Innholdsfortegnelse for June & July 2019 / Vol 21 Issue 3 i Gripped: The Climbing Magazine

All across Canada this year, climbers will be sending new climbs and old classics. I’ve been lucky to witness a number of important Canadian ascents, from new 5.15s to the opening of grade VI alpine walls. Most of the time, the sends are recorded and entered into an alpine journal, magazine or, at the very least, documented on social media. But for some strong Canadians, the send stops at the chains and few will ever hear about it. Every climbing area has at least one dark horse, the local climber who cleans up projects and repeats the hardest lines. I was lucky to see a dark horse in action while in Skaha this spring. Willis Brown, a farmer in B.C.’s interior, was inching his way up Guy Edwards’s High Country…

Skaha is one of Canada’s most-visited areas and is set up to handle hundreds of climbers with dozens of amazing crags and hundreds of five-star routes. The Bottom Line is a classic and one of the best 5.11a sport routes in Canada. Anyone who’s climbed it would agree that every move offers fun and sustained climbing at the grade. First climbed by Dean Hart in 1994, the vertical line starts up a bouldery arête of solid stone. The round holds have small incuts and the space between them is far. It will give you a solid pump right off the start. Although no single move is harder than 5.10+ in difficulty, the first few metres are unrelenting and set up the next 25 metres. As you reach the top of…

After 27 years of working with the Park Service, Yager has secured a permanent location to build his dream project in the centre of Yosemite National Park. Sitting across from Ken Yager this morning over coffee in Mariposa, Calif., located an hour from Yosemite National Park, I could tell he was excited. Dressed in a dusty fedora and faded black T, his sandy beard trimmed short, he took swigs out of his mug and told me about the next steps for his climbing exhibit called Granite Frontiers. Yager, who moved to Yosemite 43 years ago (1976), is the park’s climbing spokesperson. Today, he works on various cleanup related projects and is the owner of the carpet cleaning service Best Bet, which employs many climbers, and he recently arranged for the…

Seb Bouin Sends Seb Bouin made the second ascent of Mamichula 5.15b in Spain, first climbed by Adam Ondra. Canadians Get Speedy At the time of print, the ifsc speed world cup season was half over and some Canadians had clocked personal bests (PB). Alannah Yip got a PB of 9.449 in Wujiang and Sean McColl a time of 7.17 in Moscow. Big Red Rocks Day Brad Gobright and Alex Honnold linked four Red Rocks big walls in only 10.5 hours on April 1. They free soloed Solar Slab and then Honnold led every pitch of Levitation 29, and Gobright led every pitch of Rainbow Wall. Finally, Honnold led every pitch of Cloud Tower. Jim Reynolds in Patagonia Jim Reynolds, 25, made history on the famous Patagonian peak Fitz Roy,…

Ontario is known for pumpy limestone and dolostone climbing along the Niagara Escarpment and the adventurous climbing on Canadian Shield granite and quartzite farther north and east. There are crags and boulders strewn about the province, but one strip of walls, known as Orient Bay, still holds many potential lines. The area was first explored in the 1970s, and saw a boom in rock climbing development in the 1990s led by a handful of devoted Thunder Bay locals. One of them was Steve Charlton, who established a handful of multi-pitch aid and free routes on the 100-metre walls north of Nipigon on the north shoe of Lake Superior. Charlton had always wanted to create a fully bolted route straight up the biggest wall: the nose of Mount Olympus. “Orient Bay…

NIKKI SMITH is a celebrated photographer and author, whose images have appeared in a number of Gripped magazine issues. Smith is the owner of Pull Photography, Pull Designs and Pull Publishing, and she combines her passion for climbing with her natural skill as an artist. Smith began taking photos at a young age thanks to a gift of a camera from her father. She went on to win a number of ribbons at a state fair at five years old. In college, Smith guided with Utah Mountain Adventures and was a route-setter at Rockreation in Salt Lake City. She eventually began working for Liberty Mountain, a gear distributor where she ran the climbing and sponsorship programs, as well as the marketing department and layouts for catalogues and advertisements. Smith then…

Rock Climbing Anchors: A Comprehensive Guide 2nd Edition Topher Donahue and Craig Luebben Mountaineers Books 2019 When bouldering, it’s your posse that protects you. When climbing with a rope – indoors or out – it’s anchors that keep you safe. In a welcome update to a classic book, Topher Donahue brings back Climbing Anchors to a world where most practitioners learn to climb in gyms (some never leave), where the rising standards of performance are matched by expectations of gear performance, and where climbing parties may well include young adults. Much as the original did, this rewrite strives for clarity and practicality with photos serving as the primary means of illustration. The original was based on an engineering ethos, and the update builds on that. The principles of equalization, redundancy…

Petzl Spirit Express Quickdraw $30 to $32 The Spirit Express has long been a favourite for many sport climbers with its smooth action and thick dogbone. For 2019, it will now feature Petzl’s new clear “string” to hold the rope-side carabiner secure in the quickdraw. This is to make inspecting the attachment for the carabiner to the dogbone easier. The dogbone will now come in grey. CAMP Universal Soft Piton $19 to $22 Many climbers still carry pitons when they’re climbing alpine rock or multi-pitch trad routes. Soft pitons are handy for softer rock, like the limestone in the Canadian Rockies, where you need something to mould into cracks without breaking the stone. The head angle of the camp soft piton provides good holding power for both vertical and horizontal…

Austrians Hansjörg Auer, David Lama and America Jess Roskelley were caught in an avalanche on April 16 while climbing Howse Peak, a remote mountain in the Canadian Rockies. They had climbed M16, a grade VI 1,000-metre WI7+ A2+ alpine route up the northeast face, likely making the first free ascent and the second ascent overall. The first ascent was in March 2000 by Barry Blanchard, Scott Backes and Steve House, but they stopped shy of the corniced ridge and summit. Auer, Lama and Roskelley successfully reached the summit in making the first one-day ascent of the face. At some point on the descent, an avalanche swept them to the bottom of the wall. Parks Canada search and rescue workers located equipment in avalanche debris on April 17, and concluded that…

Mountain Hardwear Phantom Alpine -9 $675 to $725 Mountain Hardwear’s 2019 focus on technical climbing is exaggerated with the amazing Phantom Alpine that’s designed for remote mountain missions. At only 957 grams, it’s the perfect weight for keeping in your pack while on the move. The clever dual side zipper gives you an option to open the bag to stay clipped in with your harness on. The high loft will keep you cozy and warm during cold summer night. A great option for you alpine climbers. MEC Fireside 0 $190 to $200 The 2019 version of the Fireside completely revamps the old model to create a high-end sack for backcountry camping. There’s plenty of room and dual zippers that allow you to open the bag and convert it to a…

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