This just in: Geologists are warning that, unless current habits change, the world is in danger of running out of rocks in a remarkably short time. "Think about it," scientist Henry Kaiser told the Onion newspaper. "When was the last time you even saw a boulder?" Click here to read more about this alarming hypotheses.
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Tuesday Morning Time Waster
A beautiful, inspirational look at one of the greats, Japan's Yuji Hirayama, climbing in Turkey. From the Camp 4 Collective, a new collaboration of the creative dream team of Jimmy Chin, Tim Kemple, and Renan Ozturk. Should be some great stuff coming out of these lenses and laptops in the coming months.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Oh, Zermatt, Where Did You Go So Wrong?
Zermatt, Switzerland, one of the birthplaces of Alpinism, promotes...well, who knows what it's promoting with this advertisement, spotted at the Furi lift station in April.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Inspiration and Sobering Reality
I've just returned from a couple of weeks of skiing in the French and Swiss Alps, where we stuck to well-traveled tracks and merely ogled the improbable traces of bold skiers arcing down seemingly every plunging gully and cliffy face. The stuff that gets skied routinely in these mountains is mind-blowing. And so it was fun to discover Colin Haley's helmet-cam video of a "typical" day of skiing this month off the Aiguille du Midi above Chamonix—this is a great window on the kind of skiing I'll never do. Thrilling stuff!
But as I read deeper in Colin's long debrief of recent weeks in Chamonix on his Skagit Alpinism blog, I learned there was another, darker side to his story. In less than one week, Colin watched his skiing partners suffer two serious accidents during big descents (the two skiers who fell both lived, somewhat miraculously, though one was severely injured) and he himself narrowly escaped being pulled off a mountain by an avalanche. Colin's account is analytical, sobering, and highly worth reading. Don't miss it.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Russian Avalanche (Out of) Control
Think you'd be safe on a chairlift if a big avalanche swept underneath? Skip to about 0:25 to jump-start the action and find out.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
"Unclimbed": Seven Years Later
I've just been editing a story for the American Alpine Journal about the first ascent of the north face of Chang Himal in Nepal, by British climber Andy Houseman. Andy said his climb, with fellow Brit Nick Bullock, was inspired in part by an article called "Unclimbed," published in 2003 in Alpinist 4, in which various writers identified nine great unfulfilled challenges in the alpine world. Which, in turn, inspired me to dig up the article and see how climbers have done over the last six and a half years.
Not bad, as it turns out, not bad at all. But these lines have proved to be worthy challenges. Here are the nine routes and their status:
Annapurna III, Nepal, southeast ridge. Not yet, but the peak has seen some action: The southwest ridge was climbed in 2003 by Kenton Cool, Ian Parnell, and John Varco. And Britons Jon Bracey, Nick Bullock, and Matt Helliker are headed to Nepal this spring to attempt the stunning southeast ridge. [Photo courtesy of Annapurna3expedition.blogspot.com.]
South Tower of Paine, Chile, south face. Not yet, but big-wall soloist Dave Turner spent months in the Paine in early 2009, hoping to attempt the face, before an injury forced him to focus on smaller objectives.
Shingu Charpa, Pakistan, north ridge. Climbed. Twice, more or less. Or not at all. Depends on how you look at it. In 2006, a Ukrainian trio claimed to have climbed the route, but it later turned out they had turned back perhaps 100 meters below the top of the peak. A month later, Kelly Cordes and Josh Wharton climbed most of the route, but also retreated near the top because they didn't have the right gear for the summit icefields. In 2007, a Russian team climbed the east face and continued up the final section of the north ridge to the summit. [Photo by Clint Estes.]
Namcha Barwa, Tibet, west face. Nope. The 7,782-meter peak has been climbed only once, in 1992, from the south. The 3,300-meter west face has never been attempted.
Janak, Nepal, southwest pillar. Climbed! Slovenians Andrej Stremfelj and Rok Zalokar pulled off a stylish alpine-style ascent in 2006.
