Climbing Narcissist » 8a.nu

Not Much News, Mostly Just Notes – 12/19/2008

Narc — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:55:46 +0000

Hard for any news this week to seem all that impressive compared to what that one guy did, so here are some links to check out:

Steph Davis has an informative post about how she lives an inexpensive lifestyle in order to climb full time
Another interesting lifestyle post is this post on the Crag Baby blog about transitioning from the working world to a more nomadic climbing lifestyle
Everything you could ever hope to know about the art of heel hooking
It’s not too late to enter the Pitches With Pros contest brought to you by Mammut. You have until 1/11/09 to buy raffle tickets for a chance to climb with one of the following climbers: Dean Lords, Dean Potter, Steph Davis, Will Mayo or Sean Jones. Proceeds benefit the Big City Mountaineers charity.

Pitches With Pros

Via Mountains & Water, Northwest Mountain School, The Adventure Blog, Koan Bouldering and many others is this New York Times article about climbing legend Fred Beckey. Definitely worth checking out.
The question was posted recently here on the forum and Peter Beal gives some thoughts on what has been going on at 8a.nu lately. Namely, what is up with all the Top 10 lists and controversial topics.
Speaking of the Climbingnarc.com forums, I made some changes to them that should fix past problems that kept people from posting. If you have something off topic you want to discuss, that is the place to do it. You don’t need to register or anything, so fritter your day away.

Also worth noting from a site perspective is the new feature of threaded comments. You can now respond directly to each comment and the magic of the interweb will keep things organized. This should help keep things more orderly around here…or not.

Not Much News, Mostly Just Notes – 12/19/2008 from Climbing Narcissist

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A Conspiracy Theory That Has Nothing To Do With The Election

Narc — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:47:00 +0000

A few weeks back, Skyler Weeks opened a new dyno at Clear Creek Canyon, CO called Zion. You might be asking yourself, who is Skyler Weeks and why would I care about some dyno in CCC? It turns out that Skyler Weeks is the world record holder for dyno-ing, so when it took him 76 days to stick this dyno it raised some eyebrows and caused Jens at 8a.nu to wildly speculate that Zion must then be V16. Weeks’ efforts were captured on film by Chuck Fryberger for a segment in his upcoming film, Pure, which is how the news was first publicized. Remember this last part, it will be important later.

Skyler Weeks sticking the dyno Zion

Photo: Chuck Fryberger

Obviously, when someone comes out with news of a new, hard problem in the Frontrange of Colorado it is going to draw some interest from people looking to repeat it. With that in mind, Mark “Cookie” Hobson went to Clear Creek Canyon last week with filmmaker Brian Solano to check out Zion. Hobson nearly flashed the line and sent it within a few attempts immediately calling into question the grade of the problem. Hobson felt like the line was in the V8 range, not V13 or V16 as previously suggested. Solano captured Hobson’s send on film and it was to be posted on MVM in short order.

Mark Hobson sticking the dyno Zion

Photo: Brian Solano/MVM

Now, the point of this post is not to debate the difficulty of Zion. As has been pointed out in a discussion on 8a.nu, the grade is irrelevant and the realization of this climb is still a great personal achievement for Weeks. The point of this post is something most people probably haven’t even noticed: the video of Hobson sending Zion was quickly and mysterioulsy removed after briefly being posted on MVM. The Hobson footage has been replaced by a brief news blurb.

To me, this story exemplifies the ongoing debate within the climbing community over the effects commercial considerations are having on how news is reported. It doesn’t take an episode of CSI to speculate what happened to the Hobson footage. Certainly sponsors and filmmakers have their reasons for sharing/withholding information, but the question must be asked: How much influence should sponsors and/or filmmakers really have? It seems that nowadays they have an impact on the distribution of not only the news they’re directly involved with, but also in related news being distributed by others.

A Conspiracy Theory That Has Nothing To Do With The Election from Climbing Narcissist

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News & Notes – 9/11/2008

Narc — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:11:00 +0000

Let’s cut right to the chase:

Alex Honnold took his free soloing to a new level when he climbed the Regular Northwest Face route on Half Dome without a rope. Very impressive, yet kind of scary because what else could be next besides an El Cap free solo?
Paul Robinson had a slow start to his rampage in Europe because of bad weather. With conditions improving from rainy to hot, he has made quick ascents of several hard problems in the areas of Magic Wood and Chironico in Switzerland. So far 2 V13s, 5 V12s and 2 V11s are in the bag with countless harder problems remaining for when conditions get better. If you are at all interested in the high end grading debate you should read Paul’s latest blog entry where he gives his thoughts on the grades of the problems he has climbed thus far. I agree with Jamie’s comment that if he disagrees with a given grade it would be beneficial for Paul to register his thoughts on the all important spraysheet, however I understand his reservations with doing so. 8a.nu has created an environment on their site that is not conducive to a civilized debate these days. Props to James Pearson for pulling off the flash of a couple of these debated V13s.
There has been a lot of development going on in the Eastern Sierra Nevada area Way Lake located north of Bishop, CA. Strong women like Lisa Rands, Beth Rodden and Lyn Verinsky have been pulling down in a big way. Just recently, Isaac Caldiero opened one of the hardest lines when he did Chumscrubber (V12). The crew from Betabase has been up there as well. Also on the scene for the media capture was John Vallejo.

