Badger: The World’s Greatest Rock-Dodging, Route-Developing, Sandwich-Stealing Crag Dog.

This story, originally titled “Crag Dog,” appeared in our 2024 print edition of Ascent. You can buy a copy of the magazine here.

What is a crag dog? If you’re a climber, you’ve met a few. A crag dog is a dog who goes to the crag a couple of times a week, usually Saturday and Sunday, rain or shine. You’ll find these dogs—all breeds—some sporting bandanas, some with fancy collars, and some collarless mongrels, off the leash, walking over ropes and through landing zones, at large, ad hoc, mixing freely among the climbers. These are the OGs, Canis scopulus familiaris. Some of the old ones can curl up in the dirt and nap for hours (waking only for treats and snugs). We may notice good crag dogs only when they’re gone, but we notice. Because if a crag dog is missing, even for a day, the crag feels less, like a football team that’s a man down.

Climbers and dogs spend our lifetimes together. Live together. Camp together. Train together. Lunch together (given the opportunity). Smell things together. Crag together. They are our best friends.

That’s why I wrote this remembrance of my dog, Badger, notable crag dog, in hopes that it will inspire more crag dog profiles, maybe even a genre. Because … dogs.

Bad Dog

Warning: Badger was not always a good dog. Ahead lies misbehavior, stealing, blood, and death.

Little Big Dog

Badger, a three-month-old long-haired and terrier puppy about the size of a bowl of chili, settled behind my pillow and fell asleep.

At around 2 a.m. a thunderstorm moved through. Lightning flashed behind the curtains, and a great clap of thunder shook the house. Badger sprung up and ran across my chest, where he stood nervously shifting from foot to foot. I lifted his little body, set him on the floor, and watched him sniff around the room in the moonlight. He was cute and shaggy, and I found myself thinking the night thoughts of all puppy owners. What kind of dog will this be? Will he be an easy dog? One that listens and doesn’t beg and gets along with other dogs? Or will he be another kind of dog? 

The lightning flashed, and Badger froze. Thunder blasted. He ran three quick circles, set his feet wide, and growled.

Raised by a Wolf

He growled at the thunder. That was my first clue. And he was raised by a wolf.

When Badger was 11 months old my then-mother-in-law, Unchi, and her wolf moved in with us and stayed for over a year. (But that’s another story.)

Badger loved the wolf, and the wolf loved Badger. They hung out together and explored the Colorado wilderness together. She taught him things.

Food Stress

Like all great (people and) dogs, Badgie, bless his heart, was flawed. Mainly, he was hungry, and he wouldn’t turn down a small, squeaky animal in a pinch.

I could fill two books with his achievements—excellent climber with numerous 5th-class solos and technical summits to 14,000 feet, good with kids, good listener, giver of sage advice, loyal. But I can’t tell all the funny stories, like the time he peed on the electric fence, or all the heroic stories, like the bears he chased out of our yard, because that would take two or three volumes.

So I’ve decided instead to focus on the challenges—the obstacles and close calls—because these are what define a (person) crag dog. Conveniently, all the dirt on Badger fits into three related categories: Food Stress, Unkillable, and Walkabouts.

One: Food Stress

As stated, Badger was crazy about food. And I mean that literally: Food made him crazy. We had a lot of heart-to-hearts about stealing people’s lunches at the crag, but he never seemed to get it.

Toddler birthday parties were busy times for Badger. Dropped hot dogs, unattended pieces of cake, and ice cream-covered faces. He tasted them all.

One time he dashed off the beach and into the famous (and very expensive) Maui restaurant Mama’s Fish House and snagged some food item before being escorted outside by a waiter.

Another time he veered off our North Shore run to interrupt an Asian Thanksgiving ceremony by leaping onto the table and gobbling some turkey and mashed potatoes while the congregation’s heads were bowed for the blessing!

But the main way food got Badger into trouble were the times when he had to share. He wasn’t a good sharer.

Food Stress: Notable Fights

When Badger was full grown he stood two feet, two inches tall—17 pounds of quivering fast-twitch muscle under two pounds of wire-hair. The hair grew over his eyes, and his beard stuck out in all directions. He was so wooly he might have been mistaken for a miniature sheep or a sentient mop.

He was not very scary. In fact, he was adorable. People always treated him like a puppy even when he was old. “Oh look at the little puppy.” But that’s probably one reason he got away with so much.

There are too many dog fights to recount them all, but three stand out. Aila the German shepherd, the crag Akita, and Chunk the pit bull.