Chang Himal, Nepal, north face. Climbed! Those Brits, Nick Bullock and Andy Houseman, polished off the route, alpine style, in a five-day round trip from the base of the wall.
Mt. Tyree, Antarctica, southeast face. Not yet. Antartica's biggest and steepest alpine wall remains untouched.
Latok I, Pakistan, north face. Not yet. Several teams have attempted the line but diverted to the north ridge, also unclimbed.
Torre Traverse, Patagonia. Climbed! Rolando Garibotti and Colin Haley linked Cerro Standhardt, Torre Egger,and Cerro Torre in January 2008.
So, more than half of these routes remain unclimbed. But it would be a mistake for either climbers or the media to focus attention exclusively on these lines. As the Alpinist compilation's editor, Sean Easton, wrote in his introduction, these climbs "represent only a minute sampling of what remains to be found."
Indeed, one of the great thrills of working on the American Alpine Journal is seeing photo after photo of great unclimbed walls around the world (and those other mountains, barely in view over the shoulder of that peak in the foreground...what are they?). The world still holds enough great alpine challenges for generations of ambitious climbers to come. Time for a new article?
Friday, March 26, 2010
Kite Skiing on Patagonia Ice Cap
Don't miss Dave Turner's wild stories and photos of kite skiing on the Patagonia Ice Cap. Absolutely crazy! Click on the link in the Black Diamond Journal sidebar to the right.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Best Climbing Trailer Ever Made
The movie is Core, by Chuck Fryberger. The world premiere is April 7 at the Boulder Theater.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Marko Prezelj Slide Show: Repost
Sorry for the technical difficulties with the Marko Prezelj slide show (below). I was climbing at Shelf Road (T-shirts, sunburn, sharp rock...the usual excellence), so it took me a couple of days to fix the problem. I believe I've got it sussed; if not, I'm sure you'll let me know!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Marko Prezelj: Images of Norway
Marko Prezelj, the fantastically accomplished Slovenian alpinist, is also a gifted photographer. In the four years that I've been working on the American Alpine Journal, he's already had one photo on the cover and is likely to have another this year. Recently, he sent me some beautiful photos from a trip to Norway for an international ice climbing meet in Fjellkysten. "I was climbing there with Luka Lindic, and we were exploring the area and climbed several interesting lines," Marko said. "The images are my diary. Climbing was my main interest, and I didn't really focus on photography."
Maybe he wasn't focused on shooting, but Marko came away with some striking images of Norway, reinforcing my strong desire to visit there someday. Indeed, he told me, "It is such a unique place that you should not think twice." With Marko's permission, I offer a selection of his unique images:
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Rock Climbing In Your Living Room
I quote: "HardGrip takes players on a tour of exotic and stunning locales around the globe as they compete in open events or invitation-only official races. With no harnesses or lifelines, players must solve seemingly impossible challenges and conquer their fear to make it to the top. Speed counts, but climbers who prove their ingenuity and daring will earn more respect. As climbers progress, their skills will have to become truly awesome to make the grade."
Become truly awesome in the comfort of my own home? Sign me up!
Friday, March 05, 2010
Inspiration
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
In Season
Fundamentally, The Season promises to deliver compelling stories—the element that's missing in most action-sports films. After episode one's stage-setting introduction, each new episode will unfold the story of a single character; they'll generally alternate in sequence, following five separate narratives. Episodes two and three convinced me that these stories will be worth following; the people are likable, and I'm curious about what's coming next for them. Cahall has honed his skills as a narrator through nearly three dozen episodes of the Dirtbag Diaries, but here he holds back a bit, allowing the individual athletes and the footage to carry the story.
That footage, all in HD, is spectacular. There's a crazy early shot in the second episode of sea kayaker Paul Kuthe playing—and rolling—in a whirlpool. And the overhead tracking shots are amazing. The Cable Cam system, developed by Bryan Smith and climber Matt Maddaloni (one of the athletes featured in The Season), mounts a remote-controllable camera to a pair of steel cables that they ran up to 750 feet over gorges and through dense forests. It's as if the shots were filmed from a miniature helicopter flying along a few feet from the action.