Isaac Caldiero – Chumscrubber (V12)

Photo: Jeff Sillcox

The video of Alex Johnson crushing some alpine boulders is now up on MomentumVM.

A few notable upcoming events:

The 2008 Reel Rock Tour got underway last night in Boulder. Based on the review on AllClimbing it sounds like a great event. The winners of the Reel Rock Tour Filmmaking Competition were “Back on my Feet” and “Chalk it Up” in the so-called action/inspiration category and not surprisingly “Rediness is All” in the humor category. Looks like local favorite Emily is getting her nightmare wish granted to take her “dirt me!” tour nationwide. Check the listings on their site to see when the tour is coming to a city near you.
The Nor’easter festival is coming up September 26-28 at Tenney Mountain in Plymouth, NH. Climbers like Chris Sharma, Dave Graham, Daniel Woods, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson will be in nearby Rumney for clinics and of course hard sending. Check the Nor’easter website for some interesting write-ups on the athletes who will be participating in a Flash and Redpoint bounty comp on the Saturday of the event. The big bounties are offering $1,000 to anyone that can repeat Jaws II (5.15a) and $2000 to anyone who can claim the FA of the so-called Bill Clinton Project.
24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell is coming up the same weekend as Nor’easter in Arkansas. 24 straight hours of clipping bolts!!
Rocktoberfest is quickly approaching at the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. Check out the official website for more information and to register. Unless our plans change suddenly, Mrs. Narc and I will be there. Hopefully we will see some of the Climbingnarc.com faithful down there.

News & Notes – 9/11/2008 from Climbing Narcissist

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Lifestyle, Training, Performance: A Review Of The 2007 8a.nu Yearbook

Narc — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:45:42 +0000

After quickly devouring my 2006 8a.nu Yearbook and promptly letting it sit under my car seat until Mrs. Narc made me throw it away last month, I was on the fence as to whether or not I wanted to order a 2007 yearbook. I enjoyed reading the 2006 version, but my actions after the fact left me with doubts about its long term value.

Speaking of value, while it is advertised as being free, postage costs from Sweden combined with having to order a minimum of 10 books ended up costing me almost $20 last year. However, when I saw that this year only required a 2 book minimum I decided to throw down an order and was pleased that despite the increasingly poor performance of the U.S. dollar it only set us back $11.12. So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on the 2007 8a.nu Yearbook.

All images are from the 8a.nu yearbook (click them to expand)

First Impressions

If first impressions are everything then the outside appearance of the yearbook leaves a lot to be desired. The front cover is dominated by a hideous vomit green color that makes you wonder if you are maybe reading a yearbook from 1977, not 2007. When you turn it over to check out the back cover you are confronted with one of the most bizarre climbing ads I have ever seen: a seemingly deceased naked women lying on a rock with tan lines from her Petzl harness being the only thing she is “wearing”. I think we had better start looking at the inside of the yearbook before we change our minds.

The Layout/Content

Fortunately, the inside of the yearbook is much more eye pleasing than the outside. The pages are nicely designed with quality pictures (and ads) consistently complementing the content without overpowering it.

The content itself varies in quality depending on both your point of view and your interests. U.S. readers are probably not as interested in European World Cup results, and many people will be turned off by the amount of space devoted to ranking climbers. However, the articles and generous amount of pictures included within the rankings should offset some of these concerns.

Also of note, but perhaps not really the fault of the Swedish based publishers, is the high number of grammatical and spelling errors throughout the yearbook. Being that the yearbook is free* one can overlook some of these errors, but it is my hope to see this improve for next year’s book.

The Rankings

What would an 8a.nu project be without copious amounts of space devoted to rankings? Ranking climbers by: arbitrary criteria, route “scores”, boulder “scores”, age, gender…you name it, it is ranked in the 8a yearbook.

The rankings are broken into 2 distinct categories (before being broken down into several subcategories): the 8a editorial decided “Climber of the Year 2007″ and the rankings based on 8a.nu scorecard entries.

Initially I enjoyed reading the Climber of the Year section as it has interviews and insights on top climbers that I hadn’t seen before. Particularly interesting was the lengthy interview with Ethan Pringle (ranked 5th). However the list’s completely arbitrary attempt to rank something (climbers) that has no logical way of being ranked combined with the list’s 100 climber length had me just paging through looking at the pictures about half way through.

The second set of rankings is based on 8a.nu scorecard scores for 2007. It is broken down into (follow me here) Routes, Boulders, Combined, Female Routes, Female Boulders, Female Combined, Junior Routes, Junior Boulders and Junior combined. With these lists I pretty much went straight to thumbing through the pictures as the ranking scores themselves really don’t mean that much to me. I mean, does anyone really know what it means that Paul Robinson had 53 more points last year than Daniel Woods and Dai Koyamada? Obviously it means he climbed more hard problems, but I don’t think I am alone in thinking that assigning scores to routes and problems doesn’t seem to have caught on.

