After you’ve spent a bit of time in the mountain gear industry you begin to get a little non-phased about new products, its not that your not interested its just that I see a lot of new gear and if I bought every bit I liked, I’d spend too much time figuring it out rather than climbing.. The Cilo gear Dyneema® packs on the other hand, I’m very, very exited about… there will only be a handful of stockists in the UK; lakes climber in ambleside are confirmed, one or two more to follow. These packs are going to be crazy expensive and only weigh about 500g! Think of a pack that’s made out of the same material as your quick draws yep, those things you fall on.. Dyneema® is a super strong polyethylene fibre that offers maximum strength combined with minimum weight. It is up to 15 times stronger than quality steel and up to 40% stronger than aramid fibres, both on weight for weight basis.
Here’s what Graham @ Cilo Gear says – “We didn’t end up using the Dyneema thread, and we didn’t use Dyneema for the frame sheet pocket. So we didn’t want to lie, and call them 100% Dyneema packs.
The prototypes were heavily tested and abused by Kelly Cordes, Maxime Turgeon and others over several months, including being used as a bike lock cover here in Brooklyn and Manhattan…This material rocks!”
Images to follow
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
Monday, 15 October 2007
Don’t say it’s not worth the feeling
We're rushing to the west along an American highway down to the valley that is the climbing mecca. There is, by far the some of the best rock climbing in the world there. And it’s us that are speeding right to it. We are about to cross TAIOGS PASS. As we’re going uphill. The road starts twisting. The air is cold, like in the mountains. We open the car window to expose our feel the mountain air."It must be near."
"What?"
"My dream, my dream is within the reach." .
“What does it look like?”
“It’s high. It’s fu….. very high."
Honza Říha is probably the second blind person in the world to climb El Captain in the Yosemite National Park in California, via the Nose. On 17 – 19th August we managed to climb up this legendary route. Of course, due to his handicap he climbed on the second, he was clearing the rope lengths removing the belaying devices and helped with lifting up the gear bag.
We bivouacked twice in the wall and spent the last night on the top. On the first day we climbed the first four lengths on the Sickle Ledge where we left our belongings, the gear bag, and abseiled down. Four days of climbing altogether. Because of the weight we’ve decided to sleep only on natural rock ledges. We spent the first night on the ledge of the Dolt Tower (11th pitch), the second night on the ledge of Camp V (24th pitch) and the last night on the top.
The first time the Nose was climbed up in a single push ascent it took12 days in 1958 by Warren Harding, James Whitmore and Wayne Mary. In 1960 the real single push ascent took the team of Joe Fitschen, Chuck Pratt, Tom Frost and Royal Robbins six days. The route is usually climbed in 19 to 32 pitches. The Nose is classified as VI 5.13+ or 5.9 C2. We joined some of the pitches and so the route took us, by estimation, about 28 pitches. We climbed some lengths 5.9 to 5.10c, including Stoveleg Crack or Pancake Flake, free. The event was supported by the Czech Mountaineering Association. Other team members:Janek Bednařík (Mountain guide) and Vojtěch Watt Dvořák (Singing Rock)
· Related articles (training, idea, intro) here
Froggatt Frenzy - By George Taylor @ Mounatin Beta
After a few days of being stuck in corporate hell at work in London, Me and Stumpy were finally on the train back to Sheffield, beers in hand, ready for a weekend of sunny grit. Aly txt'ed in the morning with suggestions of ticking a few E5's so the plan was set. After a breakfast of goliath proportion, we felt ready for action. After a few easy solos (Heather wall, Sunset slab) we got straight on Strapadictomy. I bouldered out the start which had a fairly tricky move but was OK once you had the sequence. I jumped off and Aly jumped on, cruised the start and then got involved! after placing a few cams in the break of Strapiombante he leaned across to the tenuous rib and somehow fiddled in a big nut and a green Alien.
Needless to say we all then thought we'd step up to the challenge only to fail
Strapadictomy is hard! After being ego bashed by Strapadictomy, I headed on to Strapiombo which was good, awesome hanging upside down of bomber fist and foot jams! Adam followed me up but the Link cam I'd placed dissappeared into the depths pf the crack only to be retreived 30 mins later after lots of stick coaxing. I received lots of strange looks when I asked for something long smooth and stiff...We then headed over to Great Slab, Aly flashed Great Slab, Dom cleanly headpointed soloed Heartless Hare at E5 5c, then Aly tried it one handed, in the dark whilst being attacked by a bat... Which was an excellent end to an excellent day!
Shortish El Cap report for those who might be interested! By Andy Kirkpatrick
Here's a quick run down of mine and Karen's trip to Yosemite in September/October where we made a 4 day ascent of Zodiac (A/C2+).