My one concern about The Season is the short clips and the schedule. I'm a long-format, New Yorker–story man; I like long movies (assuming they're good). These clips run 6 to 7 minutes, but over a minute of that time is eaten up by intro, sponsor plugs, and credits. That leaves 5 to 6 minutes of storytelling. I felt the clips were coming to an end just as I was really getting into them. Cahall told me, "I wish they were longer too, [but] that four- to six-minute mark is the magic number, just long enough to convey a story or plot but not too long that someone is going to get bored or feel guilty about watching it at work.
"It's also a reality of where the industry is at," Cahall added. "It's incredible what we can do, but we still bump into size constraints. Even with the massive advances in the tech specs, you can't overload someone's computer or connection speed."
I also wonder if this schedule (a two-week rotation of Monday, Friday, and Wednesday releases on the Arc'teryx site, followed a couple of days later by Outside and iTunes) is going to feel satisfying over the long haul. If I get hooked on one of the characters, I'll have to wait three weeks to catch the next episode featuring that person. That seems too long.
But we'll see. Right now, the content seems so good and the approach so fresh that this series seems likely to be a hit. Cahall said the early response has been "overwhelming...bigger than we had imagined." In a way, it makes me a bit sad: I've always been a words on paper guy, morphing into words on computer screens over the last few years. But it's still almost all words. New multimedia concepts like The Season, delivered right to your desktop, make me wonder if words alone are still sufficient. But so it goes. Times change. For everything there is a season.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Nordwand: The Eiger Movie
First, the climbing. In the mid-1930s, German and Austrian alpinists were probably the best in the world, and I was fascinated by the equipment, clothing, and techniques, which, to the best of my knowledge, the film depicted quite accurately. The gear and methods seem astonishingly primitive compared with our high-tech tools and bombproof-anchor-at-all-times mentality. Yet these climbers could pull from their full bag of tricks pendulums, reasonably sound belays (when they chose to use them), and free-hanging rappels. The climbing footage is convincing, and the weather and avalanche scenes are harrowing. The bivouacs look truly miserable.
For me, the storytelling worked well until the last 30 minutes. Just as the drama reached its peak, some niggling aspects of the film started to become outright annoying: a couple of overdrawn characters, an intrusive love interest, and an excess of melodrama in scenes that were plenty dramatic on their own. When Toni Kurz's on-again-off-again girlfriend ventures onto the face and climbs to within a few feet of him as he nears death, I thought, "If she can get up there, why can't the Swiss guides join her and throw him a rope?" And then came a truly awful line that I hope was just a flub of the subtitles translator. I won't give it away, but a third of the audience broke into laughter during a scene that should have been evoking anguish and tears.
To their credit, the filmmakers didn't give this tragedy a Hollywood ending. I walked out of Nordwand drained, and though I could annoy my wife with my typical post-film analysis of the movie's faults, its rich evocation of 1930s mountaineering will stay with me much longer than its foibles. Click here for U.S. screening info.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Real-Time
On January 15, Renan Ozturk and Cory Richards topped out on Tawoche, a 6,500-meter peak in Nepal, after completing a difficult 1,200-meter new route. They had to battle dehydration—no water for 36 hours—and dangerously loose rock to finish the route. It was a major effort. But here's what was really amazing: On January 20, four days after they descended safely to base camp, the two guys posted a creative, heartfelt, beautifully shot video about their climb. One day later, they posted a follow-up covering the final climb to the summit and the descent, thus breaking the news of their own success.
TAWOCHE 2k10 dispatches #4 from renan ozturk on Vimeo.
I think this could be a game-changer for expedition climbing films. In their immediacy and authenticity, these short clips blow many slickly produced expedition films out of the water—I find them infinitely more inspiring than TV-style documentaries. Ironically, the climbers are sponsored in part by the North Face, which led the way in big-media big-walling during the first Internet boom in the late 1990s. I mean absolutely no disrespect to the climbers on those projects in Baffin Island and Pakistan, among other places, but when your game plan includes a multi-person camera crew, it inevitably dictates the terms of the climb, including endless fixed ropes, portaledges, days of hauling and repositioning, and releading pitches. It dictates the choice of route itself.
