planetclimbing.org - entries tagged with section:frontpage

James Pearson - The Little Devil...

2010-07-23T08:07:55Z

1 hour on the metro and bus / 2 hours in Berlin airport / 1 ½ hours to Frankfurt / 1 ½ hours in the airport / 11 hours to Singapore / 1 hour in the airport / 10 hours to Sydney / 1 ½ hours in the airport / 1 ½ hours to Melbourne / 6 hours in the airport / 1 ½ hours to Hobart.

Aided by my lack of sleep over the last 72 the travelling time itself was not such a big problem and I slept for a lot of hours on the various planes. However the entire journey was probably the worst I have ever had due to my blocked sinuses from my illness the week before. Every time the plane took off and gained altitude it felt like my head was going to explode! Each time this feeling lasted for around 2 hours, and really was agony, so much so that I was almost sick from the pain.

Every flight was the same, but each flight I took was one closer to being there, and finally I arrived in Hobart, met my friends and drove to our accommodation - a small cabin down near a beach on the south of the island.

The next week was to be a non-stop whirlwind of epic proportions involving monstrous hikes, monstrous cliffs and monstrous monsters... but unfortunately I can’t share too much of it with you at this time due to exclusivity commitments with Sender Films – but rest assured, all will be available in glorious Technicolor detail later this year... Check it out

What I can share is as follows...

After escaping from the Jungle, stumbling into a fine dining restaurant stinking to the high heavens and covered in dirt, taking a few rest days, partying to surprisingly good drum and bass and enjoying the company of new friends, everyone felt like the time had come for a little more climbing... and what better way to end our trip than with a quick ascent of the Tote!

Situated at the end of Cape Hauy, the Tote is accessed by a pleasant 2 hour stroll (a walk in the park compared to the last few days) through lush vegetation along an ever thinning peninsular. Towards the end the trail turns rockier and steep cliffs develop on either side leading to the crashing waves hundreds of feet below. Eventually you get to see what you have been waiting so long for... and it does not disappoint – The Totem pole is simply majestic, and if truth be told, a little intimidating!

We had begged, borrowed and stolen all the info we needed to be able to access the route – essentially an awkward scramble down took you to a ledge level with the top of the pole, where 2 shiny bolts made the ab to the base and the following swing across the chasm a very pleasant experience – that is until the first big wave rolls in leaving you soaked to the skin! The last thing to remember is for the second not to detach from the ab-line, for reasons that will soon become clear...

The first pitch in its own right would rank as a 3* route anywhere in the world, even if you do have to climb the first part of it over wet rock with soggy chalk. The rock quality is excellent and strange, often in cut ripples and flakes are a joy to climb. The crux comes at around 2/3 height and is a surprisingly balancey affair that keeps you on your toes. This leads into pleasant jugs to the prominent belay ledge and the first chance you really get to appreciate where you are and what you are doing.

The second pitch is simply superb and in my opinion is possibly the best route I have ever climbed – I can’t remember another pitch that made me smile this much. For almost 40m you climb one of the most striking, perfectly situated arêtes on the planet; the rock quality is amazing, the holds impeccable and the moves fascinating. Protected for most of the way by slightly spaced bolts which can be supplemented by trad gear as you approach the top, the route feels go-ey enough to be really enjoyable, but never dangerous.

On arriving at the ledge just below the summit, you are greeted by a further 2 shiny bolts making belaying a breeze. After bringing up the second and quick cruise up to the summit to pose for the necessary hero shots (well it would be almost rude to come all this way and not stand on top of the damn thing) the final exciting chapter is ready to begin. Fixing the ab-line you have patiently dragged up the whole way, an exciting 20m Tyrolean lands you back on the mainland with huge grins still firmly plastered to your face.

A day later I was stood in Hobart airport waiting for my plane back to the mainland and contemplating the events of the last week. Tasmania had been an incredible experience that had tested me in new ways and taught me many new skills. The main objective of the trip had been a great success, we did what we came to do, and got out alive – but the thing that had made the entire trip worth it, was those few hours of bliss climbing the Totem Pole. What a route!!!

Online Climbing Coach - Basic technique - saving energy on trad

2010-07-20T22:46:26Z

I’ve not posted on basic technique for a while, so here is something that my own summer of trad has been reminding me of recently. In trad climbing, the actual climbing bout is not just a little bit longer than sport or bouldering, it’s WAY longer. 20, 30 60 minutes instead of seconds up to a few minutes on many sport climbs.

