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CONTENTS

ISSUE 329
8

FLASH

34

Get your core strong

for steeps with these
10 exercises.

THE APPROACH
17

Editors Note

18

Letters

36

Re-Gram

Reader-submitted
#climberproblems.

20

Nutrition

A tasty oatmeal recipe

for all-day energy with
topping tips from oatloving pros.

Archives

19

Training

39

GEAR
Primer

Dissected: See what

parts make up a climbing shoein detail.

Off The Wall

The ne art of climbing.

40

Rock shoe buyers

guide! Find the pair
thats right for you.

THE CLIMB
26

GUIDE

44

Advice

Epicenter

47

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ANDREW BURR; MICK TRESEMER; MATT BALLARD; BRETT AFFRUNTI; LESLIE HITTMEIER

Chattanooga, Tennessee is the capital of

Southern climbing.

32

Instant Expert

Tested

The latest gear obsessions from our testers.

Jonathan Siegrist sent

his rst 5.15 this year.
Heres what he learned.

28

Big Review

CLINICS

Begin Here

Learn to use the shelf

on your multi-pitch
anchor.

48

Send chimneys like

Santa Claus with tips
and techniques from
Rob Pizem.

Ripped From the

Headlines

Minimize the risk when

you nd yourself stuck
in a lightning storm.

50

Shop Tech

Use the science of friction to your advantage.

53

VOICES

Ask Answer Man

Whats the nal word

on booty?

54

The Wright Stuff

Cedar Wright talks

naked climber chicks
yep, you read that right.

56

Semi-Rad

The accidental art of

punting.

58

Yosemite Profiles

Meet Yosemite
reporter and historian
Tom Evans.

88 THE

Cover photo by Andrew Burr: Jasmin Caton gets high on Orange Plasma (5.11a), Tuolumne Meadows, California.

FLOW
CLIMBING.COM

|3

ANDREW BURR

CONTENTS

4|

OCTOBER 2014

ISSUE 329
Jonathan Hemlock enjoys the
stunning light of golden hour on
Everlasting (5.11b) at the supreme fall
destination of Devils Tower, Wyoming.

60 Everyday Heroes

72 The Mind Game

Unless youre part of

a search and rescue
team, you dont
head out for a day
of climbing expecting to be thrust
into a life-or-death
situation. Dougald
MacDonald combed
through dozens of
stories of regular
climbers helping
other climbers to
nd ve amazing
examples of ordinary
people who saved
anothers life.

Theres no way
around itclimbing
is scary! We all feel
the fear at one point
or another, and after
a particularly harrowing experience,
Matt Lloyd decided
to do some research
on how pros like Alex
Honnold and Steph
Davis quash their
anxiety and doubt.
His ndings could
take your climbing
to the next level
safely.

81 Bargaining
With God
When four young
climbers with bigmountain dreams
went to the St.
Elias range to take
on Canadas tallest peak, they had
no idea how close
they would come
to never returning
home. In rst-person
accounts, each tells
a dramatic story of
pain, hunger, facing
death, and how it
changed them all.

Issue 327. Climbing (USPS No. 0919-220, ISSN No. 0045-7159) is published ten times a year (February, March, April, May, July, August, September, October, November, December/January) by SkramMedia LLC. The known ofce of publication is at 2520 55th St., Suite 210, Boulder, CO 80301. Periodicals postage paid at Boulder, CO, and at additional mailing ofces. POSTMASTER: Send address changes
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Please send all UAA to CFS. Retailers: Please send correspondence to Climbing c/o Retail Vision 815 Ogden Avenue, Lisle, IL 60532-1337. List Rental: Contact Kerry Fischette at American List Counsel,
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CLIMBING.COM

