Underneath the towering orange sandstone cliff, the conversation sounds curiously muted. “Yeah, man, it’s a couple months until Squam season starts, but you have to come up. Nails hard trad, sure, but there’s also all the other stuff—Pet Wall and Majestic, beers at the Chief…” 

The speaker is about 30: curly hair, bright eyes, down jacket patched with duct tape. You sit next to each other, watching as a third climber—older, European—dogs his way up a line of huecos that arch gracefully up the overhung face of Zion’s Namaste Wall.

He calls down for beta, and the Squamish climber is all too happy to provide it. “Oh, this one? The book says 12c, but that crux is brutal… yeah, yeah, I would go for the undercling…”

Later, in the parking lot, you run into the European climber. He shows you his van, which he’s sharing with his wife (also a climber) and their two young children. His rig towers over yours; bunk beds and a full kitchen, hardwood floors and adjustable lighting. The setup puts your battered ‘03 Chevy Express to shame, but you stay partial to the Chevy. Upon learning you’re headed south, he gifts you a guidebook to Arizona’s Lime Kiln Canyons and raves about the technical limestone you’ll find.

Before going your separate ways, you get him and his wife to sign the inside panel of your van, a slapdash of colorful signatures against the dusty interior walls. That night, you’ll cook dinner while the sun sets over Zion, and something will feel extra cozy as you clean the dishes and sort your gear. You don’t quite know what the plan is for tomorrow, but it’ll probably involve climbing, or driving, or maybe a bit of both.

*

Dirtbagging is dead. At least that’s what we’ve been told.

I learned this just hours after watching the trailer for Valley Uprising. It was my second year of undergrad, in the basement library of Western University, deep into finals season. I remember it vividly: the camera zooming through the train tunnel, Feel So Fine swelling in the background, Aamon McNeely jugging a rope with a pirate flag trailing behind him. Awestruck, I showed my (non-climber) girlfriend, who rolled her eyes and asked how my econ paper was going.

Instead of studying, I went to Google and dove down a climbing rabbit hole—only to learn that the dirtbag life, so glamorous and glorified in the film, apparently didn’t exist anymore.

“Sound the alarm!” Cedar Wright says in a Climbing.com article. “We are on the brink of a great tragedy.”

James Lucas, leaning forlornly against the hood of his car, agrees: “Every year I climb, it seems like there’s less and less dirtbags.”

The more I searched, the more factual these statements seemed to become. Parks are becoming more crowded, and with crowds come regulations. People are moving online and don’t need the crag or local hangout to meet partners. Maybe, just maybe, as the sport grows and the world modernizes, fewer people are willing to give up their careers and their comforts to go chase dirty campsites and frayed clothes.

I clicked through article after article, appalled but entirely trusting, until I finally just shut it down and went on with my life. That was it, I thought: dirtbagging really was gone.

Still, when I had the chance to spend a summer climbing full time, I knew I had to take it. Sure, maybe I wouldn’t be a true dirtbag, but I thought I could honor the past and get kind of close, so I cashed my student loans, bought a van, and hit the road.

*

V8 is out of your league, but it’s a proud problem, so you linger on the outskirts and watch as a group projects it. They’re a strong bunch, familiar with the moves, and they swap beta and tips while complaining about the heat. Summer is coming quickly to Red Rocks, and it won’t be long until the boulder becomes unclimbable. 

You’re hesitant to join: the starting hold looks horrific, and you know the crux is hopeless—but the others are encouraging, so you pull on your shoes and chalk up. At first you can’t even pull off the ground, but then one of the men shows you a hidden crimp and gives you a boost to get established, and then you’re climbing, and suddenly you’re part of the group.

For the next two hours you swap attempts, falling again and again, stumbling precariously only to be caught by strangers you barely know. You don’t get as close as them, not by a long shot, but you sit in the dirt and chat while you trade burns. They regale you with stories of the routes they’ve climbed, the projects they’re working, speedruns and night laps up Epinephrine; you talk about all the places you plan to go and your newfound freedom on the road. You stay there until darkness falls and no one can see the holds before stumbling back to your car, tired but happy.

Two days later your skin has healed and you go back to the boulder. This time there’s a different group there. You offer your mat and a spot, and they open up to let you in.

*

The term ‘dirtbag’ isn’t easily defined. You won’t find it in the Webster dictionary—at least not in the sense that I’m using it. The word can mean different things to different people. It’s evolved over time. But one of the best positive descriptions of dirtbagging comes, fittingly, from Lynn Hill’s attempt to summarize her life as a Stonemaster: “These dirt-poor days were among the best and the most carefree of my life, and though my friends were often scoundrels, I felt their friendship convincingly… This gypsy-like lifestyle was all for a purpose: to climb for as long as possible.”

