My coworker Andrew has a little joke. “How do you know someone does CrossFit?

“Because they tell you.”

It reminds me of a saying from when people used to do “est” self-awareness seminars, and then go around noisily proselytizing.

“What’s the different between an asshole and an esthole?

“Asshole’s still got his 400 dollars.”

My spouse, sons and coworkers have drunk the CrossFit KoolAid. CrossFit, if you don’t know, is a high-intensity conditioning program of gymnastics, sprinting, rowing, carrying around strange objects, and other clamor. Also, devotion.

The first time my older son, Teddy, went, he threw up, audibly gagging in the bathroom. The staff sat him gently on a bench and gave him some Coke to sip. Arriving home still gray-faced, he, who plays high school football and runs track, whispered, “I thought I’d be in better shape for it.”

I step inside the place to pick up

Alizee Dufraisse has become the fourth woman to climb a 9a (5.14d) with her recent ascent of La Reina Mora, located in the La Rambla sector of Siurana, Spain. This route was bolted by Alex Huber in 1996, and since then has only been climbed by three people: Ramon Julian Puigblanque, Dani Andrada and Nicolas Favresse.

Dufraisse is on a tear, having climbed Patinoso 5.14c just recently.

Writing on her blog, Dufraisse describes La Reina Mora as being sustained power-endurance and having three boulder problems as hard as V9.

Her ascent on January 23 makes her the fourth woman to climb 9a after Josune Bereziartu, Charlotte Durif, and Sasha Digiulian.

At only 25,  the young engineer John Horn discovered an essential design flaw in construction of the famed Diablo Canyon Power Plant near Santa Barbara, California. In his next career, at LucasFilm, he worked on films such as Forrest Gump and Star Wars, and contributed to systems for two films that won Academy Awards for technical achievement. He was also a dedicated and joyous sport climber, whose death of a stroke last year at 55 was a complete surprise.

Now two annual $2,500 sport-climbing grants will honor him in perpetuity.

The John L. Horn, Jr. Memorial Sport Climbing Award is the brainchild of Horn’s widow, Laurie Berliner, who says, “The weekend before his stroke we were mountain biking in the Humboldt Redwoods, and the night before, John and I were training in the Berkeley Ironworks Touchstone climbing gym.” The two were a vital part of the Marin County climbing community.  “He was a wonderful man," she says, "and still pulling down hard until the very end.”

LucasFilm and various professional and climber friends supported

The Patagonian expert - in every way - and resident Rolando Garibotti, in a SuperTopo post today (January 19), praises Hayden Kennedy and Jason Kruk's dramatic feat on the Southeast Ridge of Cerro Torre, specifies the particulars as far as known, and reports that the two removed a multitude of bolts on the descent: "The Compressor route is no more," he stated.

The two, he reports, chopped the bolts on the headwall and one of the pitches below it.

"Hayden Kennedy and Jason Kruk made a very fast ascent (13 hours from the Col of Patience to the top) of the SE ridge of Cerro Torre on what for sometime we have been calling 'fair means' style, which implies not using Maestri's insane bolt ladders," Garibotti states. "We presume they used some of Maestri's belays but in pitches only clipped 5 bolts, four placed by Ermanno Salvaterra on his 1999 variation and one placed by Chris Geisler on his and Jason's variations last season."

He lauds Kruk and Kennedy's action for returning a beautiful mountain to a more natural state, typical of