|5

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FLASH

8 | OCTOBER 2014

Alex Megos
Biographie (5.15a),
aka Realization
Cse, France

Every once in a while, one

route emerges as a collectively agreed-upon benchmark
for the worlds strongest
climbers. These routes can
be about more than just hard
climbing with a high grade
theyre about history. First
bolted and named in 1989
by Jean-Cristophe Lafaille,
Biographie went unclimbed
until Arnaud Petit added an
anchor at the halfway point
and sent the rst portion in
1996. Five years later, Chris
Sharma climbed the full route.
In classic Sharma style, he
didnt grade the climb, but he
did give it a name: Realization.
(French tradition calls for
the route to be named by the
bolter; U.S. tradition calls
for the route to be named by
the rst ascensionist, hence
the dual moniker.) The route
saw six more ascents over
the course of 13 years, when
American Jonathan Siegrist
kicked off a send train in early
June 2014 after a month of
working it (see p. 26). Alex
Megos (pictured) followed
suit on July 11, completing
it on the third try of his rst
day, and 11 days later, Adam
Ondra senttwo years after he
tried to ash it while the world
watched via social media. One
week into August, Japanese
strongman Sachi Amma
rounded out the sends with
the eleventh total ascent.
MIKEY SCHAEFER

CLIMBING.COM

|9

FLASH
Alex Puccio
Top Notch (V13)
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Despite her position as one of the

strongest female climbers in the
world, with dozens of international podium appearances, a
half-dozen national bouldering
championships, and countless
V12 sends under her belt, Alex
Puccio had yet to tick V13 as
of June 2014. Then on July 1,
she headed to Chaos Canyon
and sent the difficult Top Notch
(V13) on her second day working
it. Five days later, she put away
Nuthin But Sunshine, another
V13 in Chaos Canyon, which she
said was not quite as hard as Top
Notch. The summer of sends
didnt end there: On August 2,
she ticked her rst V14 with an

10 | OCTOBER 2014

ascent of Daniel Woods iconic

testpiece Jade, also in Chaos
Canyon; it was the rst try of her
fourth day on the problem. The
lady-crushing rounded out with
two more women climbing V14
(see opposite page), Angie Payne
getting the rst female ascent
of her four-year project Freaks
of the Industry (V13) in Chaos
Canyon (read the backstory at
climbing.com/odetothealpine),
Brooke Raboutou nabbing her
rst V13 with Fragile Steps in
Rocklands, South Africa, and
Ashima Shiraishi sending Betta
Move (V13), also in Rocklands.
JOEL ZERR

Shauna Coxsey
New Base Line (V14)
Magic Wood, Switzerland

After breaking her leg in Magic

Wood two years prior, 21-yearold British crusher Shauna Coxsey came back for revenge this
summer, which she got in spades
with her send of New Base Line,
securing her position as the third
woman in the world to climb V14.
It was a erce race for second
place. Coxseys ascent came only
a few days after Ashima Shiraishi,
13, became the second female to
send the grade with her ascent
of Golden Shadow in Rocklands,
South Africa (inset). (In October
2012, Japanese climber Tomoko
Ogawa, 34, nabbed the top spot
when she sent Catharsis in Shiobara, Japan, after three years of
effort.) Coxsey, who is known as
a top competition climber, including an overall second place nish
in the 2014 IFSC Boulder World
Cup, visited the Wood to wrap
up some two-year-old nemesis
projects: Piranja (V10), which
she broke her leg on in 2012, and
One Summer in Paradise (V13).
When she sent both quicker than
expectedsaying they lacked
the ght I had been craving
she moved on to New Base Line,
a problem that was at the top of
her wish list. Despite three days
of rain and an emotional battle
with a committing move toward
the end, Coxsey stuck with it and
secured her place in climbing
history.
LUKA TAMBAA
(INSET) KENJI TSUKAMOTO

CLIMBING.COM

| 11

FLASH

12 | OCTOBER 2014

Mike Brumbaugh
Original Avluntning (5.11a)
Lofoten Islands, Norway

With gigantic granite walls

rising straight out of the ocean,
a latitude that lies within the
Arctic Circle, and a surprisingly
temperate climate for how far
north it is, the archipelago of
the Lofoten Islands is a multidiscipline climbers dream.
Think: World-class ice climbing
in the winter meets accessible
all-day alpine ridges, big walls,
and countless boulders in the
summer (by all day, we mean 24
hours of daylight with the characteristic midnight sun). Several
main islands with fjord-laden
topographical features and an
exceedingly long coastline mean
this area is rife with rock. Climbing in Norway originated in this
region about 150 years ago, and
there are currently enough established lines to ll a lifetimewith
enough new-route potential to ll
10 more. Here, Mike Brumbaugh
thinks about his next move on
Original Avluntning, graded 7 on
the Norwegian scale.
ANDREW BURR

