I manage to grab a hold with my pumped right arm. A few swings of my other hand and I’m on to my next move. Two more moves to go and a long rest. With my left hand, which hasn’t fully recovered, I hold a three-finger flake and reach for a little incut flake. Now I set my body in motion and dyno. The next moment I hit it with my right hand. Now I enter into the long, long rest.

07 January 2005 - 12:02:50

Features: Climbing in Japan: The way of the weekend warrior

Story by Vera Schulte-Pelkum
Photos Topher DonahueYou can find this article on Climbing n.
235 - December 2004

The Way of the
Weekend Warrior

Japan offers endless opportunities for foreigners, or gaijin, to make
unwitting fools of themselves. Although tourists usually get sufficient slack
in the manners department, Topher, for one, seems determined to get it right.
Clad in a yukata, a long bathrobe-like floppy-sleeved garment worn as
aprés-hot-springs apparel, my photographer is trying hard not to do any
unintentional dragnet fishing in his dinner soup with said sleeves while
under the mounting influence of hot sake.

01 November 2004 - 18:43:44

Features: Goals in Climbing

Climb-climb-climb...but what for?!?!

For Fun! Sure!!

Adrian Berry wrote an interesting article about "GOALS IN CLIMBING" on PlaneFear.com

"Over the winter, with less actual chance to go climbing, it’s hard to stay motivated to train, especially if your training lacks variety. Goals are focal points in your climbing, and serve to
keep you focussed and motivated."

I’m sitting in the back of a van, somewhere in the middle of Mexico, jouncing along in rhythm with the bumps in the thinly paved road on which we’re traveling. My pen occasionally skids, making my
writing look like that of a child. The desert surrounds us and my traveling companion sits slouched in the driver seat, shirt off and cowboy hat on. We pass cows lying amongst cactus, flocks of birds that take flight as
we approach and mongrel dogs feasting over road kill rotting on the side of the road.

01 July 2004 - 18:04:49

Features: L’autre Côté de Fred Rouhling

Story by Pete Ward
Photos by Tim KempleYou can find this article on Climbing n.
232 - July 2004

L’autre Côté de
Fred Rouhling

Cheat! Liar! Over the years, many climbers have become objects of derision
because the claims they made did not pass muster. Once the negative publicity
gets rolling, it seems there’s no stopping it. In the sport-climbing world,
perhaps no man has received as much bad press as Fred Rouhling, a Frenchman who
made the news in the mid-1990s.

Right now, 9a is the magic grade in the crazy world of hard redpointing. It sounds so much harder than 8-something. But does anyone really care about what’s happening up there?

27 April 2004 - 09:36:27

Features: The magic grade: E5

Do you wanna know more about trad climbing?!?!

"Forget 8a, 5.14a, Australia 30, Font 8a, V10 or B10, E5 is it. To have climbed E5 is an exceptional achievement. Not only that, but E5's are big routes. Big on history and big on reputation. When climbing started to become popular most of the easier extremes had already been done, but E5's were those glaring last great problems, named and documented well before the first ascent. New magazines were there to spread the word and inspire us with full-page shots of extreme action the moment these lines were conquered. "

Not to be dissing Dave Graham, but one of his hardest Rumney routes, The Fly (9a or 5.14d), received an embarrassing amount of attention this fall. First, Tony Lamiche of France, traveling with the Petzl Rock Trip tour, made the third ascent of the crimpy testpiece, beaming his Beta to the world via digital video (still viewable on the Petzl website).

No matter if it’s for a hot date, for a meeting, for your girlfriend’s period, or, in my case, in the season — “late” is never good. Laboring halfway up a barren Colorado hillside in convulsive 100-degree July heat, I beg for mercy — and for shade. I follow closely behind Tommy Caldwell, his wife Beth, and Adam Stack, and imagine this hike in the cool temps of winter. There will be no mercy, however, not on this hike nor on the crag that awaits.
We’re on our way to the Fortress of Solitude, a limestone crag not far from the famed Rifle Mountain Park in western Colorado. It is a little-visited crag cloaked in an odd mix of fame and obscurity. It is known for being home to North America’s hardest sport routes, Caldwell’s Kryptonite and Flex Luthor — and for little else.

Born in 1981 in Maine, one of the flattest states in the U.S.A., Dave Graham started to climb in 1997 with a friend from his skiing team. “He climbed already and asked me if I wanted to go to the local wall. For two weeks I went back there every day. I immediately realised that I really liked climbing.

It was like trying to sell three Kirbys in a week,” says Joe Kinder of the effort required for his new route at Rumney, New Hampshire, his hardest to redpoint date, Livin’ Astroglide.“Kirbys” would be vacuum cleaners. After earning an art degree, Kinder, hypnotized by the possibility of making big coin fast, began selling Kirby vacuum cleaners.

If British limestone is better known for difficulty than beauty, position, or overall fine grimping, the exception is Malham Cove. If Malham were in France, the Brits often say, it would be one of that country’s best crags. The huge, 300-foot-tall amphitheatre of black-streaked limestone combines wild exposure, fantastic rock, and beautiful Yorkshire scenery.

"Greenspit" is a crack traversing a huge overhang. The crack is perfectly horizontal over 12 meters and that's the reason why the climbing in it is similar to a roof climbing. There's
only one bolt as a belay. The climbing is about fingers, hands, fists and feet jams along the whole roof. Pain is omnipresent.

Statement of youth Ramón Julián fires La Rambla Direct Look out Realization. Scoot over Flex Luthor. There's a new all-natural 5.15a on the scene-- La Rambla Direct, an extension to Alex Huber's 5.14c benchmark route at Siurana, Spain, that makes for a 17-bolt, 135-foot pitch. For over a decade the 20-foot extension has withstood attempts by top European sport climbers. In the end it was the diminutive Ramón Julián-- and not his more famous countrymen Dani Andrada or Iker Pou-- who scored the first ascent.

Who is Chris Sharma? Who is he, really? From the craggers of the Grampians to the boulderers of Bishop to the alpinists of Chamonix, climbers the world over know Sharma as one of the greatest rock climbers ever, the icon for his climbing generation, his name forever linked to perhaps the two most famous rock climbs of the past decade: The Mandala and Realization.