June - July 2008
news
Hard Core
Italian climber Christian Core has long been able to balance the demands of competition climbing with achievements on the rock. Core always managed to squeeze in impressive ascents, such as Slashface in Hueco Tanks in under an hour, between comps or during the brief spells between World Cup seasons. After years at the top of the competition scene, the former
World Cup bouldering champion has increasingly turned his focus away from the plastic arena and back onto rock, discovering new areas and putting up new lines near his home in Varazze.
Gioia, or joy in Italian, is 14 moves long and trends diagonally up and right across a steep face on a series of poor edges (a Core specialty) and nearly invisible footholds. Core started at an obvious edge in the middle of the face, but felt the line incomplete without the first half, and set to work on the far left of the face. After an initial recon, Core decided that the rock offered just enough features, but the weather offered an unforeseen obstacle. The winter rain and snow made the rock more friable. During one session, a small but important edge broke, so Core backed off and waited for more stable weather. Early in March, four months after he first saw the problem, he sent it. Core gives it V15 and thinks it’s the hardest problem he has done. More important to Christian Core than the grade, however, is discovering new problems. “Discovering new boulders, cleaning them and exploring new lines is always exciting,” he says. This is an important aspect of bouldering and without it I feel this sport is incomplete.”–AC
Saint Anger Freed
German climber Andreas Bindhammer has opened an old project at Eremo di San Paolo at Arco, Italy. Saint Anger 5.14c/d was an old abandoned project originally bolted by François Legrand.
Bindhammer had first attempted it last year, but was repeatedly shut down by the sustained 28-move route, which overhangs 12 m in 45 m. This is no surprise, given that the route bouted Legrand, a noted endurance fiend. In particular, the crux blind throw to slap for a sloper proved to be a show-stopper and sent Bindhammer packing after days of fruitless attempts.
On March 22, Bindhammer returned. Armed with a winter’s worth of campusing, and aided by cool spring temperatures, he managed to stick the crux blind slap to the sloper and completed the first ascent after a further four days of work. Andreas considers Saint Anger to be a notch harder than the neighbouring Zauberfee, a solid 5.14d put up by his brother Christian, and proposed the slash grade of 5.14c/d, preferring the grade to be settled by consensus by subsequent ascensionists.–AC
Women on Rock
Three weeks before the start of a new World Cup season, Slovenia’s Natalija Gros signalled that she is in the best shape of her life by sending Histerija 5.14c at Misja Pec, her hardest to date. Gros initially got on Histerija as part of a filming project last fall, but returned to the route this spring right where she left off. She described her ascent whilst in the midst of training for the upcoming competition season: “not everything went according to plans because each time I tried it I was tired from the intense indoor training. But on the day when I finally succeeded I was climbing after two day’s rest and the moves seemed much easier. I did it on the second try that day. When I finally clipped the anchor I was so happy that a scream of joy came out from the bottom of my lungs!” Last year Natalija Gros placed third overall in World Cup bouldering and first in the combined Difficulty and Boulder Ranking.
One foe Gros is sure to meet in the coming season, along with perennial favourite Angela Eiter and current World Cup Champion in the difficulty event, Maja Vidmar, is Charlotte Durif, who is by far the best current female onsight climber. The 2006 European Champion has onsighted Leon, 5.14a at Les Conclueses, France, just days before Gros succeeded on Histerija.–AC
Anam Cara
Rockies Grand Winter
The Rockies serve up some of the most bold and engaging lines in North America and climbers are always searching for new ones. It started early with a team from Europe and ended with some local climbers taking the advantage of the weather windows.
The big route that started off the year was the much watched smear of ice on the North Face of Snowdome, just around the corner from Slipstream WI4 1,000 m. Polarity (Dana Ruddy, Cory Richards, Ian Welsted) was climbed over two days and came in at IV WI5+
800 m. The route ended just below the serac.
Then came Swiss boys, Ueli Steck and Jason Anthamatten, who turned heads with the repeat of Polarity and added pitches through the serac, but ended below the cornice: no one has yet dared to top out. They continued with the first ascent of Rocket Baby V M8 WI5+ on Mount Patterson, just left of the existing testpiece Rocket Man. Then they climbed Not Flying is Not Trying WI6 M8 on Mount Rundle and Cockfight WI5+ M9+
on the Crowfoot Glacier.
After having a match lit under their seat, locals began to step up. On Rundle to the right of Not Flying by Steck, the 250 m Leviathan (Steve Holeczi, Eric Dumerac, Daniel Du Lac) offers long and sustained climbing at WI5+.
Rob Owens had a banner year, climbing three new mixed routes in various arenas. Zeitgeist IV 530 m M7+ WI5+R is a stunning quartzite 12-pitch line up Mount Bell completed with Holeczi. No Use For Crying IV M7 250 m was climbed with Eamonn Walsh and is found on the notorious Upper Weeping Wall and gained by climbing Sniveling Gully. Also with Jon Walsh, Owens completed The Owens/Walsh IV M6+ A1 600 m up a new peak they dubbed mog or Men of Girth.
On Mount Murchinson, a direct start to Jeu D’enfant was added by Delaney, Dumerac and Otten: Une Faiser M6 WI6 150 m. An alternative finish to Sniveling Gully was added by Beardmore and Morrin: Crying Shame (M4 WI3 160 m).
