>> Febuary - March 2004
Made in Japan
Japan, a seismically unstable country, is used to quakes and tremors.
However, the latest word from the Land of the Rising Sun is sending shockwaves
through the rest of the climbing world. First, there is rumour of a second
V15 slab from the mysterious Tokio Muroi at Ogawayama. Then comes report
of a new boulder problem from Dai Koyamada, which is at least V15 and quite
possibly harder. Little is known about Muroi, his original slab V15 Banshousha,
or the new line, but Muroi is respected in the Japanese climbing community
for his unrivalled technique, balance and flexibility.
Byakudou, a 22-move roof problem is authored by the better known Koyamada,
who has a long track record of hard 5.14 ascents and V14 problems. Fred
Rouhling, who was travelling in Japan and climbed with Koyamada also tried
Byakudou and commented that it felt harder than Dreamtime V15. A fairly
telling assertion, as Rouhling has stated that Dreamtime is his “perfect
opposite style.” If true, the problem will be the hardest in the world.
8c Problems Become
Less of a Problem
With the shift in popularity from sport climbing to bouldering, we
are now seeing a similar progression in bouldering to that of sport climbing
in the early nineties. With new tougher problems arising, the list of those
who claim Font 8c or V15 ascents grow daily, increasingly by climbers that
are not very well known. Exemplifying this trend are Si O’Connor with
Extradition in Scotland, and Bernhard Schwaiger with Zunami in Austria.
Both are first ascents, and the first for each climber at the grade but
neither are big name climbers. Despite these handicaps, both climbers have
fairly strong CVs, with a slew of V13 and some V14 ascents to bolster their
claims. If bouldering continues on a development curve similar to sport
climbing, then the present limit of 8c is just the beginning.
The Fly Bouldered
Dave Graham’s Rumney test piece, The Fly 5.14d at 7 m tall,
is so short that many have joked that it’s really a highball boulder
problem and should be done as such. The ferociousness of the moves, coupled
with the back-breaking landing discouraged would-be soloists. But Jason
Kehl, of Evilution fame, took the idea seriously and made it reality this
past fall. After working the route on top rope self belay extensively, Kehl
felt confident that he could do the climb without the protection of ropes
and bolts. With a few spotters looking on and after a few near misses, Kehl
made the first unroped ascent of the The Fly. With Evilution, After Midnight,
and now The Fly, Kehl has firmly established himself at the forefront of
highball bouldering.
World Cup Season
Wraps Up
The final stop of the 2003 World Cup season in Edinburgh, Scotland,
which took place from Dec 4th to 7th, saw Alex Chabot of France and Muriel
Sarkany of Belgium hoist their 3rd and 4th difficulty World Cup title respectively.
However, it isn’t business as usual at the top, as Chabot won by a
mere 70 points, rather than his usual two or three hundred. Similarly, on
the bouldering side, Jerome Meyer of France clinched the men’s title
with a much-needed victory at this final stop. The most impressive performance
came from Sandrine Levet of France. Levet dominated the bouldering circuit
with five out of six wins, while also coming in second overall in the difficulty
event. At Edinburgh, Levet showed the form that kept her at the top of both
disciplines, easily crushing the field in the bouldering event on Saturday.
Amazingly, in the difficulty event the next day, Levet again out distanced
her rivals, achieving an unprecedented double.