CLIMBING.COM

| 13

FLASH

14 | OCTOBER 2014

James Pearson and

Caroline Ciavaldini
Rocklands, South Africa

In recent years, boulderers have

ocked to Rocklands for the
seemingly limitless rock and opposite optimal season (our summer is their winter), but these
small stoneminded developers
largely ignored the potential for
trad lines in the uniquely shaped
sandstone. Briton James Pearson and Frenchwoman Caroline
Ciavaldini (whos originally from
La Runion, a French island in
the South Indian Ocean) visited
the area for three weeks this
summer, establishing several
hard new trad routes on the
sculpted rockmany of which
were within sight of campsites and popular bouldering
spots. Growing up climbing
on the gritstone of the United
Kingdom, Pearson is no stranger
to climbing hard through scary
runouts over tricky gear, but
he found the opposite in South
Africa: The amazing rock is full
of horizontal cracks, making
gear placement really easy.
The routes are often steep and
athletic, and almost always
completely safeRocklands
is a trad-loving sport climbers
dream. That was perfect for
Ciavaldini, who got her start on
the lead competition climbing
circuit, but eventually moved to
repeatingand now establishinghard lines outside. Its
almost guaranteed that the duo
will be back for what Pearson
calls potential for literally
thousands of new routes.
RIKY FELDERER LA SPORTIVA/WILD COUNTRY

CLIMBING.COM

| 15

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Bill Morse suits up for a larger than life burn on California 5.12, a steep and thuggy 12c at Red Rock Canyon, Nevada Photo: Ben Moon

THE

T
H
E
A
P
P
R
O
A
C
H
PPROACH
CONTRIBUTORS

ANDREW BYDLON

This perma-stoked 28-year-old

founder of the Boulder, Colorado
based Caveman Collective (a commercial photography group) shot
portraits for Everyday Hero (p.
60) and has this advice: Make
strong eye contact and listen to
your subject. This will help establish a deeper connection and a
more honest image.

MATT LLOYD

Born in Johannesburg, South

Africa, and raised in Europe
and the U.S., Lloyd eventually
settled in Denver for its proximity to several lifetimes worth
of climbing. This professional
climber and guide researched
fear and how to manage it (The
Mind Game, p. 72) and found
that its as important to train
your mind as it is your body. I
nd this comforting, he says.
It means you dont have to be
born a certain way to achieve a
healthy, productive relationship
with fear in our sport.

EDITORS NOTE

A Days Work
My neighbor Ben is a great dude. Our kids ride bikes to
the park together; our wives race triathlons and gossip;
we share beers and laughs around many a cookout. Were
the prototypical neighborhood friends, as if out of some TV show.
A couple weekends ago, he was late meeting up and apologized. Bad
climbing accident, he said, still a little shaken. Skull fracture. Bens the
park manager at Eldorado Canyon State Park, and he was a responder to a
ground fall from 60 feet up on Little Peanut Wall. The climber, Front Range
hardman Wayne Crill, was wearing a helmet, and it was one of the fastest
rescues you could imagine. In a litter, through the scree, down the trail, and
nally to a helicopter within an hour. With severe head and other internal
injuries, Crill has a ways to go, but he survived because of Ben, longtime
climbing ranger Steve Muehlhauser, Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, and
other climbers quick actions. That makes them heroes in my book. But to
Ben and others in his line of work, stuff like this could happen on any given
day. Its part of the job description.
Have you ever deeply considered the job description of climbing partner? On page 19, we asked what qualities you value most in a partner. Spoiler alert: Keeps me laughing when things get rough won. Im all about that
(insert fart jokeor actual farthere), but when you rope up with someone,
it involves way more than one-liners. In Everyday Hero by Dougald MacDonald (p. 60), we found ve climbers who saved anothers life, people who
fully embody the type of partner we should all strive to be.

HIGHLIGHTS
FROM THE
JOURNEY

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ANDREW BURR; COURTESY (2); ANDREW BURR; D. SCOTT CLARK; ROMMEL UMALI

BY SHANNON DAVIS

ROB PIZEM

Big wall dreams can only come

true by mastering offwidths
and chimneys. Dont hold your
climbing life back by avoiding them, just get in there and
embrace the gap! says Grand
Junction,
Coloradobased
family man, teacher, and professional climber Rob Pizem.
Take the rst step in mastering the art of ascending extraextra-wide cracks by reading
Robs hard-earned chimney
tips on page 32.

