Location: Round Table Pizza, 2065 Occidental Road, Santa Rosa

Time & Date: Tuesday, March 1, 2016 @ 7:30 PM (Social hours and free beer for members at 6:30)

Directions: From Highway 101 at Santa Rosa go west on Highway 12 to Stony Point Road Exit. Go straight from the middle lane at the light onto Occidental Road. The Round Table Pizza is on the right just down the road.

Southern Yosemite, located in the Sierra National Forest, has always been overshadowed by Yosemite Valley. Twenty-five years ago, Doug Robinson brought Mike Arechiga to climb in the Southern Yosemite area and he has been hooked ever since. The history of Southern Yosemite is a bit cloudy at best as early climbing pioneers kept no records of climbs or climbing areas. In the early 1970’s, Fred Beckey was the first to climb on several of the prominent domes in the area. A couple years later, Royal Robbins brought his Rock Craft School to the area to climb many fine routes but they did not keep documents on any of the first ascents they did. Over the next four decades, many notable climbers arrived to the area and established many good and sometimes bold routes.

Southern Yosemite is still wild and entices climbers to search out places like Fresno Dome, Shuteye Ridge and The Balls. Mike, along with his family and friends, established a handful of routes in the 1990’s and then started to document routes and climbing areas to add to the climbs that were included Mark and Shirley Spencer’s Climber’s Guide to Southern Yosemite. In 2009, Mike made self-produced climbing guides to Shuteye Ridge and Fresno Dome. Even with Grahm Doe’s release of A Rock Climber’s Guide to California’s Shuteye Ridge in 2013, Southern Yosemite still feels remote and wild.

Mike Arechiga currently lives in Oakhurst, CA but has been an integral part of the San Francisco Bay Area climbing community at Castle Rock State Park and beyond. He has been involved with Planet Granite climbing gyms for the past 14 years as a route-setter, climbing instructor and construction builder. He is always willing to share climbing beta and loves to meet and climb with people who share the same passion in climbing.

Location: Round Table Pizza, 2065 Occidental Road, Santa Rosa

Time & Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2016 @ 7:30 PM (Social hours and free beer for members at 6:30)

Directions: From Highway 101 at Santa Rosa go west on Highway 12 to Stony Point Road Exit. Go straight from the middle lane at the light onto Occidental Road. The Round Table Pizza is on the right just down the road.

In March of 2015, Steve Curtis spent nearly a month climbing in Argentina and Chile. He teamed up with a colorful cast of climbing partners and climbed numerous spires in Frey and long routes in Piedra Parada and Cochamo. Along the way, he discovered a darker side of his ethnicity and witnessed a small slice of the slow Argentine disintegration. Steve always presents an intriguing slice of climbing, culture and history into his presentations. This time will be no different as he will talk about these beautiful and exotic South American locations, the Bariloche Slovenes of Argentina and the American connection in Cochamo.

Steve has been climbing for 40 years around the United States and the world. His favorite spot is still Yosemite and his proudest climb is still The Nose in a day on El Capitain. Currently, Steve is a professor at University of Pacific. Please come and listen to his story.

Location: Round Table Pizza, 2065 Occidental Road, Santa Rosa

Time & Date: Tuesday, January 5, 2016 @ 7:30 PM (Social hours and free beer for members at 6:30)

Directions: From Highway 101 at Santa Rosa go west on Highway 12 to Stony Point Road Exit. Go straight from the middle lane at the light onto Occidental Road. The Round Table Pizza is on the right just down the road.

Giovanni Traversi is a Sonoma County native who currently resides in his Honda CRV in the high desert of the Eastern Sierra in order to climb as much as possible. A former climbing gym route-setter, this newly baptised “dirtbag” has matured in many ways, including taking on new challenges in climbing and in life and finding comfort high off the deck. Giovanni will share with us his continued journey, his joy and passion for climbing and his transformation into climbing tall, imposing boulders where he is finding his comfort zone. Giovanni is sponsored by FiveTen.

Location: Round Table Pizza, 2065 Occidental Road, Santa Rosa

Time & Date: Tuesday, December 1, 2015 @ 7:30 PM (Social hours and free beer for members at 6:30)

Directions: From Highway 101 at Santa Rosa go west on Highway 12 to Stony Point Road Exit. Go straight from the middle lane at the light onto Occidental Road. The Round Table Pizza is on the right just down the road.

Vitaliy Musiyenko started climbing in 2010 and became progressively excited to explore established classics and peaks few have heard of. His passion to hike or climb on all sorts of terrain took Vitaliy to places he could not have imagined as a kid. “By now, I consider this passion a huge part of my life and I am excited to share it with those who are looking to see a sample from the road less traveled”.

Vitaliy will present photos and stories from climbing he has done around the world. He will focus on rarely seen parts of the Sierra Nevada range where, in the last few years, he has climbed over 30 new routes. With these experiences under his belt, Vitaliy will share the challenges of climbing new routes deep in the backcountry, as well as the differences in strategy and style.

