Jon Griffith's short film of Ueli Steck last winter setting the speed record for climbing the north face of the Grandes Jorasses by the Colton-MacIntyre (and a harder variation) in less than three hours. Griffith's website has details and killer still photos.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thursday Morning Time Waster
Friday, July 24, 2009
Twisted
I just finished four days of reporting for the Outdoor Retailer Show Daily, the daily newspaper of the trade show. It's a hard but fun gig that I've done two summers now, and a fresh way to participate in a show I've been visiting for well over a decade. This was the 10th anniversary of the tornado that struck downtown Salt Lake City during the trade show's set-up day, killing one person, injuring dozens, and wiping out more than 300 exhibitors' booths, including the one I was helping to set up for Rock & Ice. For the last day of the show daily, I wrote a column remembering the tornado.
For those curious about the tornado, here's my original text:
When the tornado struck, we were standing just outside Pavilion I, one of two football-field-size tents that housed Summer Market exhibitors before the Salt Palace expansion. We were lucky: We could see the storm coming. Even so, the tornado that struck Salt Lake City at 1 p.m. on August 11, 1999, Summer Market's set-up day, created some of the most terrifying and yet ultimately gratifying memories of my life.
I was publisher and editor of Rock & Ice magazine, and we were setting up a portable climbing wall outside the pavilion's main entrance when the sky turned green and began swirling ominously. Down the street, we saw roof panels flying off the Delta Center (now the Energy Solutions Arena). A whirling mass of dust and debris headed toward us. I looked for cover and saw only the Wyndham Hotel (now the Radisson) across South Temple—to get there we'd have to race toward the tornado, but it was our only choice. I screamed at the friends around me to run. We dashed into the lobby just as the tornado roared past and filled the air with glass.
Outdoor Retailer show director Kenji Haroutunian, then an account executive at his first show, was working near the Wyndham, too. “As a climbing instructor, I've been on rescues, including fatal accidents, but this was by far the most intense triage situation I've encountered,” he recalled. Nearly 100 people were injured by the 10-minute storm, a dozen critically, and one man—Allen Crandy, a set-up supervisor working inside Pavilion I—was killed.
Stunned, my small staff and I wandered around the wrecked pavilions as ambulances and police arrived. With no booth to set up, we gaped at the destruction and wondered what would happen next. Most of us just wanted to go home. It seemed impossible that the show could continue.
But over the next few hours, something amazing happened. Haroutunian said show officials soon began hearing from exhibitors—he recalls that Kelty was among the first—offering to share booth space with vendors who'd been in the pavilions. By late afternoon, when hundreds of anxious vendors packed into the Marriott, a tentative plan was in place: Day One of Summer Market would be canceled, but the show would go on. Dozens of exhibitors offered to share their booths with one or more displaced companies—Timberland ended up with 12 guest exhibitors--and the city scrambled to find rooms for attendees staying at the badly damaged Wyndham.
The Rock & Ice staff shacked up with our friends at Five Ten, and we cobbled together a pathetic display of the magazines and business cards we'd salvaged from the wreckage. But our meetings went on without a hitch. Climbing magazine, our arch-rival, reshuffled its demo schedule at the indoor climbing wall and allowed us to host a full slate of the events we'd hoped to put on outside Pavilion I. Throughout the Salt Palace, similar stories were unfolding.
“The show was obviously different, and it was tragic of course, but it was also really cool,” Haroutunian said. “It became a contest of who could be the most generous.”
That generous spirit continued after the show. The Outdoor Recreation Coalition of America passed the hat and collected more than $100,000 for a relief fund, which came as a huge relief to my small business when insurance wouldn't cover thousands of dollars of damage to our rental car.
I still have a souvenir of the tornado on my desk: my calculator, which I discovered in the wreckage outside Pavilion I, its surface twisted into a spiral by the force of the storm. It reminds me that the outdoor industry is blessed with a spirit that, when put to the test, can be more powerful than Mother Nature herself.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The Spinner
All this spring I tested the Black Diamond Spinner set-up for leashless ice tools. I went mostly leashless a couple of years ago, but I’ve always worried about dropping a tool on big climbs. In fact, I’ve had a couple of scary bobbles. But I haven’t been able to buy a commercial tether in the States—Grivel made one, but I’ve yet to find it at a shop—and I’m too inept to make my own. The Spinner, which will be available this fall, is a sweet solution to the leashless dilemma. It girth-hitches to your belay loop with a 360° swivel device to minimize tangles, and it’s outfitted with easy-to-use clips for your tools and bungied tethers that extend to full arm’s reach for high placements.
The Spinner really eased my mind on long mixed climbs in Rocky Mountain National Park and Chamonix. I could climb quicker without having to worry every second about dropping a tool, and sometimes I’d let one tool hang from its tether while I fiddled with gear or bare-handed a move. Only occasionally did the tethers get in my way, and now and then I had to untwist them, but I think this is just a matter of learning how best to use such tethers—it’s not a flaw of the Spinner set-up. Plus, the tethers are rated to 2kN—that’s probably not enough to hold a fall if your feet cut out and you drop hard onto your tool, but it’s more than enough for body weight, which does offer a measure of comfort.