Laughing at ourselves

Laughing at Cedar Wright

Learning more about fear

Being in awe

I have two appers and a

blood blister right now, and
our readers shared photos of
their #climberproblems, too.

If youre doing the dirtbag thing, you know

that odd jobs put gas in the tank and PBRs
in your mouth. In this months edition of
The Wright Stuff, Cedar details what is
surely one of the oddest odd jobs in climbing
history. Without giving too much away, lets
just say he learned a lot about anatomy.

Control it to climb harder.

Dont worry, I am the strongest

motherfucker on the planet. I had
the notion that if it meant walking to
Seattle I would do it. The limitation
was time, not my determination.
This powerful line from our heroes
feature (p. 60) is just one of many
that will put a re in your gut.
CLIMBING.COM

| 17

THE APPROACH
VIRTUAL DISCUSSION

ARCHIVES

In his July 2014 column, Cedar Wright lamented the end

of the classic Yosemite dirtbag era. The digital version at
Climbing.com elicited opinions, nostalgia, and longing from
our readers. See the full story at climbing.com/dirtbag.

COMMENTS
News Flash: Its dead. If you
dont think so, try buying a
climbing T-shirt. $75 for a shortsleeved climbing shirt.
Shiloh Dorsett 07/30/14
04:30:23
My wife and I gave up
dirtbagging many years ago. We
miss it terribly. When the weight
of responsibility presses down
hard on us, I tell her, One day,
my love, we will do it again. I
may never onsight 12a trad again
or do the Nose in a day again, but
we will live poor and free again.
Peter L. Scott - 07/30/2014
9:59:58
The dirtbags of yesterday are
the pros of today, thanks to
so many climbing companies
putting money into the sport.
db - 07/30/2014
4:37:11
If I were in my 20s, Id live in a
tent again in a heartbeat.
Rob Hanson - 07/30/14
04:42:11

Dirtbags arent dead. Theyre

hiding. My advice to aspiring
dirtbags is to go up to the North
Cascades. No crowds. You can
still run into Beckey out there
and the next guard.
Beck - 07/30/2014
5:40:21
Modern climbers lead a
balanced life compared to the
climbing-centric days of my
youth. Dirtbagging was a means
to an end. Somehow it morphed
into a gloried alternative
lifestyle, with its practitioners
regarded as modern-day ascetics
who are better than those
enjoying a more comfortable
existence.
Marc B - 07/31/2014
4:45:59
There are still some of us out
here. Id send you a picture of
my Tacoma, but the house is too
messy from my latest trip to take
a picture right now.
Mike - 07/31/2014
9:17:40

KEEP IN TOUCH

letters@climbing.com /climbingmagazine @climbingmag @climbingmagazine

Chris Sharma: The Early Years

Climbings rst mention of Chris Sharma (in the December 1995 issue)
began with a question: Who the hell is Chris Sharma anyway? At the
time, the 14-year-old had just won his age group at the 1995 sport
climbing Youth World Championships, earning his rst-ever magazine
photo (above) and beginning his reign as one of the worlds top climbers.
Perhaps most impressive is that hed only begun climbing two years prior
at age 12, and he was already sending 5.13c outside with little effort. The
article states:
His first experience was in the Kids Belay program at
Pacific Edge climbing gym in Santa Cruz, California. Chris
breezed through the grades, mastering 5.12 within his first
year of climbing. His mentors began setting more difficult
and devious routes in hopes of thwarting the youngster, who
had begun to sport a bit of an attitude, constantly downgrading the gyms hardest routes.

Climbing
The Ranks
Only four issues after his initial
appearance, Sharma graced the
back cover of our June 1996 issue
in this Five Ten ad. At this point he
was climbing 5.14a (pictured), and
had won another handful of competitions. Within the next year he
would redpoint Americas hardest
testpieces of the day.