The implications of this are very important. Most of us train for trad on short steep sport routes in climbing walls - this is fine - we need the endurance for the crux sprints even during long routes. But the movement is very different on trad.

The amount of time searching for handholds, footholds or gear, or resting takes up the vast majority of the total climbing time. Actually making moves is quite fleeting between long periods on the same holds. If you’ve ever edited a piece of video of a climber doing a long trad route you’ll readily appreciate this!

Let’s go through the pictures (BTW these are from our Triple 5 trip to St Kilda - nice route eh?):

A rare moment of actually making a move. Note bent arms, trunk close to the wall and shoulders pulled back in tension. On a climbing wall route, you move almost continously by comparison and your body tends to adopt this sort of position a lot - like maybe 60% plus of the time.

So what? You get into the habit of staying in this position. If you can’t find the hold or need to clip gear, you just freeze in this position and sort it out before continuing seconds later. Because the climbing bout is short, it doesn’t matter too much. In fact, the moves are probably hard enough that it’s actually more efficient not to set up a full resting position, just to go back to ‘progress’ mode a few seconds later. Next photo >>

In trad, not only will you have to make these stops between moves many times more than on a short climbing wall route, but they might be of much longer duration. So the climbing style has to change. You can always tell a very experienced trad climber when the adopt the position in the picture 2 almost immediately when they have to stop on a pitch. The hips are in, back arched and leaning back on straight arms. The maximum amount of weight is on the feet, but you can lean back a bit to scan the rock ahead more effectively. Next picture >>

The other common position in trad is when searching for footholds. In this case, the shoulders are in, drooping from straight arms and the bum is out to give a clear view of the footholds.

If you haven’t been tradding for a while, you often have to remind yourself to take these resting positions immediately by conscious reminder and accentuating them, so you fall back into the habit. If you haven’t developed the technique at all, long steep trad pitches will feel a lot harder than they should. But even a delay of a few seconds in assuming these positions will really add up as you might use them 100s of times in a single long pitch.

Dave MacLeod Climbing - Sron Uladail 1, Dave nil

2010-07-20T21:31:00Z

I’ve just done my first climbing session in 8 days after a week long trip to Sron Ulladale. The session was back home on my board! There’s nothing worse than moany blogs and I do try not to post too often about the many many failures I have trying to make Scottish new routes come into existence. But as Claire and I agreed the other day (day 4 of sitting in the car watching the horizontal rain), people often don’t know what goes into opening new hard trad routes in the mountains.

I’ve been to the outer Hebrides nearly every year for a decade, on most of those trips, climbing in the mountains of Harris, namely Sron Uladail, has been ‘plan A’. On all but one trip, plan A has lasted less than 10 minutes off the Harris ferry and we left the Harris mountains to their lashing by wind and rain and headed for the relative shelter of the Lewis sea cliffs. Although serendipitous, I’ve found many of my favourite places to climb there and the sea cliffs never felt like a plan B once I was there.

This time it was the Sron or nothing - I had a job to do. The brief: find a good, preferably hard and unclimbed route on Sron Uladail that myself and Tim Emmett can climb in under 6 hours on live television and get it cleaned. Easier said than done.

Having studied my crag shots, I did the big load carry from Ahmunsuidhe and abseiled over the big drop armed with a 600 foot rope, brush and a lot of hardware, just before the rain started. My first choice line was seeping copious drools of water from the back of the roof and was out of the question from the word go. Hmmm, what now? I hauled up the line, fed it all back into the bag, moved 30m left and repeat. Option 2 had no protection and being 35 degrees overhanging for a couple of pitches would be nearly impossible to clean and inspect. By day 3 I was at option 5 and still at square 1.

The live TV issue kind of dictates having at least a fighting chance of getting to the top on the chosen route. For me, anything harder than about E9/10 always involves a remote chance of success for any given attempt. Sure, the ultimate chances of success across many days and weeks of attempts rise to something sporting, but on this occasion we have 1 day, 6 hours to make it happen. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if the crag wasn’t so overhanging or so ravaged by the elements. I could absorb more of the potential problems through preparation.

