Climbing Narcissist » Pro Blog

News & Notes – 08/27/2007

Narc — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:15:16 +0000

As usual, I go away from a computer for a weekend and the sendtrain begins…

The big news is that Paul Robinson has made the 3rd ascent of Jade (V15 for now) in RMNP. The day after the Jade send, Paul did the second ascent of Chris Schulte’s new V13 Child Stars SDS at Mt. Evans. And to cap off the week, he made a quick repeat of Daniel Woods’s new line The Lockness Monster. Nice Work Paul!

Paul on Jade

Photo: Woodsfamilyclimbs

Daniel Woods has added a sit start to the recently established (and oft-repeated) V11 Two Ton Tongue which he has dubbed The Lockness Monster (V13). Within a couple of days it was repeated by both Paul Robinson and Ty Landman.
Kevin Jorgenson has made the 3rd ascent of Ode to the Modern Man (V14) at Mt. Evans. Best known for climbing scary and difficult highballs, Kevin has now done two of the better known short power problems in the U.S. with the other being The Swarm (V14).
The Youth World Climbing Championships recently wrapped up. Click here for complete results. Despite reports last week that Ryan Roden did not attend, he in fact was there and he finished 7th! Congratulations as well to Tyler Haack who finished 18th.
Bouldering.com is trying again with the pro blogs concept. They began last year but fizzled out in short order. Check out this newly updated blog by Jon Cardwell. In the post he talks about his travels across Europe this summer to areas like Gorges du Loup and Ceuse. He also gives some insight as to Ethan Pringle’s progress on Realization which was recently marred when Ethan broke a hold on a route which resulted in all the skin on one of his fingers being destroyed.
Check out this new video of Ty Landman repeating Paul Robinson’s Don’t Get Too Greedy (V13).
Sonnie Trotter recently established another contender for “hardest trad route in the world” when he redpointed The Path (5.14 R). Check out the video of him on the route:

News & Notes – 08/27/2007 from Climbing Narcissist

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Midweek News – 08/22/07

Narc — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:17:00 +0000

Here are a few interesting stories to check out

Splitterchoss has a couple of cool tidbits on climbing at Rifle.
- First is a post about a feature story done about climbing at Rifle Mountain Park in the Glenwood Post Independent.
- Second is news about a new guidebook for Western Colorado climbing that will feature updated Rifle information among many other areas. The book will be published by Wolverine Publishing. Check out my post on the new Red River Gorge guidebook for some samples of their work which is awesome.
Mike Doyle is back on the road again after taking a bit of a break upon returning home from his lengthy roadtrip to places like Hueco, Smith Rock, RRG and Australia. In the past month he has been in Riggins, ID, Maple Canyon, UT and Rifle. He has done 13 routes 5.13 and harder in just the past 3 weeks.
This is probably only exciting news to me, but a team of Russian mountaineers have put up a new route on the hitherto unclimbed West Face of K2 in Pakistan. K2 was the peak featured in the laughable film “Vertical Limit” and it is probably the toughest of the 8000m giants to climb via any route. This was the first new line put on the mountain in 21 years (and not for a lack of trying).
Even if you are not into mountaineering, the latest pro blog at climbing.com by Freddie Wilkinson is still a really good read. He recounts the sort of emotions a climber has when going on a rescue.
Check out the video of Steve McClure climbing one of the hardest routes in Great Britain, Mutation (5.14d), after you read the write-up at Dr. Topo.
Last week I raised a question after watching the new MomentumVM video in which it was said that Ben Scott only goes to Area D at Mt. Evans once a year to “lessen impact”. It seemed like a strange thing to put in a video. Courtesy of Chad Greedy, here is a more lighthearted take (along with mass repeats of Seth Allred’s new V11 Two Ton Tongue):

Midweek News – 08/22/07 from Climbing Narcissist

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