The Fang grips that I’d installed on my old Viper tools covered the clip-in holes, so I had to thread a loop of thin nylon tape behind the Fangs as clip-in points; they’re ugly, but they work fine. Newer Viper and Cobra tools don’t have this issue.
All in all, the Spinner is a great simple tool at $49.95—a total bargain for the peace of mind it offers to leashless climbers.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Beetle Mania
How will pine beetles affect outdoor recreation in Colorado? It ain't going to be pretty. I wrote about the problems hikers and backcountry skiers will face for the next decade or more in the summer issue of Elevation Outdoors.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Jonny's Gifts
I never climbed with Jonny Copp, but I’d bump into him everywhere: at the foot of a sandstone crack at Indian Creek; just after dawn at the Glacier Gorge Trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park (gusty winds making us all wonder what we were doing there); post-climb at a picnic table above the Black Canyon; sharing photos on a laptop at his “office” in Amante coffee shop in Boulder. Each time was the same: an extended hand, a huge smile, an encouraging word. He always seemed so happy to see me (a longtime acquaintance but not a close friend); he appeared genuinely thrilled that I was out there with him, sharing similar experiences, sharing possibilities. He made me want to try harder. These were Jonny’s gifts. He had the gift of enthusiasm, of seeing the possibilities in others and nudging them forward; he bestowed these gifts unselfconsciously and without hesitation; and he inspired me (inspires me!) to try each day to do the same for others—perhaps his greatest gift of all.
Sunday, June 07, 2009
RIP
There will never be another quite like him.
Support the search for Jonny Copp's missing partners, Micah Dash and Wade Johnson. Donate here.
Ghost Dancers
Punishing but rewarding. That sums up the long day that Jack Roberts and I "enjoyed" in the Indian Peaks on June 6. The target was the northeast face of Paiute Peak (13,088 feet). I've never seen a record of any ascent of this face, though it's quite likely that it has been climbed—it's a big target and not very difficult. But the face is hidden from the east, and the approach is arduous. The only practical way to get there during snow-climbing season is to climb over a high shoulder of Mt. Audubon (or its summit), descend into the Coney Lakes basin, and then traverse to the base of Paiute. This is not an easy thing to do.
Jack and I mounted our bikes at the gate on the Brainard Lake Road just after 5 a.m., rode to the trailhead, and then hiked up the east ridge Audubon to a saddle at around 12,700 feet. Because of some illness issues, we were moving very slowly, and it was after 9 a.m. before we crested the ridge. The view to the other side was stunning but discouraging: We would have to traverse nearly a mile across broken ridges and frozen couloirs, while descending more than 1,000 feet. To make matters worse, a brutal, cold wind whipped over the saddle.
Our hands were freezing, and we nearly bailed, but instead we decided to "take a look." In the end, it required nearly two hours of hard, somewhat dangerous work before we could reach the base of Paiute at around 11,500 feet. In hindsight, I think the best approach would be to continue over Audubon's 13,221-foot summit to the Audubon-Paiute col, and then descend to the north from there, or to drop straight down one of the Coney Couloirs from Audubon's east ridge and then walk up the valley floor to Paiute. Either way, it's a big approach. It took us more than six hours; a fast party would likely still need four hours.
By this time, the snow had softened significantly (much of the face was still in the sun until after noon), so we didn't need a rope as we kicked shin-deep steps up the central couloir. We had carried a rack because of the big headwall at the top of the face, and even just a few hundred feet below the top we still weren't sure where the route would go. But just when we were wondering if we'd have to escape by rock-climbing to the left or right, a hidden, body-length-wide slot snaked up to the left. We roped up partway along this for a short ice step and then carried on to the top, popping out within a few vertical feet of Paiute's summit. Good stuff! 
A long glissade, snowshoe trudge, and bike ride awaited. But it was all downhill now. By the time we reached the car, we'd put in a 12-hour day, of which less than two hours was spent actually climbing. This route may have been climbed before, but we think it deserves a name, and we propose the Ghost Dancer Couloir. It's a superb outing...for those who don't mind a little punishment along with their rewards.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Sniglet
A friend—I can't remember who—once made up a great word to describe climbers' habit of testing out hand holds and finger jams on man-made structures. You know how it goes: You're walking down a city street or climbing a stair well, and casually, almost without thinking, you find yourself crimping the edge of a brick or slotting your hand in the crack between two concrete slabs. We all do it. Unfortunately, age and decrepitude being what they are, I can't remember the term he/she came up with.
Hand-jive?
Grappling?
Brailling?
Man, it's right on the tip of my tongue.... This is a sniglet that's sorely needed. If you've got a good name for this common climber behavior, let me know.
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