Matt Paden

    http://frixtion.net

    Matt currently lives in Boone, NC, where he's attending graduate school at Appalachian State. In a foolish gamble, he assumed he'd have more time to climb by going back to school instead of working a full time job. He sorely lost that bet. Still, he finds some time to climb and is slowly but surely bouncing back from a shoulder injury that buggered him in 2009. Matt has been climbing since 1995 and he is one of the founders of Cruxn.com.

  • Dec 29, 2011, by » 4 Comments »

    Projects 2011: Did You Send?

    2011 has been a mixed bag. I started the year injured (left shoulder)  and I’m ending it injured again (lower back). Also, there was a little thing called graduate school thrown into the mix that narrowed my life down to all school and maybe one day of climbing a week. Still, I managed to tick a bunch of my fall projects here in Boone, including Unwritten Law (12b/c) and No Free Lunch at Hawksbill, which is one of the most exposed, amazing pitches of 5.10+ trad climbing I’ve ever had the joy to climb. To the left is a picture of me getting shut down at the crux of Shredded Wheat, a 5.11a classic finger crack at Rumbling Bald. It’s Read More

  • Aug 13, 2011, by » 4 Comments »

    The Best ‘Rest Day’, AKA, DWS at Summersville Lake

    I just spent the last week at the New with my girlfriend Melissa and a great bunch of old and new friends. For years, talk of renting a pontoon boat on Summersville lake has been bounced around by various freinds, and this weekend all of the factors finally lined up. We had the minimum 6 people needed to make it affordable and we had a truck that could trailer (thanks to Matt de Camara having faith in our ability to use his truck even though we had about two days of trailering experience between 6 people). It was a killer, sunny day that  was supposed to be a rest day for me and Melissa, but that didn’t really work out. There’s no way to Read More

  • Jul 27, 2011, by » 5 Comments »

    Win a Dolomite Bouldering Bag!

    Cruxn.com and Dolomite Climbing Bags have teamed up to give you the chance to win a styling and functional bouldering bag! What’s the deal and how do I enter, you ask? Well, read on to find out about Dolomite’s sweet pad packs and how to enter to win. Dolomite Climbing Bags Typically, there are only a few options that us boulderers use to organize the gear in our pads: Stuff all of the junk loose in the pad, hope that it doesn’t fall out between boulders, and then make a small mountain of gear sprawl when you unpack. Use a backpack or a couple of smaller packs in attempt to keep everything organized, only to find your crash pad looks Read More

  • Jul 1, 2011, by » 12 Comments »

    Poll (Updated): What are the best small camming devices?

      If you are the type to watch reruns of Friends (and I’d never say that you were, or that I am for that matter; this is purely hypothetical), you might find yourself thinking, “Damn, this show looks dated already.”  Well, like the show Friends the bulk of my friends date back to the late 90s, and I can tell you they are looking rough and a bit dated, like they just stumbled in after an all nighter following a Pearl Jam concert. Not only are the cams all old models by now, most of the wires are all jacked so the cam heads are askew, and I’ve got a few that pump me out just trying to pull the Read More

  • Jun 9, 2011, by » 2 Comments »

    Towers of the Ennedi Film

    Many of us sad bastards are stuck inside for large parts of the day, be it for work, school, whatever. If you’re like me, you watch a lot of climbing videos online–it helps me get through the day and stay psyched for the weekend. I just came across this pretty dang great video about climbing desert towers in Chad, Africa from the fellows over at Vertical Carnival. While the movie doesn’t show a ton of climbing footage, it’s got some stunning (a word I don’t use lightly) cinematography and something a lot of climbing films lack: heart and introspection. This isn’t just about dudes in tank tops crushing pebbles. It’s a bit longer than most climbing clips on the web (12 minutes), Read More

  • Jun 2, 2011, by » 4 Comments »

    A Few From Linville Gorge

    I’ve basically had the whole month of May off from school, and I’ve been trying to cram in as much climbing as possible during that time. Me and Melissa have gone from Table Rock, to the New, back to Table Rock and the Ampitheater, to the Linville River, Ship Rock, and Grayson Highlands all in the last couple of weeks. Melissa’s working on a trip report and I’ll be posting again about some parts of the trip, but I wanted to post a couple of shots from down in Linville Gorge. We took the Spence Ridge Trail down and did a bit of swimming and bouldering, but we got rushed out by a huge thunderstorm before we could go downstream Read More

  • May 18, 2011, by » 6 Comments »

    Southeast Summer Bouldering: Linville Gorge

      I’ve only been down into the gorge to boulder a couple of times, and both times were without the help of a guide who knew where to go or a map. But even without a guide, it was fun just to wander around and scope out the possibilities–simply put, there is just a ton of rock down in the gorge, probably hundreds of boulders. Back when I was there a couple of summers ago, there was very little chalk anywhere; you pretty much found a boulder, chose a line that looked good, and climbed. It’s a fun adventure and the surroundings are definitely hard to beat. Now that it’s “summer” (yesterday the high was around 50 here in Boone) Read More

  • May 12, 2011, by » 9 Comments »

    Climbing: Compulsion, Habit, Escape, Pure Joy, or all of the Above?

    I was at a Buddhist retreat for a few days this past week where I didn’t talk for two and a half days. This is the second retreat I’ve been on, and both times now I get very deep into the meaning of climbing in my life. I’ve been climbing for sixteen years, and almost every major decision in my life has been influenced by climbing: where to go to college, where I lived after college, what I’m currently going back to grad school for (Speech Therapy, so I can travel and climb). There are even relationships I’ve walked away from partly due to climbing. Climbing also holds a very prominent spot in all of my ideas of the future. Read More

  • Apr 29, 2011, by » 10 Comments »

    More Splash than Flash

    So you’ll just have to take my word that I actually sent this problem before I filmed this attempt. I was psyched to have sent it ’cause it’s a nice little rush to climb out over the creek, so I figured I’d try to get some video. I pretty much botched the sequence from the start on this attempt though–I blame it on feeling rushed by my crappy point-and-shoot camera, which has a small memory card that I knew would fill up quickly. This boulder doesn’t have a ton of problems on it, but it’s like 5 minutes from downtown Boone, NC. This problem is called Flash or Splash (V3) for obvious reasons and it’s the best line on the Read More

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