Karen became paraplegic in a climbing incident 15 years ago ( a fall that also broke her skull, neck, ribs, and arms), but since then has undertaken many non climbing adventures (kayaking the inside passage from Canada to Alaska, skiing across Greenland, hand biking over the Himalayas). When she asked me to ski across Greenland with her in 06, my first comment was she should climb El Cap instead, as it would be much easier (little did I know!!!).
After Greenland (a 600 km ski from coast to coast that took 28 days), we started wondering about El Cap. One problem was that the 4 paraplegic climbers that had climbed El Cap had all had lower breaks, meaning they could use their stomach muscles - crucial when it comes to doing several thousand pull ups. Karen on the other hand has no feeling below her ribs, yet a few hours spent jugging up a tree, using a Petzl Pro traction and assorted pulleys seemed to do the trick, even if it was pretty slow. The main problem now was that the lack of muscle bulk or control meant that a normal sit harness compressed Karen's waist to just a few inches - potentially very serous for anything but the shortest of hangs. Climbing El Cap could take us up to 10 days, so another option was needed.
The next trial was in the Foundry in sheffield, were we used a loaned paragliding harness, which was ideal, acting as both a rigid seat, and harness. With this we went off and did our first climb; Kilnsey main overhang, which Karen jumared up with very little problem. It looked like it could work.
Next up was something with a bit more spice; The Old Man of Steor, a sea stack of the West Coast of Scotland. The approach was made by sea kayak, and the overall logistics were much harder, involving a bit of swimming on my part, plus some carrying of Karen. Moving Karen around by myself had long been one of the hardest parts of all our adventures, as being nearly six feet tall, and weighing 70kg, this was always at the limit of of safety and strength! Never the less within an hour of landing, Karen was on the top, having made a swift 60 metre free hanging jumar. It was here though that I saw for the first time just how terrified Karen was hanging on the rope, and because of this I said that El Cap was off, after all if she was terrified on a 60 metre climb, how would she feel on a 600 metre on?
But being a stubborn kind of woman, Karen was not for giving in, and so having only climbed twice (if you ignore the tree, and two ropes in climbing gyms), we headed off to climb El Cap, only this time with the proviso that she would have a back up rope!
I'd always just assumed I'd be carrying Karen on my back too and from the climb, so on our first try I simply hitched her on my back (sat on a modified rucksack), and started staggering up to the base of El Cap. Within 100 yards I felt that there was no way that I could do it, my whole body feeling as if it was engaged in the most extreme form of weight lifting ever devised (carry 70kg up talus in extreme heat), but with lots of sit downs we made it to the base of our route (Shortest Straw) 2 hours after leaving the road...at which point I had to go back for one more haul bag! I'd always planned to climb as a 2, but after climbing El Cap the week before, and seeing the descent again (I'd climbed EL Cap 11 times before), I realized that getting down would be the crux, and doing this alone would be very dangerous for both of us, if not impossible. Looking for some help, I went looking not for climbers with the right skills and plenty of muscle power , but someone I thought would be fun, and easy to get on with, plus be in to the idea of climbing with me a Karen (having a partner in a wheelchair would put most climbers off any route, let alone climbing El Cap.) We teamed up with an Australian female duo from the Blue Mountain (Tasher and Jemmer), would although having almost no big wall experience, seemed very keen to come along on such a crazy adventure.
Unfortunately the climb didn't go as well as I'd hoped. The climbing was slow (lots of dangerous climbing, including a pitch of new age hard aid with many metres of hooking with no gear), and working well as a four person team seemed beyond our grasp, with a lot of time waisted as we tried to figure out a way of hauling all our stuff. Karen was also pretty scared by the whole deal, especially the fact that very often all 4 of us were hanging from just 3 belay bolts. On the 3rd day I woke up after having a nightmare that I translated as being about maintaining focus, and irreversible consequence (it was about my son being run over) and I suggested that I should either rap to the ground and come back with more water, or we should all bail. For the next hour we talked it over, with each of us trying to work out what was the right and wrong thing to do. Finally Karen realized her Thermarest had gone flat, and the girl's realized they'd invertantly dropped all their food, so the decision was made,and we rapped 200 metres back to the ground.
Needless to say carrying Karen back down was easier on the legs, but much harder on the soul.
Once down we talked over our options, the Aussie girls would go off and do a wall by themselves, feeling guilty that they had slowed us down, and while me and Karen discussed if we should go back. For a few days we tried to recover, but something felt wrong, with a great deal of tension between us. Then one night, as we sat eating a pizza, Karen began to cry, feeling trapped by the fact that she was terrified to go back on the wall, but also terrified of running away from a challenge. Basically she had never been scared of anything in her life before, but this was different. I said we should just go now, and leave the valley, and that El Cap wasn't going anywhere, but she replied that we should climb it, then go.