Ozturk and Richards chose a chossy, dangerous, unclimbed alpine route at high altitude. They had no idea if they would succeed; in fact, the odds were very much against success. They climbed alone and shot their own footage, each carrying a single digital camera; they had a helmet-cam rig and a few extra batteries. They edited these clips in their tents at base camp and uploaded them by satellite modem (except for two clips for which they had to race down to Namche Bazaar after their sat link died). "It is arguable which was harder and took more time: the climb or the dispatches," Richards said.
In the intro to their summit-day clip, on the Vertical Carnival blog, one of them wrote: "As [we] are artists, we are locked in a constant struggle between what we want to capture and the energy our bodies can afford to give. It’s an instinct to reach for the camera, but one that nearly always falls second to the tasks at hand. Often times, I criticize myself for not shooting more…for not nailing the perfect image…but then again, I am fighting just to move. As athletes, we are succeeding, but as creative individuals, we are flailing…it hurts."
They may have been flailing, but they weren't failing. In my view, they succeeded beautifully.
TAWOCHE 2k10 dispatches #5 from renan ozturk on Vimeo.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Christian Beckwith Going 'OuterLocal'
Beckwith, who started Alpinist in 2002, had floated the idea of a multisport outdoor magazine on the Alpinist/Surfer's Journal/Ski Journal model back in 2004. But the money wasn't there for a print book. Now, more than a year after Alpinist went belly-up (and then was resuscitated by Height of Land Publications), Beckwith is trying to launch his magazine vision on the Internet.
I asked him to describe the new site, and he sent the following blurb/media-kit copy, which I'm reprinting verbatim below:
"Alpinist was born in Jackson, Wyoming, and raised in the mountains of our backyard. The people who worked at our magazine, however, were far more than just climbers. We skied the backcountry for six months a year. We ran the footpaths of the Wind Rivers, mountain biked the Pinnacles of Togwotee Pass and paddled the Snake long before the tourists arrived for summer. We lived in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem because of its wild beauty, its lack of people, its daily opportunity to experience nature on nature’s terms. When we traveled, we sought out the wilds wherever we went, be it surfing in Mexico or hiking in South Africa’s Cederberg or flying the thermals above Switzerland’s Grand Combin. Wherever we went, our love of the wilds extended far beyond the mountains. Problematically, we could find no authentic expression of what we loved in the day’s mainstream publications.
"In 2004, we set out to create a new magazine, one that explored a broad range of adventures with the respect they deserved using the values we had brought to Alpinist. We originally partnered with Patagonia on the idea, then worked to launch it on our own, but the tide was already turning against print, and we were unable to secure the $5 million necessary to launch a title from scratch.
"Since Alpinist’s collapse, I’ve been developing a way to transfer that original idea online. Over the course of more than a dozen road trips across the US, and international journeys to Mexico, Europe, Japan, and Africa, I met with adventure athletes, web developers and entrepreneurs from numerous walks of life and industries. I forged relationships with opinion leaders in climbing, skiing, paddling, surfing, hiking and biking, and built agreements with strategic allies across the outdoor industry. In December I traveled to India, where I secured a website design and development company to execute the site. The result is OuterLocal.com "Adventure is the medium through which we understand our lives. Exploring new lands, new waters, encountering nature in ever-deepening ways, we gain n appreciation of ourselves as individuals and as participants in the world. The feel of Scottish granite beneath our crampons, the narrowing of our sightlines as we commit to a steep couloir, the focus as we drop in on a reef break during a late-afternoon session: OuterLocal will celebrate the artisans of the wild in a website as respectful, irreverent and profound as the manner in which we pursue our dreams.
On January 8, noted big-mountain skier and filmmaker Kina Pickett shot our first film. We’ve recently finished design of the home page and user interface and are now working on the interior pages. We expect to launch OuterLocal by July 2010."
