Jeezum Crowbar! That's Chris McNamara leaping off Lover's Leap in California, parachute (hopefully) at the ready. Photo by David Safanda. More photos, explanation and discussion at Supertopo.com.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Big Air I
Big Air II
No chute on this guy! Note, he's falling in this shot, not climbing (and he walked away, thanks in part to a saintly spotter.) See the video clip here. It's from UnderDeveloped, an upcoming film about climbing in Ireland.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Secrets of the Stars
When Tommy Caldwell linked two El Cap free routes in a day last October (totaling 51 pitches), he carried two pairs of shoes: a snug-fiitting set for the crux pitches and a more comfortable pair for the wide cracks and easier stuff—everything 5.12a and easier, that is. (They were La Sportiva Miuras and Tradmasters, respectively, if you care about that kind of thing.) Many of us carrry multiple pairs of shoes to the base of a crag and swap out depending on the situation. But this got me wondering if I should do the same on a long route. There's always a compromise with a single pair of shoes: Either they're comfy and a bit sloppy or they're tight and precise but your feet hurt so much that you start losing your concentration—if not your will to live. For certain long routes, with lots of moderate cruising and a few hard pitches, the Tommy Two Shoes technique might be just the thing. Of course, I'm not likely to have a belayer who will carry my spare shoes like Tommy had.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Forget Something?
Sous chef David Goldstein preps for fine dining at Zion National Park's Watchman campground, April 2004.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Skiing on a Warm Planet
Is this the future of skiing? Snoasis , a proposed indoor ski resort 80 miles from London, received key approvals on Friday and is slated to open in 2009. If it is completed, the $570 million complex will have a 1,550-foot-long main ski slope with 330 feet of vertical drop, plus the usual accoutrements: ice rink, ice climbing wall, bobsled run, golf course, conference center and casino. At the district council meeting where approval was granted, one dissenter likened Snoasis to a giant phallus looming above the bucolic Suffolk countryside.
This year a similar indoor ski resort opened in Dubai, but Britain? Not surprising, really: It's a 12-hour drive from London to Scotland, and there's often little snow when you get there. One-hundred meters of vertical drop isn't much, but it'll be good for the kids, the after-work crowd, and business meetings, I suppose. If I lived in London, I'd still be buying those dirt-cheap airfares to ski in the Alps on weekends.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Extreme 14'ers
The Ski the 14'ers project is getting super-interesting. Last week, Chris Davenport, Neal Beidleman and Ted Mahon made the second descent of the Chris Landry line on the east face of Pyramid Peak, eliminating the short downclimb that Landry was forced to do on the first descent, way back in 1978. And yesterday, Davenport and Beidleman pioneered an amazing line on the east and south faces of Capitol Peak, one of Colorado's steepest mountains. According to Lou Dawson, who broke the news (and posted an AWESOME follow-up photo) on his Wild Snow website, Davenport said this was the toughest descent he'd ever done. Dawson also reported the third descent of the Pyramid line, the same day, by a group of skiers including Sean Crossen, who now just needs Capitol to complete his own multiyear quest to ski the 14'ers, making him the second person after Dawson to do them all.
Sound incestous? Not really. There just aren't that many people capable of pulling off these descents week after week, despite Colorado's high population of amazing skiers. Speaking of which: a few lest-we-forget notes on Chris Landry, who more or less pioneered extreme skiing in the U.S. After his Pyramid Peak descent in the late 1970s, Landry went on to complete two other almost inconceivable descents: the icy Mendel Couloir on Mt. Mendel in the Sierra, and the 6,000-vertical-foot Liberty Ridge on Mt. Rainier. Later he attempted to ski the West Rib route on Denali but took a 1,000-foot fall and quit extreme descents for good. One shudders to imagine the skill and nerve such descents required on the gear of the late 1970s. The skis no doubt did their share of shuddering, too.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Easter Surprise
A friend was climbing on the pocketed rhyolite of Penitente Canyon in central Colorado last weekend, and on Sunday morning he (and everyone else in the canyon) discovered that an Easter bunny who climbs 5.10 had secreted colored eggs in some of the huecos and pockets on popular routes. Pretty funny. My friend's reaction? "The damned egg was blocking the hold and I couldn't clip!"
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
InSanitas Indeed
Early Sunday morning, ultrarunner Paul Pomeroy completed his 30 laps of Mt. Sanitas—that's 100 miles and 40,000 vertical feet on stair-step trails up the 6,863-foot peak above Boulder, Colorado. In typical Colorado spring weather, Pomeroy endured temps in the 80s followed by high winds and scattered cold rain. Plagued by stomach problems and muscle cramps on his first day, Pomeroy was slower than he'd hoped and finished in 45 hours 5 minutes. To put that in perspective, Colorado's Hardrock 100, considered one of the hardest ultras in the world, covers only 33,000 vertical feet (albeit, much of it over 11,000 feet in elevation), and 40 percent of the Hardrock finishers last year spent more than 45 hours on the 100-mile loop course. No doubt Hardrock runners get better views, but I'll bet Pomeroy experienced interesting "inner views" during the second night of his epic on Sanitas.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Springtime in the Rockies
Spring may be my favorite season in Rocky Mountain National Park. It's when some of the Park's best routes come into shape and the deep mantel of snow transforms ordinary climbs into beautiful and challenging outings. Yesterday, Greg Sievers and I climbed the Spiral Route on Notchtop. It's a pleasant mountaineering route in summer, with some 5.4 rock and scrambling, gaining a wild summit ridge. A storm the day before had brought cold temps, very high winds and a shot of snow to the Park, and the clouds and gusty wind lingered as we skied toward Notchtop. It wasn't looking good: The rime-covered peak looked like a tower straight out of B.C. or southeast Alaska and gusts were knocking me off my skinny skis. But the forecast was excellent, so we kept the faith.
By the time we started up the first rock pitches, the sun was out but the wind was still gusting. As we spiraled around the tower into the lee, the day got warmer and the clouds vanished. Crampons on, tools out, we entered the upper gully and slogged up some nasty unconsolidated snow to the final headwall. 
We chose a more direct line than the one I had followed before in summer, and it probably had some 5.7 or 5.8 rock. l got us halfway up before running out of rope and gear, and Greg got the crux, a couple of sketchy bare-handed moves on wet rock. All in all, a great climb in splendid alpine surroundings.
Much of the Park is dry in summer, but in the spring there's snow everywhere, and it's easy to visualize the glaciers that filled these cirques years ago. Spring is also ski season in the Park, and while we were climbing we watched three skiers headed up to the steep chutes and bowls at the head of the valley, and then ski out a couple of hours later. 
Once we crested the ridge, we could see their tracks right down the middle of the Ptarmigan Glacier. As we were rapping off, we heard a roar and watched all of the new snow slide off the glacier, obliterating the skiers' tracks about two and a half hours after they left them. With cornices looming over our own exit gully, we raced down as fast as we could and were happy to reach the skis safely and point them toward home.
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