We’re back, finally! Our annual convention at the New River Gorge is happening July 14-17, 2022 and we encourage everyone to get vaxxed and come climb. Registration is a must, as usual, for all attendees – with no further adieu, here’s a link to this year’s form! Before you register, make sure you check out the very neccessary convention eligibility requirements.

We’re stoked to have our annual auction, and already have sponsorship from Organic, Black Diamond, and La Sportiva, with more on the way. Start saving so you can bid high! Proceeds, this year as ever, go to organizations that support climbing access and queer+trans social justice.

HELLO, WIDE WILD AND WONDERFUL MULTIIVERSE OF LOVELY LGBTQIA CLIMBERS!

Register for Homoclimbtastic’s 12th Annual Convention, July 18-21, 2019 in the New River Gorge of West Virginia here!

As always, there will be world-class climbing on Nutall Sandstone (THE BEST SANDSTONE, COME AT US), whitewater adventuring, drag excellence, auction goods courtesy of your most beloved climbing companies, make-out sessions, dance parties, bonfires, hot tub funtimes, star gazing, s’mores making, swimmin’ hole dips, and MUCH MUCH MORE. Come join us!

If you’ve got any questions, email me at hilary@homoclimbtastic.com (or feel free to contact any of the other Dictators).

Much love,

Hil (on behalf of the Dictators)

The wait is over!

Click here to register for this year’s Convention.

Every person who plans to attend the Convention must fill out this form.

See you at the New!

Are you rrrrrrready?!

Registration is open for the 2017 Convention.

Every person who plans to attend must fill out a registration form.

You can fill it out online here. See you at the New River Gorge: July 20-23!

Our sponsors have come through with some amazing donated items for the live auction Saturday night!  If you like ropes, draws, packs, duffles, shoes, and headlamps, this is the auction for you.  Bring your clams, shillings, or buttons to get in on this huge gear give-away!  All proceeds benefit the American Alpine Club and NRAC.

We are psyched to have a lot of love from the following companies:

Laganja Estranga as Rachel Zoe. Literally? Ugh.

If you know anything about me at all, you probably know that since we wrapped the 2013 Homoclimbtastic Convention last July, I have been swimming in a pool of bow ties. As much as I despise the word “literally,” I would use it here to emphasize the point and sound more hip and trendy–but no. I’m no Rachel Zoe. Not even close.

Aside from bow ties, Homoclimbtastic is a cause near and dear to my heart, and to the hearts of countless others. Everybody who works for Homoclimbtastic has a real live day job (or night job, or both, depends on what they’re into), and we all use the time we have left over to work and plan this great big homo-ho-down in the gorge every summer. It’s a labor of love, and the reward is SO gratifying regardless of the lack of paychecks. So for me, whilst in the throes of bow tie fabrics, patterns, websites, buyers, and inventories, Homoclimbtastic planning crept slowly into the present. No lie, July seems really far away when it’s October. With a dedicated team of planners and volunteers and phone calls out the wazoo over the past few months, the registration is finally open for this year’s convention. Remember that little tiny note that hit the Facebooks with some dates on it back in November? November.. that was ages ago, right? Yeah, that note was tiny, I know. Well anyway, those dates stuck (not so surprisingly, it has been that same weekend for like, four years). If you missed it, it’s JULY 16-20, 2014. That’s a Wednesday thru a Sunday. To optimize your climbing time with the big group, you’ll want to arrive sometime on Wednesday and plan to leave sometime on Monday. If you’re adventurous and really super excited to be in West Virginia, plan to come early or stay late… we don’t mind, and we love it when people are really into it and the energy is super high all the way through the convention. Just don’t burn out before everybody starts climbing on Thursday! If you plan to stretch your trip out, remember that other groups may be on the campground or may have cabins reserved before and/or after our official dates– that’s Nancy’s call– but it’s all us from Wednesday thru Sunday.

So what’s happening this year? Well, we have a whole lot of options to consider, and some more phone calls, emails, letters, carrier pigeons, etc to send, but as soon as more things are nailed down, we’ll broadcast to the interwebs for everybody to see. We know for sure that The American Alpine Club will be joining us again this year (yay!) and we’ll be doing another auction of some super cool sponsored gear and stuff… you won’t want to miss that. It’s going to be a little different this year, though; the auction will be a smaller part of our overall evening entertainment, and you should prepare to be entertained. Porsche Ferrari will be joining us again this year– when she starts her engines, she’ll drag the house down. Literally? No. Well, maybe in drag-speak. Not going there.

Cantrell’s is our host again this year, and they couldn’t be happier to have us back. Every time I talk to Nancy on the phone, it’s an outpouring of love that can’t be matched. Their campground is more than just a venue for our little gathering, it is our home away from home for five hot summer days. It is the South, after all. When Richie, Nancy, Jessie and the gang are around, it’s like we’re all at home and they’re our family.

