Gripped: The Climbing Magazine October/ November 2024 Vol 26 issue 5

This is many climbers’ favourite time of year, with its transition from summer heat and wildfire smoke to cool evenings and colourful trees. It’s time to take advantage of those sendy temps and quiet crags to redpoint your projects and to find new ones for spring 2025. Of course, summer was full of memorable moments, from Janja Garnbret winning her second Olympic gold, to Alex Megos climbing 5.15c in five days. One of the most impressive new routes of the summer, in my books anyway, was a new five-pitch line by Anna Hazelnutt in Yosemite. In mid-September, she made the first ascent of Inner Peace on the west face of Medlicott Dome in Tuolumne Meadows. The first two pitches follow Peace at 5.11d and 5.13d, the third pitch is Hazelnutt’s…

Rab Women’s Mythic Alpine Down Jacket $575 If you’re looking for a jacket to keep you warm in the cold months ahead, for moving up a snowy ridge or chilling at a belay, then consider this. Perfect for dry conditions, incredibly warm and retains its loft throughout the season. Scarpa Origin VS $159 Built on a slightly asymmetric flat last and featuring gentle tensioning, the Origin VS delivers a reasonable level of performance without the toe-crushing fit common with many higher-end specialized shoes. If you are a new or intermediate climber looking for a comfortable shoe, look no further. Patagonia M10 Anorak $499 Ice and alpine climbers are celebrating, as Patagonia has brought the M10 Anorak back to market. The minimalist shell will keep you safe from the elements, allows…

In summer, British rock climber James Pearson successfully made the long-awaited second ascent of Echo Wall on the north face of Ben Nevis, in Scotland. His ascent came 16 years after the route was first climbed by Scottish local Dave MacLeod in 2008, who described it as potentially one of the hardest traditional climbs in the world and the most difficult in the U.K., but he did not grade it. A few weeks after his ascent, Pearson sent us his thoughts about the grade. For a route that had never been graded, Echo Wall certainly had a lot of people thinking it was the hardest traditional rock climb in the world. From MacLeod’s original blog posts at the time, he made it clear he felt the route was harder than…

A small mountain community in the Himalaya called Thame, which is home to several Nepalese mountain guides, was struck by a devastating flood of freezing water earlier this year. Luckily nobody was killed, but dozens of homes were lost, including lodges used by trekkers passing through. Videos posted on social media by the local authorities showed muddy water digging through the landscape in scenes that looked like they were from Hollywood movies. Entire structures collapsed, as people fled to higher ground. Thame, a Sherpa village that sits at around 3,800 meters, was once home to Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, who was on the first ascent of Everest with New Zealander Edmund Hillary in 1953. The village is now home to Kami Rita Sherpa, the climber who holds the record for the…

Tucked into the foothills of the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies is a bouldering area that’s been gaining popularity over the years. While climbers have been visiting the large conglomerate rocks found in a forest near Yamnuska for decades, it wasn’t until recently that a development spree took place that resulted in there being dozens of problems from V0 to V10. There are five main areas of boulders, with them being The Cottage, Lil’Un, Forget Me Knot, The Garden and Moss Rock. The approach is around 30 minutes of walking on a flat trail into a forest with views of the Prairies to the east and mountains to the west. This is the only place in the Canadian Rockies where you’ll find conglomerate, a rock that is harder than…

Onsighting at your limit is hard. When climbing a difficult route, you know nothing about, you’re almost certainly going to get very pumped. Unlike a dialed-in redpoint attempt, you end up using unideal beta repeatedly, making moves harder than they need to be. Reading moves on the fly, you turn a V4 crux into a V6, and because you’re gambling with the sequences, you end up climbing up and left above the last bolt rather than up and right, turning the run to the chains into a pumpy V3 rather than a V1. The physical difficulty of onsighting is only half the battle. Perhaps more so than any form of climbing, onsighting is mentally draining. Your brain not only has to sort out complex sequences under a growing state of…