Evan Thomas Creek is an avalanche-safe creek located near Calgary and now hosts 10 new routes from WI2 to WI5, M9 60 m including the new aesthetic line Physiotherapy M9 WI5 50 m by Will Meinen and Brandon Pullan.
Raphael Slawinski had an amazing year, climbing many new routes and making winter ascents of summer rock routes. On the Stanley Headwall, with various partners he climbed Ideal for Living M6 WI5X 100 m, Victoria’s Secret Deviation M7+ 50 m and Clucking M6 WI5 200 m. He continued his charge with the first winter ascent of the Greenwood/Jones on Mount Temple. Then he headed to the Icefields Parkway with Pierre Darbellay in late March for the first ascent of The Dogleg Couloir VI M7 A1 1,300 m on the imposing East Face of Mount Chephren just right of the engaging line The Wild Thing 5.9 A3 W4. Slawinski also completed the first winter ascent of the Greenwood / Jones route on the North Face of Mount Temple IV/V M6 20 pitches 1,300 m with Eamonn Walsh and Welsted. Not long after, Steve House and Roger Strong climbed the Greenwood/Jones in a single 25.5 hour push.
Late in the season Audrey Gariepy, Caroline George, Jen Olson, Ines Papert and Jon Walsh flew into Icefall Brook and established 10 new routes from WI5 600 m to M12 100m.
Also on the Icefield parkway in early spring Mount Wilson had a new route added to it by Jon Walsh and Raphael Slawinski. The route Dirty Love M7 12 pitches 500 m rises up a huge west facing corner above the route Shooting Star. The first three quarters of the route were completed by Jon Walsh and Audrey Gariepy before it was sent by Walsh and Raphael in a 23-hour push from car to summit. The route features many wide chimneys and steep sustained terrain on quartzite.
Without a doubt, this season was one of the most remarkable years for new routing and hard sends in recent years.–Brandon Dompullan-AC
Ondra Continues to Throw Down
Czech revelation Adam Ondra shows no signs of slowing down after his impressive showing in Spain. Climbing in Misja Pec, Slovenia, in one day Ondra dispatched both Sansjki par extension 5.14d and Clovek ne jezi se 5.14c and followed that up by cooling down on Popolni mrk 5.14b.
Showing that he is no mere stamina fiend, Ondra visited Ticino,
Switzerland, and fired off an ascent of Dreamtime V14 in a mere four hours, the fastest ascent to date. He also climbed Shadowfax and Shule de Lebens, both V13, in under an hour. Toss in flashes of Kirk Windstein V12 and Doctor Jump V12, and it’s clear that Ondra, though only 15, is already able to operate at a world class level in both sport climbing and bouldering.–AC
Everest and the Olympics
Before reaching its final destination at the Beijing Summer Olympics, the Olympic Flame was, at time of writing, en route to the summit of Mount Everest. Chinese party mountaineers carried the torch up the Chinese side of the peak in the main climbing season of May in an atmosphere of growing outrage and protest against human rights abuses in China and especially in Chinese occupied Tibet.
Climbers like Heinrich Harrer, Doug Scott and many others have always been among the strongest supporters of the small mountain kingdom. Since China took it over in 1950, however, access has been at best limited by the Chinese government. As one of the largest and farthest ranging groups of Himalayan tourists, climbers have witnessed many acts of Chinese repression, including the shooting of a Tibetan refugee near Cho Oyu Basecamp in 2006.
Sensing the possibility that climbers might protest the climb, the Chinese closed down all access to Everest from China and Tibet during the Games. They didn’t stop there, though, and attempted to get their long-standing ally, Nepal, to do the same. Although the Nepalese government followed the Chinese lead on this for a few weeks, it eventually relaxed its regulations to allow climbers to ascend as high as Camp Two before May 10.
The Chinese government’s response to the Tibetan unrest has been to crack down on the protestors and deny the legitimacy and scope of the protests. Jiang Yu, a spokesperson for the Chinese government, said of the protests, “a small number of rioters and saboteurs could never represent the Tibetan people… economic and cultural development in Tibet is better than ever.” Xiong Lei, director of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, said the protestors were “human rights destroyers instead of human rights fighters.”
Few westerners, however, have found this convincing and protests in sympathy with the Tibetans have followed the torch around the globe. Italian climber and artist Alberto Peruffo has started a movement to “To kindle the broken hearts of both mountains and mountaineers with the colour of shame-sadness-outrage and bid food to those who resist.” He proposes that climbers protest by lighting red smoke flares on top of peaks, cliffs and skyscrapers at the same time that the Olympic torch is lit in Beijing.
Visit his site, sadsmokeymountains.net, for
more information.–DCS
Canadian repeats desert crack testpiece
Quebec climber Jean-Pierre “Pee Wee” Ouellet has made the third ascent of Noah Bigwood’s Bushido, a 5.13+ desert crack in Moab, Utah. The 40 m crack climbs a steeply, overhanging arch that is almost horizontal in parts, and tapers from wide hands to small fingers and involves strenuous laybacking.
Ouelette thought the climb “super enduro” in nature, and “amazing” despite it being the opposite of his favourite style. “I suck at layback and big hands is pretty hard for me usually… So the thing I enjoyed the most about the route was improving my weakness.”
Pee Wee is best known for his first ascent of La Zébrée 5.14a in Val David, Que., but has also repeated established testpieces such as Sphinx Crack 5.13c in Colorado and made the second ascent of Fiddler on the Roof 5.13d in Wyoming.–GA
