And now it’s time to embarrass my wife, Rannveig.

We traveled all winter through Australia and New Zealand, and I took a lot of photos. A lot. One of my big goals was to build my stock collection of outdoor and adventure sports images. One of the shots I took, in the Grampians in Australia, made it into the 2011 Women of Climbing calendar, put out by Sharp End Publishing. Sharp End is a Colorado-based company, and a major powerhouse in the outdoor sports guidebook industry. Here’s the spread. You might be able to guess who the climber is 🙂

Heidi, the publisher, has done an amazing job with the calendar — it’s filled with inspiring photographs of girls climbing way harder than I ever will. Rannveig was asked to go to Salt Lake City to sign the calendars in a huge promo put on by Sharp End and Petzl at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market trade show, so off we went. The event was top notch, and so were the athletes. Here’s a photo of Rannveig next to Lynn Hill, arguably one of the best female athletes of all time.

I was super impressed by how many people came by to get a copy! There were 20,000 people at the Outdoor Retailer show, and it seemed like every single one of them was crowding into the Petzl booth. The line went on for ages and the walkway was almost impassable! You might recognize some of the people milling around — they’re among the best climbers in the world.

It was pretty fun to be there. The trade show was pretty overwhelming for the first few days, but we got into the swing of things and met all sorts of really great people. Here are a few more images from the event.