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?
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
"Unclimbed": Seven Years Later
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.
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