I spent last Sunday working on a climbing access trail at Red Rock Canyon Open Space, a Colorado Springs city parkland and a popular rock climbing area with over 100 routes on sandstone slabs and faces.

I was out there with ten members of the basic climbing school and their head instructor, Collin Powers, from the local Pikes Peak Group of the Colorado Mountain Club.

The students had to do a service project and Collin called me a month ago to arrange for the group to do a trail day at Red Rock Canyon. I picked out the trail to The Whale's Tail, which had fallen into disrepair with a couple steep sections gullying out during heavy rainfall last summer.

We met at 8:15 in the morning at the parking lot, sipping coffee and eating donuts that Collin brought. Then we packed up lots of tools--shovels, polaskis, axes, rakes, a couple wheelbarrows, and 5-gallon buckets--and set off to the Tail.

The first order of business was to fill in a deep gully with loose field rocks of various sizes and then cover them with coarse gravel as well as stack branches on them to keep climbers from scrambling up the gully. The group worked hard all day, constructing a couple stairways out of large flat slabs of sandstone and creating a level trail section between the stairs.

We worked for 7 hours, breaking only for a half hour lunch in the shade of towering cottonwood trees, and moved at least three tons of rock and gravel. In the late afternoon, I inspected the finished work and said, "Great job! Now let's go climbing!"

It's important that we put sweat equity into our climbing areas, especially the local ones in our backyard where we climb all the time. Climbers need to be responsible users and demonstrate to land managers that they're willing to not only pick up trash but also to work hard to create and maintain climber trails to the cliffs.

Climbers need to become stewards of their climbing areas, not just users. Be proactive and get involved.

Find out more about stewardship, conservation, and climbing area management at The Access Fund's website.

Photographs above: Climbers from the CMC climbing school work on a trail at Red Rock Canyon in Colorado Springs. Photograph © Stewart M. Green

Andreas Steindl, a 22-year-old mountain guide in Zermatt, Switzerland, broke the record for speed climbing The Matterhorn from Zermatt via the classic Hornli Ridge to the 14,692-foot (4,478-meters) summit on August 23.

Starting at the Zollhaus in Zermatt at 4:05 in the morning, Stiendl ran the first section in running shoes and with trekking poles, passing Schawrzsee and the Hornli Hut, where over 90 other climbers had started climbing in the early morning hours.

On the upper technical climbing section of the route, Stiendl wore boots, crampons, and a helmet and carried an ice axe. As he passed the other climbers, he told the Zermatt newspaper, "The guests cheered me on and wished me luck."

Most climbers ascend The Matterhorn by taking a cable car to Schawrzsee and then hiking two more hours to the hut. The next day, starting about 4 a.m., they spend another eight or so hours climbing to the summit and then the rest of the day descending.

After a mere 2 hours and 57 minutes, just a smidgen under three hours, Andreas stood on The Matterhorn's summit after gaining 9,560 feet of elevation. He broke the 2007 record set by fellow guides Simon Anthamatten, Ernest Farquet, Marcel Marti and Florent Troillet.

Steindl's racing ascent comes on the heels of Dani Arnold's stunning ascent of the 5,250-foot-high North Face of The Eiger in only 2 hours and 27 minutes last April--that's climbing 35.7 feet per minute on loose and dangerous terrain.

Now that is speed climbing!

Photograph above: Andreas Steindl poses below the Hornli Ridge and The Matterhorn. Photograph courtesy Zermatt Tourismus

Read more about The Matterhorn and Speed Climbing:
The Matterhorn: Switzerland's Most Famous Mountain
Speed Climbing: Climb Faster Climb More
Speed Climbing El Capitan's Nose Route

A team of engineer climbers from the engineering firm of Wiss, Janney, Estner Associates, Inc. have been rappelling down the 500-foot-high Washington Monument, an iconic American landmark on the National Mall in Washington D.C. during the past week and doing a top to bottom survey of earthquake damage.

After the 5.9 magnitude earthquake shook the Washington D.C. area in late August, the National Park Service, the federal agency that administers the Monument, has been assessing structural damage on both its inside and now its outside surface.

The Washington Monument has, however, been deemed structurally sound but cracks in its marble exterior as well as missing joint mortar between blocks and loose pieces of rock must be assessed and repaired before the popular landmark can reopen to visitors.

The engineers are part of a crack climbing team of eight called the Difficult Access Team that is certified to do this kind of high ropes work on buildings and other structures.

Emma Cardini, one of the climbing engineers, told "Early Show" co-anchor Chris Wragge that the work is "awesome." She said, "It's not entirely scary. You have an appreciation for the height that you're at, but it's, for me, it's not so much the fear as just an awesome experience."

Yep, climbing is an awesome experience and I'm sure that dangling off the side of the Washington Monument is more than just putting in an honest day's work. It's probably pretty darn fun.

Photograph above: Climbing engineers swarm around the sheer top of the Washington Monument to assess damage to the historic tower. Photograph © Mark Indy Kochte

Climbers climb chimneys. Imagine that. Chimney climbing has got to be messy business, squeezing up the black sooty interior of a chimney above a blazing fire. Or maybe climbers scale the outside face of the chimney, crimping on the edges of bricks.

Actually the chimneys that climbers ascend are cracks or fissures in cliffs that are wide enough to accommodate their bodies. Chimneys range in size from ones just wide enough to squeeze inside to gaping vertical shafts that are climbing by bridging arms and legs on either side wall.

If you go climbing enough, you're going to need to learn how to climb a chimney. Chimneys are found on most long climbing routes and big walls like El Capitan in Yosemite Valley as well as on sandstone towers like Castleton Tower near Moab.

Learn more about climbing chimneys by reading my new article All About Climbing Chimneys in the Crack Climbing section and then get out and climb one!

Photograph above: On big routes, like those at the Fisher Towers, you're gonna have to climb a chimney. Photograph © Stewart M. Green