Should be interesting!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Tuesday Evening Time Waster
Readers who enjoyed Barry Blanchard's terrific "Mountain Profile" of Mt. Robson in the latest issue of Alpinist will also enjoy "Infinite Patience: The Movie." (Not its real name.) Eric Dumerac, one of Blanchard's two partners for his much-tried (and oft-failed) new route on the Emperor Face of Robson, shot footage during their successful climb in 2002 for a cool 10-minute video that can be watched at Blanchard's new website.
Barry also has posted a collection of more than 40 scanned slides (dust, scratches, and all) from his 1985 first ascent of the north pillar of North Twin with Dave Cheesmond—still unrepeated. I'd never seen the majority of these images, including this shot of Barry arriving at the summit. Great stuff!
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Have No Fears, We've Got Stories for Years
In the time-honored tradition of producers who'd rather rehash the "best of" old shows than create something new, I present the five most commented-upon Mountain World posts of 2009. (Not necessarily the best.) Drum roll, please!
1. No Consolation: reflection upon the death of Craig Luebben.
2. Oops, Wrong Planet: the Hubers get funky.
3. Never Stop Litigating: TNF gets aggro on a teenage parodist.
4. Lacelle Avalanche Video Analysis: a (strangely) controversial post-mortem.
5. Mountain Movie Clichés: what's your favorite?
Sorry for the clip show...
Friday, January 08, 2010
Pledge for Endless Ascent
Will Gadd's "Endless Ascent" at the Ouray Ice Festival begins tomorrow. He's going to climb the same route over and over, for 24 hours straight, to see how many vertical feet he can accumulate. It's a mind-blowing effort.
But this isn't just a Red Bull athlete's latest wacky stunt: It's also a fund-raiser for the vital work of the dZi Foundation to support remote mountain communities in Nepal and Sikkim. Will's effort won't mean nearly as much unless he raises some significant dosh. I've pledged 0.5 cents a foot. If Will reaches his primary goal of 11,429 feet (the gain from Everest base camp to summit, or 77 trips up the Pick O' the Vic route at Ouray), I'll give $57.14 to the dZi Foundation—an amount that will be matched by a challenge grant. What will you give? Visit the Endless Ascent website to make a pledge and track Will's progress.
UPDATE: Will climbed the route 194 times in 24 hours, starting at noon on Saturday. That's about 25,400 feet of ice climbing. Surely this is a Guinness record? Congratulations, Will!
You can see a great gallery of James Beissel photos from the Endless Ascent at Colorado MoJo.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Oh. My. Gawd.
Looks like maybe Zion to me. Anyone know for sure? Man, these two were lucky to get out unscathed. (I'm assuming they were OK: You don't usually say "Hooolly shit!" and keep filming when you get hurt. You say something else entirely.)
If it is Zion, I can attest to the nastiness of those approaches and descents. Once you get off the well-beaten paths to the classics, that ground is loose, loose, loose. And don't forget the ticks.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Retire Those Ropes
Sure, we all know ropes need to be retired when they start to look old and worn, right? But it's so tempting to hang onto a rope for just a few more pitches. Particularly for sport climbers, Powick's tests should serve as a real-world warning: Sport climbers beat the hell out of the ends of their ropes through repeated falls, hanging, and winching, and sport routes are more likely than most climbs to have crux moves close to the belayer. It's a double whammy.
Bottom line: A hard, unsentimental look at your rope, combined with your personal knowledge of how much work it has seen, is the best guideline for deciding when to retire your cord. Don't be cheap: If it looks bad, it ain't safe.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Truer Words Were Never Spoken
Climbing.com reader Jeff Weinberg posted this great "Overheard" quote, from a man giving his son a pep talk at the Philadelphia Rock Gym: "The beautiful thing about climbing is, everyone sucks at their own level."
New Year's Weekend Time Waster
Kelly Cordes makes a margarita for Tommy Caldwell, courtesy of Kelly Cordes Dot Com:
[Hey, you kids, what are you doing watching videos all weekend?! Go outside and play!]
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