Devotion is at the core of Lynn’s message: how the dirtbags of old were willing to give up a “regular life,” and all the comforts that came with it, so that they could climb as much as possible.

When I drove around America, I didn’t see many people hitchhiking to the crag or offering to belay for food à la Fred Beckey. What I did see, though, was people taking time off work, pushing themselves on routes they found scary, looking for beauty and simplicity in the art of climbing—whether it was for a weekend, a season, or the foreseeable future.

That’s sort of like dirtbagging, right?

*

You’ve always loved climbing history. Now you get to follow in its footsteps.

The desert grows hot, so you load up your van and head west. Time passes slowly, leisurely, days and routes blending together but somehow remaining distinct. You wind your way through the southwest following in the footsteps of those before you: rusty old bolts at Big Bear; obscure roads and scrappy trad in Holcomb; sleepy Taqhuitz, where Royal Robbins cut his teeth and where, for the first time, you leave the rope behind and venture up into an ocean of granite with just your shoes and chalk bag for company. 

Slowly, you begin to fit the bill. Your skin grows scarred and tough. Shoes worn at the toes, sweat stains lining the ankle. You start to find your place, start to get immersed: casual conversations at the crag, huddling around fires under the twinkling stars, the collection of signatures on your wall growing ever larger. 

Throughout it all, one place is always in the back of your mind. The place where it all started, where this obsession was first born, lurking silently over the horizon. You delay, putting it off, more miles on the shoes and pitches on the rope until you know you can’t wait any longer—and so you point your van north and head to the Valley.

*

If there’s one thing we can say about dirtbagging with absolute certainty, it’s this: the goalpost is always moving.

At the end of his famous memoir Camp 4: Recollections of a Yosemite Climber (1998), Steve Roper, a keystone of Yosemite climbing in the 1960s, laments the changes he sees in the sport: newer equipment, more people, camping restrictions at his beloved Camp 4. These changes, to Roper, signified the end of an era. Climbing was becoming more crowded, more regulated, and he couldn’t help but feel that something was being lost.

As Roper and his gang slowly drifted away from the Valley, though, dirtbagging didn’t die. Instead, a group of anti-establishment teens moved in and made the place their own. Routes were a little more crowded, so they trained to climb harder. Rangers were a little stricter, so climbers got better at skirting the law. Instead of fading away, Yosemite’s climbing culture blossomed into something new: the age of the Stonemasters.

Slowly the stonemasters ceded to Chongo Nation, who then became the Stone Monkeys, when Cedar Wright, Sean Leary, and Dean Potter appeared as a new type of dirtbag. Restrictions were even tighter, but they made do. Instead of sleeping on the ground at Camp 4, they slept in caves or in their cars. They took up where the Stonemasters left off, adding their own repertoire of nails-hard free climbs, blistering speed records, and mind-boggling linkups to the Yosemite climbing history.

Now restrictions in Yosemite are tighter than ever—but does that mean that dirtbagging is dead? Or has it simply evolved, like it always does?

*

Fingers aching, feet slipping, you heave desperately for the nearby jug. For a second, you think you’ve missed it, tips scraping for purchase in the thin crack—but then your hand hits the hold, you pull yourself into a solid position, and you hear them cheering behind you.

You only met Will and Colleen an hour ago, but already you feel the strange bond that comes with projecting a route together. They’re exactly the type of people who hoped to meet when you arrived in Yosemite: Will bouncing from job to job to fund his slacklining adventures, and Colleen working remotely as an engineer while she bums rooms in the Yosemite staff houses. They give beta tips in exchange for snacks, and Will pulls the mat out to protect you as you line up for the final mantle of Bachar Cracker.

It gets hot in the afternoon, so you leave the boulders and go slackline. You complain about needing to return to school in the fall, but they’re quick to set you straight. “It’s not your last chance, man,” Will says, balancing precariously on the line, beer in hand. “I’ve been there. Felt like my time was up. I keep finding my way back, though.” 

Later, Colleen lends you keys to the staff laundromat and gives you advice on how to get free refills from the pizza store. “You have to steal a little bit,” she says, only half-joking. “It’s part of the Valley experience.”

*

“Climbing means different things to different people,” British crusher Jerry Moffat says in his autobiography, Revelations. “To some it’s a way of getting fresh air. For others it’s an adventure. Then again it’s a social thing, a chance to catch up with mates.”

This has always been one of my favorite quotes, because I think it speaks to something integral to the sport: at its core, the type of meaning that we take from climbing is both personal and various. Climbers have always found things to argue over—sport vs. trad, alpine vs. siege style, crimp routes vs. comp boulders—but at the end of the day, what we love about the sport is always up to us, and it’s going to vary from person to person.