The Pictures

This is where the yearbook really impressed me. With roughly 160 pictures (not including ads which were generally nice to look at) spread across its 80 pages, the yearbook gives you plenty to look at. Not only does it feature pictures from photographers we are used to seeing in U.S. publications like Simon Carter and Keith Ladzinski, it provides a great outlet for lesser known people to get their images published like Hayden Miller and John Vallejo (among others). Also, for readers in the U.S. it offers us a lot more exposure to photos from European photographers whose images we don’t normally get to see. If nothing else, the 8a yearbook serves as a nice photobook to flip through from time to time.

The Articles

The articles featured throughout the yearbook are broken up into a section of 8a.nu “Statements” and articles on various climbers and locations. The 8a Statements are not really anything new, however this section does include a cool month by month recap of notable climbing news from 2007 which I would have liked to see even more of.

The remaining articles range from interviews with climbers like Lynn Hill and Daniel Woods, to tips on training to information on a few areas like the Red River Gorge, KY and Lleida, Spain. For the most part these articles are interesting reads, and they are accompanied by many nice pictures.

More than anywhere else in the yearbook, the articles have several typos and grammatical errors, but I wouldn’t say that they detract too badly from the overall content. I also noticed at least a couple of factual errors in the articles including a statement that the Motherlode is part of the PMRP at the Red River Gorge which I am pretty sure is not correct.

Final Thoughts

Overall I was quite pleased with the 2007 yearbook. Its variety of pictures and interviews with top climbers make it worthwhile even if you are turned off by the focus on numbers. If you want to get a sneak peak of the 2007 yearbook online, 8a has a web based version for you to flip through and you can order your own copy through the 8a store. Of course, I will be doing a contest in the coming weeks where you can get a copy for free so just sit tight if you don’t feel like trying to time the foreign currency markets to get a good price on your book.

Lifestyle, Training, Performance: A Review Of The 2007 8a.nu Yearbook from Climbing Narcissist

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News & Notes – 11/7/07

Narc — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:11:39 +0000

I realize lately that I have been spending too much time blogging about myself and not enough time talking about all the action going down elsewhere so here goes nothing:

During his recent work on Trice, Jamie Emerson made a slight deviation from the line of Trice and nabbed the 3rd ascent after Karn and Moon of AKR (V11). Nice work Jamie. Only a couple of weeks left before Jamie hits the road.

Jamie sending AKR

Photo: Chuffer

Since we last heard from Dave Graham, he has made his way back out west to finish off a few more lines at Rifle. He repeated Stockboy’s Revenge (5.14c), did Benign Intervention (5.14b) second go and flashed Slice of Life (5.13d) .
Somewhat unheralded strongman Kevin Jorgeson, who made very short work of Ode to the Modern Man (V14) earlier this summer, recently established another heady highball boulder problem in Bishop, CA. While the V8/9 crux of the newly established Footprints is down low, the problem climbs more than 40 feet up the tenuous North Face of the Grandpa Peabody boulder at the Buttermilks. Jorgeson considered it be his first “solo” which is saying something if you have seen his other highballs like The Beautiful and Damned (V13) that made Chris Sharma retreat in fear in King Lines.

Kevin Jorgeson high up on Footprints (V9)

Photo: Giovanni Traversi – Climbing.com

Si Moore has made a very late season send of the RMNP V13 benchmark Nuthin’ But Sunshine.
Daniel Woods and Jon Cardwell have setup shop in Europe. After some struggles with conditions they were able to get out and make the 2nd and 3rd ascents respectively of Incubator (V13) at Zillertal. Daniel also flashed Total Brutal (5.14a) at the same crag. Next up they are off to Swizzy. It should be interesting to see how they do on the problems there.
Last week I reported that Mike Doyle repeated Fifty Words for Pump (5.14c) at the Red River Gorge. Here you can read his thoughts on the climb as well as confirmation that he apparently did adjust the bolts to make the clipping a little less cruxy. His girlfriend Audrey Sniezek has been having a good few weeks as well. She onsighted Cell Block Six (5.12c), and she was recently added as a new USA editor on 8a.nu.
Check out this pretty cool analysis of the ascents in the 8a.nu database. Without having access to the actual database, any analysis is kind of hard to do on observation alone but it is still an interesting read. I for one would like to see “Mr 8a” find some way to allow others to tap into the really incredible wealth of information that is currently being stored in the 8a database.
8a.nu has also added the V and YDS scales to their scorecard system. Somewhat pointless if you ask me.
On the mountaineering front, Tomaz Humar recently soloed the 3000-meter south face of Annapurna (8091m) in a 4 day push. First climbed in 1970 in a traditional weeks long assualt on the mountain, the south face of Annaurna is one of the great challenges in high altitude mountaineering. It famously claimed the life of Anatoli Boukreev during an attempt in the winter of 1997.

News & Notes – 11/7/07 from Climbing Narcissist

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