Opening
Statements

OVERHEARD
I could climb it, but Im not sober enough to drive there.
Boulder, CO climber on soloing the Second Flatiron (5.0) at midnight on a Monday.
Its funny to think about all the climbers out there that would be fat hephers [sic] if
they didnt rock climb.
Pro climber Joe Kinder, on Facebook.
Luckily, the 10 minutes following my ascent where I couldnt get down off the boulder
werent caught on camera.
Shauna Coxsey, on her blog, describes becoming the third woman to climb V14,
and then being unable to climb off it.
18 | OCTOBER 2014

In our rst Sharma interview

(August 1997), the 16-year-old
phenom stated his opinion on the practice of red-tagging a project (the
act of a route developer claiming a climb, to keep others from taking the
rst ascent). The quote below came after he had bagged a years-old
Tony Yaniro project, but his sentiment remained when he found his own
mega-project in La Dura Dura (5.15c), which was rst climbed by Adam
Ondra just last year.
Its like teasing someone, Look at my project, but you cant get
on it. If I bolt something, Im not going to put a red tag on it. I
wouldnt think it would discourage you to watch somebody else
climb a project that you had spent a lot of time on. It should
motivate you to work on it more.

OBVIOUS LINES

Whats the most important quality you look for in a climbing partner (assuming theyre safe)?
Keeps me laughing when things get rough
Super psyched
Other
Nice, soft catches
Strong enough to lead all the hard pitches
Always brings post-climb beers
Anyone who can breathe/safely operate a belay device
Owns a huge rack of expensive, shiny pro

OTHER:
Can bail on routes, but not on plans.

107
78
55

I only climb with my wife. Anyone

else would be considered cheating.

46
41

Will pick up the sharp end when

Im so scared that I question why I ever
started climbing in the rst place.

33
31
6

35 *Source: Climbing reader survey. Join at climbing.com/readerpanel.

RE-GRAM

#ClimberProblems

Life changes when you become a climber. Your body becomes lean and captivating. Gravity becomes a force that can be overcome. Pickle jars
become easy to open. On the other hand, climbers face unique, everyday challenges that our proportionately forearmed brethren will never understand. Here is a small sampling of those #climberproblems, shared by our readers.

This fella cheese-grated down Breashears Crack

in Morrison, incurring a burly flapper in the
process.
@_ha_vee_air_

My girlfriend is too small

to properly spot me, so I
strapped together three
Mondos and a sit pad.
@carerommel

Five guides were getting ngerprinted for work at a

climbing camp. We had a contest to see who had the
most shredded tips. I won with ve rejected prints.
- @erikthatcher

After cruising up Fake

Pamplemousse (V11), Fraser
McIlwraith nds the descent
harder than the climb.
@pennylopeorr

Finally found a way to dry

my ropeand a use for the
ironing board that sits in my
closet gathering dust.
@aparker_ut

Put me in a dress and heels on a boat, but nothing changes. I still try to climb everything and
anything.
@kaderines

The search for boulders

isnt always easyor
cleannear Laramie Peak
in Wyoming.
@ghoulish

At Washoe Boulders, NV. I

ripped the best hold off Halloween Hangover (V7)
and onto my domepiece.
@jazzy_monkey

CLIMBING.COM

| 19

THE APPROACH
OFF THE WALL

Climbing as Art

Meet two artists who are pushing our sport into ne art galleries
BY KEVIN CORRIGAN
ITS NOT OFTEN THAT rock climbers are admired in New York City art galleries, but
Missoula, Montana painter Barb Schwarz Karst has accomplished just that. Her painting
Face to Face shows her husband of 28 years, Tim Karst, climbing Witness The Tickness
(5.11a/b) in Mill Creek, Montana. The photorealist portrait has been featured in places from
the retired art teachers home state to Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
What inspired you to paint Face To Face?

How did your husband react when he saw it?

When I started dating my husband, the rst piece

of artwork I ever gave him was a colored pencil
drawing of him climbing. He loved it. Since then,
every year he says, When are you gonna do
another painting of me? I kept thinking, If I do
that, I really want to do something that has a
good sense of what its like with him on the rock,
how hes built, and how he climbs.

He loves it. He acts like a proud parent. He

showed it to the group of guys he climbs with. I
think hes just really proud that his wifes a painter.

Tell us about the painting.