Most of the fights started like this:

1) Food is introduced at the crag. Someone chums the air with the maddening scent of Kirkland Signature oven-roasted turkey breast, for example.

2) Escalation. Showing of canines. Quiet, low growls.

3) Bedlam.

Food Stress: Chunk

Badger fought Chunk in the winter of 2018 at Manawainui on the east side of Maui, a big cave with plenty of shade and clinging yellow dust (aerated goat shit). Badger took full advantage of the cool dust, rolling in it until his white fur blushed the color of a tequila sunrise.

Chunk, a large pit bull with a head like a Yeti cooler and balls the size of Jamaican lilikoi, passed the time by gazing adoringly at Mariah, his human treat dispenser, and exercising his massive jaw muscles by chewing on a tennis ball.

Mariah was generous with the treats, and it wasn’t long before she had a new best friend—a fuzzy, bearded, tail-wagging mop-of-a-dog that didn’t leave her side because every time she gave Chunk a treat, she’d be sure to hook up Badgie, too.

By the end of the day, I noticed that Badger was lying on Mariah’s feet—which is dog language for “This one is mine.”

Chunk walked by, noticed Badger, and put his ears back. I saw Badger’s hackles rise—just a twitch.

Badger was 12 years old at the time, and we’d been through this before. When I saw his canines—yellow and radically filed down from 12 years of chewing rocks—I knew that Badge was edging into the red zone where terrier and wolf collide like plutonium and uranium. I moved quick, but before I could collar him Mariah brought out the treats.

At that time, Badger was 6 and 0 in dog fights. He’d won them all because of his height advantage. His strategy was to trust in his matted fur, lunge upwards, clamp down on the throat, and don’t fucking let go. This method worked well for the little dog because, for unclear reasons, he chose only much bigger dogs to attack.

Despite the ferocity of some of the fights, Badge had never been hurt, and he’d never broken the skin on his opponents’ throats—just choked them out until I could kick him off. In other words, things never got too serious, I guess, until Chunk.

Mariah brought out the treat bag, and then, with the abruptness of all dog fights, there came a whirlwind of lunging, snapping jaws, and spit-slinging barks.

Climbers gathered round to watch the melee. Badger and Chunk crashed together again and again until Chunk, in a lucky bite, got Badger by the ear and lunged, jaws snapping, trying for the death crunch. Badger fought away, and Chunk was left holding, again, what was now a rather bloody and tattered right ear.

We tried everything to get the dogs apart. We picked up Chunk’s back legs and drug him (and Badger) around the gravel lot, poured beer over Chunk’s nose, and pleaded with him. In a heroic moment, my climbing partner G$ stuck his finger up Chunk’s ass. All to no avail. Chunk was locked down on that ear.

When we saw that G$’s trick didn’t work, we all kind of gave up. Nobody was going to beat that. So we watched the dogs fight for minutes. Soon enough they were exhausted. They’d growl, erupt into violence, and then rest, panting heavily. Chunk never let go of the ear.

Finally, during one extended bout, Badger fought free. I grabbed him, rushed him to my truck, and looked him over. The only damage was a missing piece of his right ear. (It never grew back.)

I turned to the crew to report the good news, and Badge saw an opening. He leapt past me and charged Chunk again.

Lunging, snapping, devil eyes. This time Chunk got Badger by the throat. Both dogs were tired, but every so often, Chunk would go for the death bite. Minutes passed until Badger finally fought free. This time, under the dome light, I saw there was a well-deserved puncture in his throat.

I don’t know if Badger learned his lesson that day, but it was his last fight. His senescence was marked by a new peacefulness, a time in which Jack Russell terriers could coexist with all things—and even share.

Two: Unkillable

One morning, back in 2009, when Badger was three, he decided for some reason to follow my truck to work (see Walkabouts). At that time I was editing Rock and Ice in Carbondale, Colorado, about five snow-drifted, icy miles away.

Following close behind my truck, Badger charged onto the highway, tiny legs scrambling, claws gripping the ice—and slid into the path of an oncoming 18-wheeler barreling up to McClure Pass. The truck braked, skidded, and then Badger “bounced off the tire and was flung way into the woods,” according to the water-softener repairman who saw the whole thing but was unable to locate the dog.

Badger should’ve been dead, but later that morning he wandered up the driveway, bell rung, walking sideways.

A panicked trip to the vet revealed a chipped right hip bone, but his insides were all good. He pulled hard on the leash when we left the vet clinic, explaining in that telepathic communication crag dogs have with their climbers that he needed to meet that big animal—a nearby horse—possibly bark at it and definitely chase it around the field. I knew then that Badge would shake it off, and he did.