Correspondent: Andre Cheuk
Ice Report
Once again the Canadian Rockies has entered another winter season
of hardy and prolific ice. Like most years, there is more enough to keep
even a five-day a week climber occupied for the extent of the season. This
year is not unlike any other and could be described as even fatter than
usual. Mt Wilson and the north end of Mt Rundle are riddled with daggers,
smears and streaks of the utmost quality. One of the prize new lines to
be captured at the advent of the season was The Oracle, a 450 m vapor of
ice running down the far north end of Mt Rundle, climbed by Holezci, Owens
and Webster. This slabby 5 cm thick ice line proved to be a cerebral exercise
in finding adequate
protection in the surrounding rock. This was a good warm up for Owens who
later returned with Guy Lacelle at the beginning of December to make an
attempt at free climbing the T2 gear line in order to access the hanging
ice of the unformed Terminator. Contradictory to the Waterfall Ice Climbing
guidebook, T2 had indeed been free climbed by Serge Angelucci and Jeff Everett
back in 1991. They did, however, use yoyo tactics to reach the upper ice
belay. Owens’ and Lacelle’s sojourn on T2 came close to a free
ascent, but when they were passing under the direct fall line of the Trophy
Wall, a trailer truck-sized dagger broke away from the wall. Luckily, the
two were unhurt and gathered themselves enough to mixed climb free up to
the ice and first belay. Owens described the climbing as excellent but said
that it was a mental workout finding gear on strenuous terrain. Because
of lack of daylight the two bailed after the first pitch, so T2 has not
yet been free climbed in a complete ascent to its
natural end.
A few of the other finer additions are a pair of routes completed by Walsh,
Whithers and Semple around the Transparent Fool area. The first being a
spectacular pillar resembling Fearful Symmetry. Idiot Savant climbs three
pitches but the first 50m pillar offers the most difficulty. The other less
difficult line climbs three pitches and is named Dark Savant. Close by on
the Upper Weeping Wall a dramatic pillar formed serving up 30 m of exposed
difficult pillar climbing on the far left side. Dave Thompson reportedly
called this one of the best ice lines he has climbed, but it was Dave Marra
who was able to acquire the first ascent, naming it Pooing is Fun…
Sometimes.
Other excellent traditionally protected mixed additions included Grant Meekins’
pair of routes on Pilot Mountain. Fog Bank and After Burner both moderately
difficult hanging pillars of ice. High quality lines have also been added
around Twisted in Field BC. UnTwisted, Glen Morangie and DaggerMeister all
enjoyable gear/bolt lines on bomber Quartzite. Blanchard and Wally Lama
added a gear line at Lake Louise also moderate in difficulty. This line
is opposite Louise Falls on Mt Fairview. Todd Learn and partners added a
new mixed line beside Good Luck and Bad Dreams. They aptly named it Bad
Dreams Good Luck. An easy but runout mixed addition beside Saddam’s
Insane called the Axes of Evil was rooted out by Brent Raymond and Craig
Hyslop in the Kananaskis. In the same region Polish Bob and Erol Altay completed
Racially Motivated by Whiteman’s Falls. Full mixed gear rack is needed
for this moderate line. Also in the Kananaskis Sans Bob was added to First
Blood area.
Once again there’s a lot to do out in the Rockies of all types. It
should be mentioned though that avalanche hazard is still an issue for a
lot of the above mentioned routes and should always be considered before
heading out.
Correspondent: Ben Firth
Banff Mountain
Film + Book Festivals 2003
However you might feel about your own local show, the annual Banff
Mountain Festivals are ever the biggest, usually the baddest, and invariably
the best attended community events in Canadian climbing. They’re the
interface between our sport and, uh, all those other people who do all that
other stuff.
Every first week in November for 28 years, the names and the stories and
the pictures are invited into this chilly, echoing, shoulder-season-sedated
Rockies town to talk their talk, show slides, pimp new books and films,
promote future projects, hobnob, drink, and maybe even walk their walk by
actually going climbing.
The 2003 Banff Mountain Festivals were typical of their tradition. The first
snow of the winter had fallen on town. Guy Lacelle was commuting back and
forth between the parking lot and his appointments on stage, trying to keep
the five dogs in his vehicle happy. Tashi Tenzing paired up with Will Gadd
to get in a quick route before they had to rush back to clip on microphones
and become the evening’s entertainment. Integral Designs, Arcteryx
and MEC draped their foyer booths with unnatural fibres, then tag-teamed
staff so they could watch films and take bathroom breaks. There was gear
zip-tied to tradeshow screens, plastic-wrapped collectible Antarctic photos
going for thousands of dollars, tour operators’ brochures and business
cards in little tilted racks everywhere. posters, photos, and “This
way to the Max Bell Auditorium” direction signs decorating all vertical
surfaces. New guidebooks and coffee table photo collections went from display
to hand to authors’ pens and the latté concession lined up down
the carpeted hallway.