Its 48 tall and 24 wide and about 1.5 deep. Its

on wood. So its all painted; there are no tiles
or anything. The little tile shapes that youre
seeing are like littles hexes. Its kind of a spin-off.
I wanted to use the actual shape, but theyre not
perfectly symmetrical. The whole thing took
more than 300 hours.

Are you a climber yourself?

I could probably climb a 5.8 or a 5.9, but I dont

have the nerve for it. Its in Tims blood. When
we rst started dating, I really thought, Hell
probably climb for like 10 years and then lose
interest. Oh no, hes only built up steam.
Whats next?

I think a series with alternative outdoor sports,

like kayaking and hang gliding would be really
fun. Ive had people approach me and say, You
should do more of these. Theyre incredible!
(See more at schwarzkarststudio.com.)

WEVE ALL SEEN those woven climbing-rope rugs and thought about making one.
Boulder, Colorado artist Mick Tresemer takes them to the next level. His pieces feature
intricately woven colors, words, and even three-dimensional designs.

Every year for Christmas I make family presents.

Id seen the woven rope rugs and decided to try
a few as gifts. I was like, Oh, this is really fun.
At the time, I was using one single color. Then
I started mixing colors because I had all these
different ropes from the outdoor consignment
shop I work at. I really love to re-use.

Did the difculty increase when you shifted to

the third dimension?

It adds a dimension of difculty for sure, literally.

But I think it adds 10 times the interest. I use
hot glue and it will melt the rope and stick it
together. Its like welding almost. The rst time
was an accident. I got some glue on the side, and
I was like, Ohhhhh! Accidents drive a lot of art.
I dont think just mine, but a lot of peoples art.

Where do you get all the ropes?

I did nd myself running out of ropes in the

beginning. Not any more. I made a deal with a
climbing gym in Boulder. I made them a huge rug
for their entrance, and they let me know when
they have rope. And actually people started
bringing them to me, too. Im the rope guy now.

20 | OCTOBER 2014

Any tips for anyone that wants to try this at

home?

Dont hold yourself back. A rope is just like a line

on a piece of paper. If you can draw then you
can make anything you want. Its limitless.
(See more at micktres.com.)

BARB SCHWARZ KARST (TOP); MICK TRESEMER (2)

Howd you get started?

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THE APPROACH
UNBELAY VABLE!

Scary (and true) tales from a crag near you

There was a climber leading a
sport route. The belayer was half
belaying and half messing with a
tangle. Halfway up the route, the
climber stopped at a ledge, then
untied and threw the rope down
so that the belayer could sort everything out. He wasnt clipped in
to anything. After straightening
out the rope, the belayerafter
many triestossed the rope back
up to the climber, who tied back
in. He wasnt safe until he reached
the next clip, though. When he
tossed the rope down, it had fallen out of the lower draws.
L.V., via Climbing.com

LESSON: Given what gravity and

sudden impacts can do to a body, you
should never be on a route unanchored.
Its too easy to lose your balance and
pitch off the wall, especially when

youre doing something like, say, trying

to catch an airborne rope. The best
course is to prevent these problems before they start. Always ake your rope
at the base of a route before starting a
climb to eliminate knots and tangles.
If you do nd yourself in a situation
like this, either go in direct while your
belayer sorts it out, or suck it up and
lower, x the problem, and start over.
Its better to waste 10 minutes than to
fall off a cliff.

I met a group of climbers working

a route on toprope. The belayer
was using an anticross-loading
carabiner, which was connected
to his leg and waist loops instead
of the belay loop or tie-in points.
It was also unscrewed, and the
leg loop was jammed on the inner gate, holding it open. By some

miracle, the Grigri hadnt fallen

out. No one noticed the oddly
open biner until I yelled for them
to close it.
Rui Rosado,
via Climbing.com

LESSON: Carabiners are signicantly weaker when loaded along their

minor axis (width-wise instead of
length-wise). Anticross-loading
biners are designed to prevent this
problem by xing themselves in the
proper orientation. This benet is
completely negated when the gate
is open, which reduces a carabiners
strength the same as cross-loading.
A simple check to make sure your
carabiner is locked should be part of
your pre-climb routine. Better: Use an
auto-locking carabiner and make sure
its closed. Also, belay from your belay
loop. Thats what its there for.