Unkillable: Bombs Over Badger

One of the best examples of Badger’s impressive ability to survive is the close call at the Low-Hanging Fruit near Marble, Colorado, in 2010, when he was four years old.

It was our first day at the crag, and I told Badger to stay and guard our stuff while I soloed the 300-foot, low-angled, pine-needle-strewn, butt-smooth limestone slab to the right of the wall and got a rope over the good stuff. He agreed, settled onto my belay jacket, and started gnawing a piece of deer hide he’d torn off the carcass I’d smelled on the approach.

About 200 feet up the slab, I decided that it was just too sketchy and that I didn’t have the zeal that day to risk the big bite for this crag at 8,000 feet out in the boonies that nobody would ever climb at anyway. Melting into the warm arms of good judgment, I started frictioning down, trying to stay cool and minding the needles.

I noticed movement toward the bottom of the slab. A white dot floating upwards. It was Badger. He’d spotted me and was climbing up.

“No!” I yelled. “No! Go! Bad dog!”

Badger paused and looked down. The height spooked him, and he beelined up the slab, going for the summit and there was no turning him around—no matter how loud I yelled, cussed, or threatened.

I’d see that laser-focused, imperturbable face again and again, like the time he chased the rich guy’s cat under the million-dollar beachside deck in Spreckelsville. The crawl space under the deck was maybe six inches, but Badger crammed himself into the slot and, with the one-pointed, manic energy seen only in terriers, commando-crawled for 100 feet until he disappeared from sight. Time passed. The millionaire asked, “Is my cat gonna be OK?” and I couldn’t truthfully answer yes, because Badger, who was 14 at the time, had killed eight species of mammals. We waited, the businessman in his business suit sweating like a buttonhole sewer in Qiaotou. Then we heard a scraping noise. Panting. Scraping. More panting. A little more scraping.

The face I saw when I shined my phone flashlight under that deck—wide eyes, ragged panting, pink tongue hanging sideways out of his mouth, muddy beard wet as a cotton swab dunked in soap suds—was the same face I saw as Badger trucked past me up the slab. He padded steadily up and up, to the top of the cliff, and dwindled into the ponderosa pines.

So I had to risk it all, after all, by climbing the slab, finding him in the woods, stuffing him in my pack, and rappelling over the line that became Bombs Over Badger (5.13b).

Later that day I cut loose a ton of rock that detonated all over the slope below me. Oops.

Where was Badger? 

He was, of course, miraculously unscathed. It was then that I began to think he might actually be unkillable.

Unkillable: Stunt Dog

My suspicions were confirmed the time Badger and I, in 2012, climbed a random steep gully (it now has fixed hand lines) to an obscure but beautiful slab of granite near Carbondale.

The gully was horrendous—a shifting slope of granite pieces, from shards to jumbo blocks, stacked at an angle that was maybe a degree or two below the angle of repose. The rock chute where the gully necked down was particularly hairy.

Badge scampered over the loose talus like a water bug skating across the skin of a lake. He ran ahead and scouted, returned, and told me that the rock looked “splitter.” I redoubled my efforts, swimming up the chips.

Finally I made it to the base of the wall, where a massive granite obelisk, maybe 20 feet tall and 15 feet wide, leaned against the opposite wall of the hanging canyon. I scrambled onto the block and marveled at the 60-meter face across from me—flawless, smooth granite that would one day be The Waterboard (5.13c).

A few moments passed before a nagging question interrupted my reverie. Is this ginormous block that I’m standing on … solid?

It had to be, right? It probably weighed 40 or 50 tons. I stamped my foot, and it seemed trusty. I stamped a little harder, to no effect. Just to be sure, I bent my legs and jumped. As soon as my feet contacted the boulder it commenced barreling down the steep gully like a rocket.

What unfolded was a movie stunt you’ve seen before, the one where the burning gasoline truck is skidding away from the camera in slow-mo, black smoke billowing, shooting a rain of debris, emitting a noise like an oil drum full of marbles rolling down a flight of stairs.

I fell off the back of the block and slid down the scree on my butt, screaming, “Badger! Badger! Badger!” because he was below the boulder, heading for the chute where the loose crud dropped away and turned to 4th-class rock; any life below that boulder would be, for sure, scrubbed out.

“Badger! Badger! Badger!”