But really, everybody tried not to worry too much about the stuff, kept
their eyes open, and simply visited and had a good time. You could get hugged
20 times standing waiting to buy a sandwich. Marketing was incidental. Rob
Owens, behind the Charlet Moser table, was fielding more calls for beta
on the route he’d just climbed on Mt Rundle than requests for information
about the fancy orange hardware displayed in front of him.
For better or worse, for most people halfway around the globe and half the
time, Banff just is Canada. The “Best of the Banff Mountain Film Festival”
touring program will play hundreds of nights in as many towns, heading out
on the road almost before the featured presenters and guests make their
connections from Banff back to Calgary International. Mountainfolk in cities
as far flung as Reykjavik, Paris, and Johannesburg will pay big to watch
and dream. Nothing else in Canadian climbing has half the reach or impact.
If you pull a funny face in front of your friend’s video camera, and
then have him or her go on to win their category at Banff, a month later
you could be laughed at in Sydney, Australia. (Find your entry form for
next year on the Banff Centre’s website – win big prizes, become
famous, still sleep in your van.)
That’s all for later, though. In crowded progress, at their source,
the Banff Festivals are loosely arranged into a Book, Film and Summit program,
spread across the November events calendar. Each of these has a different
emphasis – the first two are self-explanatory, and the latter varies
from year to year, a gathering of notables discussing a single vague topic.
In 2003 this theme was, (wait, let me check my notes), “Mountains as
Water Towers.”
Snide remarks aside, the Banff Centre resists the easy appeal of focusing
purely on mountain sports. Equal emphasis is given to environmental and
cultural works, and some of the strongest offerings of the Festivals seven
core days have nothing whatsoever to do with actually getting up anything.
Presenting sponsor National Geographic was well-represented in the schedule,
and even hosted a seminar about how to get your idea or expedition featured
and funded by their council. (Think two years. Think thousands of competing
proposals. Expect the magazine to assign the photographer, possibly the
writer, then maybe the rest of the expedition members, too.)
Regardless, in 2003 the film program was exceptionally strong from a climbing
perspective and the books weren’t too far behind. Attendees could see
retro Eiger, turbo bouldering, free-soloing Jack Russell terriers, expedition
spoofs, a manic reverse take on Talking to Americans, and the release of
compulsively thumbable volumes of photos, beta, instruction, and stories
about crags and mountains worldwide.
Over 300 films from 38 countries were entered in this year’s film competition.
More than 150 books were entered into the 10th annual book competition.
As climbers, here’s what you need to look at: You should try to see
Peter Mortimer’s eight minute episode of Front Range Freaks, because
it is so much fun and because the expressions on Biscuit-the-Dog’s
face are just like the ones your friends make when they’re bouldering.
Then, for balance, you should sit through Eiger Nordwand – In the Footsteps...
to bring up sweat to your palms and involve you in the fascinating question
of whether today’s über-climbers measure up to the legendary alpine
heroes who had to pioneer their great lines in knickers and hobnails.
Sweet bouldering footage comes with Dyno-Soar, spraying adrenalin from a
fast and artful take on Colorado dyno specialist Paul Glover. And Leo Houlding’s
So Far West It’s Quicker To Go East To Get There first tickles your
ribs, then gives them an elbow, showing how much fun you can have with a
slab in the forest at Font.
Touching The Void has high production values and is so true – so cold,
so hurting, so necessary – that even though you’ve heard the story
a thousand times and read the book and seen Joe Simpson’s slide shows,
you could sit through it again. As a movie, it’s feature-lengthish
enough that you might very well see it show up on television soon. Don’t
let your mom watch.