Chris
chris@homoclimbtastic.com

If you forgot some gear, or it got lost on your flight out, or you never had it in the first place but want it so bad you can taste it, WaterStone Outdoors is our local go-to for everything you could possibly want from gear to raincoats to socks. Check them out on Facebook, too, they would love to be your friend.

So for now, get to that registration page, register, and email me if you want to get on the cabin list.

< that’s me.. the one in the bow tie.

Come back to the website often for updates on all things Homoclimbtastic Convention (yes, they will happen from time to time)! As always, check out the Facebook page and group to learn more about Homoclimbtastic, other LGBT rock climbing organizations, and rock climbing in general.

NOW GO REGISTER FOR HC2014!

Attention all climbers! You’ve got ONE week until the most badass international LGBT rock climbing convention ever!!

You say you haven’t registered for Homoclimbtastic yet…?

Here are some things you can expect at this year’s event:
– Shirtless hotties
– World-class rock climbing
– Climbing gear auction
– Whitewater rafting
– Sarcasm and new inside jokes
– American Apline Club realness
– Amazing food
– Private screening of our documentary “Climbing With Pride”
– More shirtless hotties
– Climbing commoroderie
– Summersville Lake swimming and blow-up alligator ‘rasslin
– Porsche Ferrari, Denver’s hottest drag queen
– Sunday brunch picnic in the square
– Visits from Waterstone’s pride parade sponsors
– Climbing harness bulges
– Fayetteville’s favorite “temporary” gay bar
– Even more shirtless hotties
– and more and more and more…

is that a potato in there?

So complete your registration online NOW to secure your spot for Fayetteville’s gayest event (well, maybe second to Waterstone’s promo) of 2013!

PS: there are some new cabin spots available (ahhhhh, air conditioning)… email chris@homoclimbtastic.com for details– but you’d better hurry!

Stilts!

It’s been an epic last few days for us United States of Americans. Our Supreme Court decided to kick discrimination to the curb, Water Stone Outdoors released  the most epic HomoClimbtastic convention promo video ever (evarrrrr!) and we have more sponsors and bigger gear than we’ve had before.

You’ve probably heard enough about the Supreme Court. What you haven’t heard enough of us is about Water Stone Outdoors, which has produced the most epic promo video ever:

I can’t help but enjoy the photos, which are just as fun:

It appears that there are two parades, a prop plane, a skydiving sock monkey, and enough badassery to make me jealously wonder if the creation of the promo video for the convention is yet more ostentatious than the convention itself, heretofore something I thought unpossible. We had a drag queen with stilts, and they brought in stilts AND A SKYDIVING SOCK MONKEY AND PROP PLANE.

We will not be able to compete with this, because, for the foreseeable future, HomoClimbtastic does not own a plane. Apparently you can ride the plane if you contact Wild Blue Adventure Company, although I don’t know how you convince them to let you put on a sockmonkey suit and jump out of it in midair. Though clearly, it can be negotiated.

We also have a great many sponsors this year, and I get to announce which climbing equipment companies loves you the most (well, we can’t say for sure, because we haven’t opened the Trango box yet) but BlueWater Ropes operating out of my wonderful home state of Georgia sent us TWO climbing ropes, as did STERLING ROPE COMPANY, which is not based out of Georgia, but I suppose I can forgive them for that, because I like Maine.

Who’s got ropes? You got ropes. BlueWater made you ropes.

Sterling is based out of Maine, so I’m beginning to suspect a little east coast pride going on here.

So if you need a rope, attend the Saturday night HomoClimbtastic auction at Cantrell’s in Fayetteville, West Virginia on July 20, 2013 and buy one while you enjoy drinks! Climb with it the following day!

ClimbTech is sponsoring and sending an actual live climbing human, Ann Raber, along with unknown quantities of swag.

In case you wanted to know who’s donating the permadraws for the projects I can’t finish.

ClimbTech is out of Austin, Texas. Will any platinum sponsors appear to redeem the west coast?

What’s that? Why it’s… FREE SHAMMIES FROM CALIFORNIA. Evolv is sending us more gift certificates for any damn pair of shoes you want to use them for, which basically means, “you better get some shammies or Alex Rowland will not respect you.”

I just blew mine out last week, after having the shoe repair guy bring them back from the dead twice, because I was so insistent on wearing the shoe that finally allowed a heel hook that I sized three sizes down and endured pain for two weeks that rivaled that time I got a hole in my intestinal lining. Now that the shoes are irrevocably dead, I’m going to have to break in another pair.

The Evolv Shamans. Given what I endured to break these in, I will not countenance anyone’s complaints about the pain of high heels, or climbing shoes which do not facilitate edging with my 180 pounds of hot man meat.

We have more sponsors, but I am going to do a second post about them shortly (we’re still opening boxes).

What I want to cover now is that climbing companies sponsoring us is a big deal. I’ve harped on this already, but we still live in a country where same-sex marriage is not recognized in 37 states, and companies can sponsor a lot of other things instead. It’s a recognition that we have a long way to go and they’re willing to cut into the profit margin to help.

Or, in some cases, organize an entire West Virginia town.