Location: Round Table Pizza, 2065 Occidental Road, Santa Rosa

Time & Date: Tuesday, November 3, 2015 @ 7:30 PM (Social hours and free beer for members at 6:30)

Directions: From Highway 101 at Santa Rosa go west on Highway 12 to Stony Point Road Exit. Go straight from the middle lane at the light onto Occidental Road. The Round Table Pizza is on the right just down the road.

Adrian Ballinger is a IFMGA guide, professional big mountain climber/skier, and owner & founder of Alpenglow Expeditions. Adrian has 12 summits of 8000 meter peaks (6x Everest, 4x Manaslu, 1x Cho Oyu, 1x Lhotse), 4 ski attempts of 8000 meter peaks (2 successful – Manaslu & Cho Oyu), and is the only person to ski from the summit of Manaslu (8th tallest peak in the world). Adrian has attempted to ski Makalu before, in 2012, and although he did not reach the summit due to poor weather conditions, he managed to ski from below the summit at 25,000.

Makalu, the 5th tallest peak in the world, presents a uniquely beautiful and ambitious challenge in a rarely-traveled part of Nepal. Adrian Ballinger, Emily Harrington, Hilaree O’Neill, Jim Morrison, and Kit DesLauriers will aim to test themselves as high altitude climbers while advancing an embattled sport in a post-earthquake Nepal. The team will also be taking on two groundbreaking objectives: (1) Hilaree and Emily will attempt to summit Makalu without the use of supplemental oxygen (2) Adrian, Kit, Hilaree, and Jim will attempt the first ski decent from the summit.

At 8466m (27,776ft), Makalu will be the ultimate challenge in modern mountaineering and high altitude skiing.

Location: Round Table Pizza, 2065 Occidental Road, Santa Rosa

Time & Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2015 @ 7:30 PM (Social hours and free beer for members at 6:30)

Directions: From Highway 101 at Santa Rosa go west on Highway 12 to Stony Point Road Exit. Go straight from the middle lane at the light onto Occidental Road. The Round Table Pizza is on the right just down the road.

At the young age of 15 in Southern California, Dean Fidelman began climbing and taking photographs. Dean fell in with a group of young climbers, which included John Long, John Bachar, Yabo and Lynn Hill, the Stone Masters. He began to document this period of climbing in California, the people and the lifestyle. Dean is well known for his Stonemasters books including Yosemite in the Sixties, The Valley Climbers and Stone Nudes.

Companion to the classic Yosemite in the Sixties, Dean’s newest release, Yosemite in the Fifties – The Iron Age, uses the words of the climbers of the time and artfully restored photographs to chronicle the historic first ascents of Yosemite’s “mile-high” granite walls, the legendary personalities who risked their lives to climb them, and how their endeavors initiated the birth of adventure sports.

Yosemite in the Fifties gives the stage almost entirely over to the original source material, the first-person narratives, archive photos (artfully restored), and memorabilia particular to the seminal ascents of the era. These words, images, and design, when cast from critical angles, all reach across generations to resurrect vanished worlds. Yosemite in The Fifties is fashioned not so much as a book but as a wormhole back to an enchanted time in the history of exploration, and a classic era of Americana now lost in time.

Location: Round Table Pizza, 2065 Occidental Road, Santa Rosa

Time & Date: Tuesday, September 1, 2015 @ 7:30 PM (Social hours and free beer for members at 6:30)

Directions: From Highway 101 at Santa Rosa go west on Highway 12 to Stony Point Road Exit. Go straight from the middle lane at the light onto Occidental Road. The Round Table Pizza is on the right just down the road.

As a teen with angst, Ed Cooper led a dull and rather aimless existence in New York State. Then at age 16, Ed’s family encouraged him to go out west with his older sister. They went to Yellowstone where he took a picture of a bear on a hillside with his Ansco Panda Box camera. Ed remembers that the highlight of the trip was a guided climb of Mt. Rainier. Ed recalls, “From that point on, the mountains became my passion, my raison d’être”. Some years later, the (Seattle) Mountaineers published a book entitled “Freedom of the Hills” and that is what the mountains represented for him and still do 62 years later.

Ed has three published books: Soul of the Heights, 50 Years Going to the Mountains; Soul of the Rockies; and Soul of Yosemite. After years of shooting film, Ed entered the digital world in 2005, considerably reducing the weight he carries into the mountains. You can follow Ed on his new Instagram account: @ed_cooper_photography and his three Facebook accounts where he posts new images almost daily. https://www.facebook.com/ed.cooper.photography. Ed’s presentation is a distillation of all of his mountain experiences over 60 years where he will show us his amazing photographs, many of which have been restored. Ed will also have his books and prints for sale at the presentation.