The locals’ favourite, Crawford and Wrobleski’s Sister Extreme,
is an at-times-artful
at-times-awkward parody of mountaineering movie clichés. Your mileage
may vary, but if the Outdoor Channel is part of your cable package, you’ll
understand most of the jokes. If you’re familiar with the better-known
Bow Valley locations, the film is borderline hysterical. And if you actually
know Pat Morrow or Barry Blanchard or Tim Auger or Bob Sandford or Will
Gadd, you’ll probably pee your pants.
Not prizewinners, but still worth checking if you have a chance, are Ice
Up, which travels with the Charlet-Moser factory team to Norway for some
wild frozen waterfall action, and Part Animal, Part Machine, following legless
Warren McDonald up the Centre of the Weeping Wall.
Books you should add to your reading list include, but by no means should
be limited to – Escape from Lucania: An Epic Story of Survival by David
Roberts. This is perhaps the best mountaineering adventure ever told that
does not involve death or tragedy, and Roberts gets up close with the protagonists,
putting you right there. Simon Mawer’s The Fall is a novel spanning
time, personalities, global conflict, and the evolution of alpine idealism.
Mawer read to the festival audience during one of the Literary Lunch Breaks.
He has a feel for the big places, and a way to move the plot along. You
could let your mom read this one.
The keynote topic for one of the Film Fest’s public noon-hour forums
was “Beyond Imagining: The Next Great Projects.” Panelists were
expected to speculate about the future, and describe where they thought
the next few years would take climbing and adventure.
Mike Libecki said for him it was going to be more big walls, perhaps in
Greenland. Christian Beckwith, editor of Alpinist magazine, cited a frontier
of the mind that had climbers returning to old routes with new ideas about
speed and style. Börge Ousland, polar soloist, was more prosaic, declaring
his intentions to return to Patagonia with kayaks, and after that traverse
Siberia. Modest all-round Canuck stylemaster Sean Easton called for a look
homeward, to the epic mixed alpine lines still languishing all over the
Rockies and the Interior.
Finally, moderator Geoff Powter had worked his way down to the end of the
table and he prompted Dean Potter for his contribution. Dean had been spotted
outside the emergency exit earlier, around the side of building, perhaps
adjusting his attitude in preparation for the discussion. Now he leaned
toward the microphone on the table in front of him, gazed innocently up
at the standing room only audience, and the video cameras, and declared,
“If you open your mind, anything is possible. You can achieve your
dreams. You can breathe underwater. You can fly. It’s time for people
to stop being sheep and wake up to the possibilities.”
It didn’t end there, of course. It was after all only Saturday –
there were more films to look at and many more words to speak. But nothing
else really needed to be said.
Correspondent: David Dornian
The Prizes for the
Books:
Phyllis and Don Munday Award >
Escape from Lucania: An Epic Story of Survival
by David Roberts, published by Simon & Schuster (USA 2002)
Jon Whyte Award for Mountain Literature >
Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow: The Personal Cost of Climbing by Maria
Coffey, published by Saint Martin’s Press (USA 2003) and
Random House Group Limited (United Kingdom 2003)
Best Book – Adventure Travel >
The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy,
published by Pantheon Books (USA 2002)
Best Book – Mountain Exposition Award >
The Bugaboos by Marc Piché and Chris Atkinson,
published by Elaho Publishing Corp. (Canada 2003)
Best Book – Mountain Image >
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land
by Subhankar Banerjee (photographer) in collaboration with six essayists,
published by The Mountaineers Books (USA 2003)
Best Book - Mountaineering History >
Tenzing: Hero of Everest by Ed Douglas,
published by National Geographic (USA 2003)
Canadian Rockies Award >
The Yam: 50 Years of Climbing on Yamnuska
by Chic Scott, Dave Dornian, Ben Gadd,
published by Rocky Mountain Books (Canada 2003)
The Prizes for the