I was determined not to leave Harris no further forward, so after two days of torrential rain and wind I jogged in as fast as I could in a brief lull in the storm to check out another potential line, some grossly overhanging blank grooves left of the Scoop. As soon as I’d dropped the ropes and headed off down over the first overhangs I found to my dismay that the brief lull was just as the storm readjusted to a westerly, blowing straight across the crag. Pretty soon I was having a right gripper. The tail ends of 3 or 400 feet of my two static ropes that had been hanging below me were now blowing in great arcs horizontally in space despite being sodden from the rain and very heavy. As the wind rose and rose I realised it could get dangerous to be on the wall quite rapidly switched to ‘escape’ mode. Plan A was to continue back-aiding down through the roofs until I could be sure the ropes would reach the slopes far below and then bail to the cliff base. But it became obvious that even with my weight on them in a free abseil the ropes and me would be blown out away from the slope and If I attempted to go down the rope I’d probably suffer a very spinny-dizzy death being tossed around on the rope ends. So I went back up.

I was terrified the wind would get so strong that things would start to get out of hand - being thrown around on ropes running across crystal sharp rock edges. Every time I released a piece of gear I was thrown sideways into space by the wind, with the sickening sound of ropes scraping along overlaps above. I learned to jumar up rope a lot faster! As the pro-golfers over at St-Andrews bailed back to the clubhouse for a beer due to the high winds, I flopped over onto ledges in a waterfall and hauled up the sodden ropes, cursing the Scottish weather as I staggered off along the ridge to Ullaval into the gale.

The rest of the week alternated between long hours in the car watching the rain, or long hours of the above dangling in it. The upshot was that I have still to settle on an ideal line to attempt. Here’s to the next trip going a little better!

In the meantime, I’ll be trying to gain back the fitness lost on my ‘climbing’ trip...

The lovely outlook from the Sron on the good day - It’s amazing how transformed the Hebrides are in nice weather. More so than other parts of Scotland I think.

An ancient wire battered in by aid climbers 40 odd years ago. I removed this relic (it practically turned to dust in my hands). There wasn’t really a placement for in the seam - I think that fear, a strong arm and a good hammer had a lot to do with it!

4 days of the same view

I thought I was being paranoid about the sharp overlaps of sheared quartz and gneiss until the slightest glance of my hand along one gave me a 4cm gash.

climbing.com - Hot Flashes - 2010 Arco RockMaster Champions and Legends Winners

2010-07-19T19:54:00Z

7/19/10 - This weekend saw competition greats gathering in Arco, Italy, for the RockMaster 2010, one of the most prestigious competitions in the climbing world.

climbing.com - Hot Flashes - U.S. Youth Teams Selected from SCS Nationals

2010-07-16T18:29:00Z

7/16/10 - The newly-opened Stone Summit in Atlanta, Georgia, the largest climbing gym in the nation, inaugurated its second month with the 2010 SCS Youth National Championships, drawing more than 300 of the nation’s most talented young climbers.

climbing.com - Hot Flashes - Lead and Speed World Cup Wrap-up from Chamonix

2010-07-13T21:43:00Z

7/13/10 - The International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) Lead and Speed World Cups wrapped up today in Chamonix, France, with Spain's Ramón Julian Puigblanque and French climber Charlotte Durif finishing first in the men's and women's lead comp.

climbing.com - Hot Flashes - Free Rider Sees First Female-Team Free Ascent

2010-07-09T20:05:00Z

7/9/10 - Recently, Madaleine Sorkin and Kate Rutherford completed the first female-team free ascent of Free Rider (VI 5.12d, 37 pitches), a four-pitch variation to the Salathé Wall that is the most popular free line on the main face of El Cap.

climbing.com - Hot Flashes - 5.14b FA by Jacinda Hunter

2010-07-09T19:56:00Z

7/9/10 - A little over a week ago, Jacinda Hunter, 31, nabbed the FA of her project Fantasy Island, a 5.14b in Utah’s American Fork Canyon.

climbing.com - Hot Flashes - Big New Mixed Route on Mount Foraker

2010-07-09T19:15:00Z

7/9/10 - In mid-June, Colin Haley and Bjørn-Eivind Årtun teamed up and established a new mixed route on the Southeast Face of Mount Foraker in Alaska.

climbing.com - Hot Flashes - Honnold's Triple Link-up on El Cap

2010-07-06T18:45:00Z

News link: Alex Honnold, most recently in the media for his speedy solo link-up of the Regular Northwest Face and the Nose, returned to El Cap with Sean Leary to do a triple link-up of the Nose, Salathé Wall, and Lurking Fear in a single day.

climbing.com - Hot Flashes - Graftiaux Back on Top in World Cup Rankings

2010-07-06T16:55:00Z

7/6/10 - The second-to-last Bouldering World Cup of 2010 transpired this past weekend in Sheffield, England, where a crowd of more than 20,000 amassed to watch the world's highest-ranked climbers battle it out.