad, and chewing gum). 'Hahaha, Pinklebear's Pavilion,' I'd say over and over. Neither suggestion won, but I sure did entertain myself, giggling like a schoolgirl at my own cleverness the rest of the day, much to my wife's chagrin.

On a hanging clipboard, I randomly suggested the name 'Pinklebear's Pavilion' for a bulging wall by the entrance, writing my idea under the likewise snarky 'Jub-Jub' someone had penned in. Part of that effort was renaming each panel/sector. This article originally appeared on Climbingīack in the Aughties, my local gym-the Boulder Rock Club, in Colorado-gave itself a facelift, revamping the lead walls in its Expansion Room and retexturing the walls throughout the facility.

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