Films:
Grand Prize at Banff Mountain Film Festival >
The Other Final (Netherlands 2002)
dir. Johan Kramer, prod. Kessels/Kramer
Best Film on Mountain Sports >
Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place (United Kingdom 2003)
prod. Justine Kurgenven, Mark Dyson, Kate Snell
Alpine Club of Canada Award for Best Film on Climbing >
Eiger-Nordwand: Auf den Spuren der Erstbesteiger (Switzerland 2002)
dir. Frank Senn, Thomas Ulrich, prod. Otto Honegger
Best Film on Mountain Culture >
A Man Called Nomad (United Kingdom 2002)
dir/prod. Alex Gabbay
Best Film on Mountain Environment >
Northwest Passage – On Franklin’s Trail (Ireland 2002)
dir/prod. John Murray for Crossing the Line Films
People's Choice Award >
Sister Extreme (Canada 2003)
dir/prod. Glen Crawford, Brad Wrobleski
Best Short Mountain Film >
Das Rad [Rocks] (Germany 2001)
dir. Heidi Wittlinger, Chris Stenner, prod. Georg Gruber
Best Feature-Length Mountain Film >
Touching the Void (United Kingdom 2003)
dir. Kevin MacDonald, prod. John Smithson for Darlow/Smithson Productions,
Film Four, and the Film Council
Boulder Climbing
Challenge Finals
The Rock Court, Halifax_November 22, 2003
The first ever East Coast nationally sanctioned regional was held
last Saturday at the Rock Court. After the morning’s qualifiers, organizers
agreed that this was the strongest field of competitors that had shown up
for any of its boulder climbing challenges. Many of the new competitors
in the men’s category advanced to the finals. In fact, four of the
six were newcomers to the series including one from New Brunswick. By 4
pm the viewing gallery was packed with supporters who came to watch the
women and men’s showdown. The men’s field of six competitors was
presented with a new series of six boulder problems, which were again very
challenging. It seemed like none of the men would complete many problems
until number one ranked Ben Blakney came out and climbed the first four
problems each on his first try. After battling with the steep roof on problem
five, Blakney completed number six on his third try with only seconds to
spare to easily finish in first place. Second place was the real challenge,
with the other competitors very closely matched. It did come down to Shawn
White and Chris Eager sharing the podium. Similar to the men’s round,
Shaunna Taylor was the favourite going in and to no great surprise took
away the top seat. Climbing last, Shaunna quelled any doubts with her flash
ascents of the first three technically difficult problems. It was the steep
45 and 60 degree walls that finally slowed her down. The battle for second
was waged with great tenacity between Fiona Gallacher and Tania Wong. Tania
came out ahead by one bonus hold. In the junior boys’ category the
top position became a close battle between Ben Rose-Davis and Nathan Smith.
It was so close that first place was determined by only one try. In the
girl’s
category Mackenzie Oram climbed two more problems than the rest to capture
first place with a strong lead. The top competitors walked away with prizes
and cash totalling well over 2000 dollars.
Seattle Bouldering
Challenge, Stone Gardens_November 22, 2003
Hard core, down and dirty boulderers have long known of this comp, but the
secret is out and this year it drew 220 climbers from the
US and Canada. Independent and not a little rebellious, the SBC served up
a menu of 120 boulder problems up to V12, and including some sick dynos.
This late November comp lasts for the better part of a day and offers a
wide variety of top-notch routes, raucous music and gear prizes.
Canada’s Mike Doyle, Jamie Chong and Nathan Woods swept the men’s
Expert Division with Seattle’s Leif Palmer-Burns taking fourth place.
In the Women's Expert Division, Seattle’s Mykael Ann McGinley proved
she could hold her own in bouldering with a decisive win. Sydney McNair
took second with Canadians Sarah Austin and Vikki Weldon in third and fourth
place.
Keith Magnuson, owner of Stone Gardens, says climbers can count on the SBC
to be the same high-quality event for years to come. Magnuson said that
next year, he may include and onsight final for the Expert Division with
cash prizes.
Correspondent: Beth McGinley