If climbing is personal, it seems to me that the definition of dirtbagging can be personal, too.

*

There’s a storm outside, so the five of you crowd in the Chevy. 

You barely know the men, but you joke and laugh like old friends. You met them cragging earlier. Someone invited someone else bouldering. It came up that you had beer and were in a sharing mood. Now you have plans for a bonfire, once the rain dies down.

Of course, you’ve gotten them to sign the van wall. 

The three of them are old friends, stealing time away from their families for a week of climbing. They’re different from each other, and different from you: fifteen or so years your senior, jobs and families and retirement plans, but they come together at least once a year for trips like these. 

Wind howls against the van windows, but inside it’s warm and dry. You can see the comfort in the way they talk, in the way they tease and rib each other. Tomorrow is a rest day, so they’ve made plans to tick off some of the classic low-grade multis in the area. There’s something freeing about them, something relaxed and pure in the way they pick their routes. There’s no chasing numbers or pressure, no fear or stress. They’re just climbing, and their love for it is obvious. Sure, in a few days they’ll be back home, back to normal life—but that just means they get to start planning their next trip.

Finally, the weather dies down. Before leaving the van, one of them glances around with a little smile. “It’s cool,” he says. “You know, seeing young people live life the right way.”

Watching the three of them under the night sky, mucking around as they chop wood and cook dinner, you can’t help but think the same thing about them.

*

The crusher out in Zion, all those months ago when you first hit the road, was right about one thing: you really do have to check out Squamish when it’s in season.

The splitter granite. The short approaches. The sparkling blue water. It’s all world-class. What people forget to mention though, is the campground.

Climbers sleeping in the dirt. Climbers sleeping in eighty-thousand-dollar sprinters. Locals and international travelers and first-time trad gumbies and 5.14 crushers. I once saw a 6-foot-3 climber squeeze himself into the bed he’d built in his Honda Accord. Tall, short, strong, scared, they all come to Squamish, gathering at this little campsite to cook and slackline and socialize and plan for the next day.

Again, older generations might scoff at labeling this “dirtbagging.” You can only stay at the campsite for two weeks per year. Most people get their groceries from the nearby Wholefoods, and in the evenings, they’re just as likely to gather at microbreweries as they are to huddle around campfires.

Still, though. People come to Squamish to find something, to unplug from the world, camp out, meet new friends, try hard routes, push their limits, and otherwise connect with dirtbagging’s ineffable spirit. It might just be for a day, it might be for the entire season, but they’re doing it.

That’s what I learned out there, drifting through the obscure crags and lonely highways of the West Coast. I don’t think dirtbagging is dead. I just think it’s changed. Many of today’s dirtbags are more comfortable than they were in Cedar Wright’s day, just as he was more comfortable than many Stonemasters, who were more comfortable than Roper’s gang, who were flabbergasted by Fred Beckey’s near-maniacal commitment to poverty.

Things are always changing. Yosemite will never be like it was in the 1950s or the 1980s or even the 2000s. Faced with that, we can either bemoan what’s lost, or can enjoy what’s here—while we still have it.

*

It’s bittersweet as you watch the van drive away. 

New plates, new owner, new adventures. You kept the wall of signatures and swear it’ll hang in your office forever. 

When people ask why you’re selling, the list of excuses is long. The van uses too much gas. The spark plugs are going soon. You can’t afford insurance on two vehicles.

Truth is, your time is up. The bill comes at the end, and all too suddenly the air is cooler, the leaves are turning, you have tuition payments and course schedules and midterm exams. Already it feels strangely distant: the quiet pine-scented nights, the endless lonely highways, the secret crags and friendly strangers and beautiful simplicity that came with life on the road.

You weren’t a Stonemaster, no. By most people’s standards, you probably didn’t even count as a dirtbag. But whatever you wanted to find when you left that spring, whatever you’d felt all those years ago when you first watched Valley Uprising, you feel like you got. It was there in the friendly camaraderie of new friends at the crag, in the lonely, stomach-clenching nerves of a runout lead, in the way that everyone, full-time crusher to weekend warrior, shared the same simple love for the sport. 

So did you find any real dirtbags on the trip? You think back to those you met: the Euros in Utah, the boulderers in Red Rocks, your Valley locals and Squamish vanlifers and topropers in Washington. In practice? Maybe not. There were jobs and families and bills. 

But in spirit? Dirtbags, every single one.

---

Marcus Memedovich is a lawyer from Calgary, Alberta, who enjoys climbing, skiing, and telling Bow Valley climbers how bad the rock quality is. He dreams of being the next Jeff Smoot, if Jeff Smoot was noticeably worse at both climbing and writing