The rock dropped into the chute and, I swear to God, out of the tire-fire-black dust cloud appeared a little white dog. He banked off the left wall of the chute, pushed hard with his scrawny hind legs, and jumped the 20-foot block as it dropped into the slot.

Badge was unscathed. Not a scratch.

Three: Walkabouts

For the most part, Badger stayed where you put him. Sure, he’d conduct a thorough investigation of the immediate environs, sniffing every-damn-inch of the area near the packs and pissing across any unusual scent. (He once pissed on a baby in a bouncy chair and marked a Russian influencer’s magazine while she was reading it at Baldwin Cove.) But once every open bag was searched for errant sandwiches and every animal rooted out of its hole, Badger would lay down near my stuff and chill.

Rarely, however, he’d get a wild hair (or smell) and wind up miles away. In 2013, for example, he was picked up by the “dog cops” (animal control) and went to “dog jail” (the Aspen pound). They’d found him in Pitkin County, galloping up Highway 133 toward Redstone.

His longest walkabout occurred in 2021, when Badger was 105. At that time he was stone deaf and almost blind. His coat was long and dreaded and often full of burs. He had bad breath and his right hip, the one that bounced off the semi, ached when the weather changed. His canines were totally filed down, and he derived no more pleasure from his favorite vice: chewing rocks. His sight was worse and at times he veered off trail and bumped into trees or ate it down this or that hill and/or short cliff. But his nose worked perfectly and his old body was strong. The year before, at 98, he’d summited a 2,000-foot volcanic pu’u. At 105, he was still emancipated—off the leash—and cragging hard.

Walkabouts: Unsupported Journey

The crag that day in 2021 was called The Carnation, a lovely sweep of smooth, hard columnar basalt up the Wash Gulch in East Maui that sports one awesome route, Goldfish (5.12c), and a good route, Ulua (12d).

These routes are accessed by a steep down climb and a short rappel. Badger knew this and at 105, he’d made it abundantly clear (with unremitting whining) that he had zero interest in being shoved in a pack and transported.

I laid out my jacket, picked up the shaggy, old, blind dog, and settled him on it. He couldn’t hear me, but our telepathy had developed over 15 years to the point that we conversed fluently. I told him to “Chill out, like always, and I’ll be back at dark-thirty, like always.”

“Shoots boss,” he said, which is Hawaiian Pidgin for “OK.”

Imagine my surprise when I arrived back at dark-fifteen and found no little dog.

Where could he have gone? I looked over the cliff’s edge and scanned the ledges for signs of an unkillable white dog. Nada.

Wild goats scampered up the endless ridge.

Damn it. He’s gone after the goats. 

But somehow I knew he hadn’t. He wasn’t really into chasing goats anymore. Two kills were enough for a lifetime apparently.

Where did that old dog want to go?

Home.

He was heading home—35 miles away. Somehow I knew it. A voicemail confirmed it: A nice lady had picked up a thirsty and footsore Badger in Ulupalakua, 20.4 miles away, making this trek the longest unsupported paw-powered journey of all time by a deaf and near-blind, two-foot-tall, 15-year-old crag dog. Just another notable accomplishment.

119th Birthday Party

Badger turned 119 on the summer solstice, June 21, 2023. All he wanted to do for his birthday was sleep, but we woke him up, shoved him in a pack, and brought him to the crag. On the way he got to lay down in the cool water of the Ukumehame stream, nose through some empty wrappers that had once contained food, and be showered with love and treats by his climber friends.

One week later, on June 27, Badger couldn’t get up to lick the chili bowl.

We gave him a bath, trimmed his beard, and untangled his dreads. Groomed him until his white coat shone. Clipped the hair away from his cloudy brown eyes. And then we drove him to the vet.

He couldn’t lift his head anymore but he was calm and peaceful while I held him, and after the injection, he slipped away easily in my lap.

The vet left me with him, just asked me to lay his little body on the table. I held Badger for a long time, thinking about the 17 years of adventures. He’d been with me through all the good times and stood beside me through all the bad. He really had been my best friend and surely one of the most notable crag dogs to pass away in June of 2023.

After quite a few tears, I laid him on the table and started out the door, but something made me glance back. The sun was shining on Badger’s body. His fur was so clean and glossy. He looked so handsome with his trimmed beard. Was he really gone?

It didn’t seem right to leave him there on the cold metal table because … what if? He’d defied death so many times.

Months later, I’m still listening for the scratch at the sliding glass door, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see him standing there, wild beard and dirty dreads, footsore, a little worse for the wear, perhaps, but back from another unsupported journey.

To read more from Ascent, visit our table of contents here.

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