That night we watched a slide show by our friend Timmy O'neil, talking about climbing El Cap with his paraplegic brother Shaun. It was pretty inspirational, but showed up how much grind was involved. The most interesting part was seeing 6 climbers carrying his brother to the base!
The slideshow, and the support and kind words from people like Alex and Thomas Huber, turned the tide and Karen suddenly found the strength to say lets do it, and as we stood their in camp 4 making plans again Jemma and Tash came over and said they'd been thinking that they we should try again as a 4. And so we did.
Four days after leaving the base of El Cap, at around 10pm Karen jugged up in the dark above a 700 metre drop. There was snow in the air, and a viscous wind blew her backwards and forwards as she literally inched up the rope, having made over 4000 pull ups to get there. I lay on the top, exhausted after leading for the last three days. and watched as she grew nearer and nearer, her headtorch and speed making her look like a diver slowly coming up afraid of the bends. Finally she reached the rim, puling her self tight to the bolts until only her skinny legs hung over the edge. Jemmer appeared beside her smiling having cleaned the pitch.
Without help Karen had to wait until I could help her fully onto the top, and for a second I was worried she'd loose it, being trapped by her useless legs one more time on the wall, stuck between heaven and what had often been very much hell. But instead she smiled and with with her usual grace, patience and tenacity, waited a little while longer until it was finally all over. An hour later it began to snow and all was left was getting down.
Postscript
Just talked to Karen who's sat in Hospital in Aberdeen with a broken leg and foot, the result of a fall on our 7 hour wet and slippery descent from El Cap the following day. Never in my life have I undertaken such a psychically and emotionally demanding climb, with the final broken bones coming as a shattering final touch. I have to ask myself what I got out of it? Hubris, self grandisment through another person's disability? I don't know. I also don't know why karen climbed it in the end as well, but what I do know is that El Cap invariably breaks you in some way, but when you heal you know it was all good, and you always want to go back for more.
Thanks to the Hubers, Tom on the bridge, PTPP, Timmy O, Pete and family, Arun, Keith at YOSAR, Don Mabbs, Lee and Anne, Aberdeen A&E and everyone else who made a crazy ideal seem a little less crazy.
Karen became paraplegic in a climbing incident 15 years ago ( a fall that also broke her skull, neck, ribs, and arms), but since then has undertaken many non climbing adventures (kayaking the inside passage from Canada to Alaska, skiing across Greenland, hand biking over the Himalayas). When she asked me to ski across Greenland with her in 06, my first comment was she should climb El Cap instead, as it would be much easier (little did I know!!!).
After Greenland (a 600 km ski from coast to coast that took 28 days), we started wondering about El Cap. One problem was that the 4 paraplegic climbers that had climbed El Cap had all had lower breaks, meaning they could use their stomach muscles - crucial when it comes to doing several thousand pull ups. Karen on the other hand has no feeling below her ribs, yet a few hours spent jugging up a tree, using a Petzl Pro traction and assorted pulleys seemed to do the trick, even if it was pretty slow. The main problem now was that the lack of muscle bulk or control meant that a normal sit harness compressed Karen's waist to just a few inches - potentially very serous for anything but the shortest of hangs. Climbing El Cap could take us up to 10 days, so another option was needed.
The next trial was in the Foundry in sheffield, were we used a loaned paragliding harness, which was ideal, acting as both a rigid seat, and harness. With this we went off and did our first climb; Kilnsey main overhang, which Karen jumared up with very little problem. It looked like it could work.
Next up was something with a bit more spice; The Old Man of Steor, a sea stack of the West Coast of Scotland. The approach was made by sea kayak, and the overall logistics were much harder, involving a bit of swimming on my part, plus some carrying of Karen. Moving Karen around by myself had long been one of the hardest parts of all our adventures, as being nearly six feet tall, and weighing 70kg, this was always at the limit of of safety and strength! Never the less within an hour of landing, Karen was on the top, having made a swift 60 metre free hanging jumar. It was here though that I saw for the first time just how terrified Karen was hanging on the rope, and because of this I said that El Cap was off, after all if she was terrified on a 60 metre climb, how would she feel on a 600 metre on?
But being a stubborn kind of woman, Karen was not for giving in, and so having only climbed twice (if you ignore the tree, and two ropes in climbing gyms), we headed off to climb El Cap, only this time with the proviso that she would have a back up rope!
I'd always just assumed I'd be carrying Karen on my back too and from the climb, so on our first try I simply hitched her on my back (sat on a modified rucksack), and started staggering up to the base of El Cap. Within 100 yards I felt that there was no way that I could do it, my whole body feeling as if it was engaged in the most extreme form of weight lifting ever devised (carry 70kg up talus in extreme heat), but with lots of sit downs we made it to the base of our route (Shortest Straw) 2 hours after leaving the road...at which point I had to go back for one more haul bag! I'd always planned to climb as a 2, but after climbing El Cap the week before, and seeing the descent again (I'd climbed EL Cap 11 times before), I realized that getting down would be the crux, and doing this alone would be very dangerous for both of us, if not impossible. Looking for some help, I went looking not for climbers with the right skills and plenty of muscle power , but someone I thought would be fun, and easy to get on with, plus be in to the idea of climbing with me a Karen (having a partner in a wheelchair would put most climbers off any route, let alone climbing El Cap.) We teamed up with an Australian female duo from the Blue Mountain (Tasher and Jemmer), would although having almost no big wall experience, seemed very keen to come along on such a crazy adventure.
Unfortunately the climb didn't go as well as I'd hoped. The climbing was slow (lots of dangerous climbing, including a pitch of new age hard aid with many metres of hooking with no gear), and working well as a four person team seemed beyond our grasp, with a lot of time waisted as we tried to figure out a way of hauling all our stuff. Karen was also pretty scared by the whole deal, especially the fact that very often all 4 of us were hanging from just 3 belay bolts. On the 3rd day I woke up after having a nightmare that I translated as being about maintaining focus, and irreversible consequence (it was about my son being run over) and I suggested that I should either rap to the ground and come back with more water, or we should all bail. For the next hour we talked it over, with each of us trying to work out what was the right and wrong thing to do. Finally Karen realized her Thermarest had gone flat, and the girl's realized they'd invertantly dropped all their food, so the decision was made,and we rapped 200 metres back to the ground.
Needless to say carrying Karen back down was easier on the legs, but much harder on the soul.
Once down we talked over our options, the Aussie girls would go off and do a wall by themselves, feeling guilty that they had slowed us down, and while me and Karen discussed if we should go back. For a few days we tried to recover, but something felt wrong, with a great deal of tension between us. Then one night, as we sat eating a pizza, Karen began to cry, feeling trapped by the fact that she was terrified to go back on the wall, but also terrified of running away from a challenge. Basically she had never been scared of anything in her life before, but this was different. I said we should just go now, and leave the valley, and that El Cap wasn't going anywhere, but she replied that we should climb it, then go.
That night we watched a slide show by our friend Timmy O'neil, talking about climbing El Cap with his paraplegic brother Shaun. It was pretty inspirational, but showed up how much grind was involved. The most interesting part was seeing 6 climbers carrying his brother to the base!
The slideshow, and the support and kind words from people like Alex and Thomas Huber, turned the tide and Karen suddenly found the strength to say lets do it, and as we stood their in camp 4 making plans again Jemma and Tash came over and said they'd been thinking that they we should try again as a 4. And so we did.
Four days after leaving the base of El Cap, at around 10pm Karen jugged up in the dark above a 700 metre drop. There was snow in the air, and a viscous wind blew her backwards and forwards as she literally inched up the rope, having made over 4000 pull ups to get there. I lay on the top, exhausted after leading for the last three days. and watched as she grew nearer and nearer, her headtorch and speed making her look like a diver slowly coming up afraid of the bends. Finally she reached the rim, puling her self tight to the bolts until only her skinny legs hung over the edge. Jemmer appeared beside her smiling having cleaned the pitch.
Without help Karen had to wait until I could help her fully onto the top, and for a second I was worried she'd loose it, being trapped by her useless legs one more time on the wall, stuck between heaven and what had often been very much hell. But instead she smiled and with with her usual grace, patience and tenacity, waited a little while longer until it was finally all over. An hour later it began to snow and all was left was getting down.
Postscript
Just talked to Karen who's sat in Hospital in Aberdeen with a broken leg and foot, the result of a fall on our 7 hour wet and slippery descent from El Cap the following day. Never in my life have I undertaken such a psychically and emotionally demanding climb, with the final broken bones coming as a shattering final touch. I have to ask myself what I got out of it? Hubris, self grandisment through another person's disability? I don't know. I also don't know why karen climbed it in the end as well, but what I do know is that El Cap invariably breaks you in some way, but when you heal you know it was all good, and you always want to go back for more.
Thanks to the Hubers, Tom on the bridge, PTPP, Timmy O, Pete and family, Arun, Keith at YOSAR, Don Mabbs, Lee and Anne, Aberdeen A&E and everyone else who made a crazy ideal seem a little less crazy.
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