I climbed a multi-pitch sport

route with a friend recently. He
led and built an anchor. When I
got to the top, I saw that he had
the tube-style belay device clipped
to the chains only by the wire at
the base of the device.
Cody, via Climbing.com

LESSON: The wire on a belay device

is called a keeper loop. Its purpose is
to keep the device from sliding up the
rope during a rappel. Its not load-bearing. Had the climber fallen, it would
have likely been a grounder. Even if the
wire didnt break, the device wouldnt
have stopped the rope from moving
through it because it was not set up
correctly in guide mode. Make sure you
know how to properly use your device.
See something unbelayvable?
Email unbelayvable@climbing.com.

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26

GUIDE // 39 GEAR // 47 CLINICS // 53 VOICES

24 | OCTOBER 2014

THE

Patrick Kingsbury demonstrates perfect froggy style technique on Scream and

Slither (5.11) in Long Canyon, Utah, an area that has six of legendary offwidth
climber Craig Luebbens 10 favorite wide cracks. Turn to page 32 for a quick
but comprehensive look at climbing chimneys of all widthsfrom true squeeze
slots to full-body stemswith stellar advice from wide-crack expert Rob Pizem.
Then check out route developer and crusher Jonathan Siegrists suggestions for
redpointing at your limit, and make sure to start any day of hard climbing with
our ridiculously delicious oatmeal recipe. Its goodwe promise, especially if you
follow Conrad Anker and Kate Rutherfords customized topping suggestions.

LIMB
ANDREW BURR

CLIMBING.COM

| 25

THE

CLIMB

GUIDE

ADVICE

Its not authentic French climbing

without a little agging action! Jonathan Siegrist locks it off on Biographie/
Realization, a historic 5.15a in Cse,
France. The American climber, who has
put up several 5.14 rst ascents (sport
and trad), spent more than a month
working the route, with the ultimate
goal of using it as a 5.15 benchmark for
his own original lines back in the States.

26 | OCTOBER 2014

BY JULIE ELLISON

Breaking Barriers
What Jonathan Siegrist learned from sending his rst 5.15
I wanted this route more than Ive wanted
anything in my life, Jonathan Siegrist told me,
as we sat drinking espresso (his was decaf ) in
Chamonix, exactly two weeks after he nabbed
the eighth ascent of Biographie (5.15a), aka Realization, in
Cse, France. Chris Sharma rst sent the full route in 2001
and chose not to grade it, but it was widely speculated (and
later conrmed) to be the worlds rst 5.15.
Siegrist, 29, has been a xture in the national climbing scene for the
past ve years, ticking off hard sport routes across the globe, adding his
own 5.14 lines (both bolted and on gear), and bringing a smile and positive attitude to every crag he visits. Although his father, Bob Siegrist
(who, at 64, sent his rst 5.13 in July 2014), had always urged his son to
try the sport, Siegrist didnt start climbing until he was 18. Eventually
climbers in Colorados Front Range began to see him everywhere, sending the areas hardest lines. He gained international attention in 2009
when he visited Kentuckys Red River Gorge and cleaned up: three
5.14cs, three 5.14a ashes, three 5.13c onsights, and more than a dozen
other 5.13 and 5.14 routesall dispatched quickly. According to his
website (jstarinorbit.com), Siegrist has about 150 5.14 sends (many of

them ashes and rst ascents) and more than 400 5.13s under his belt.
Siegrist thought sending Biographie was important to his credibility
as a route developer because it represented the next level of difficulty.
I want to add some of the hardest sport routes in the U.S., and with
my routes La Lune and La Rve, I speculated they could be 5.15, but I
didnt know, he said. I thought Biographie would give me a respectable benchmark so I wouldnt have to speculate about grades. I could
say, OK, now I know what this difficulty feels like, he explained. It
was also encouraging to know that shorter climbers had done it, like
Ramon Julian Puigblanque and Enzo Oddowhos actually huge now.
(Siegrist is 5 5.5)
Siegrist also wanted a challenging objective that would inspire him
to train and try harder. The challenge forced me to train in a new way,
to adapt my lifestyle, to approach my climbing differently, and to really improve, he said. That dogged attitude meant months of hangboarding, campusing, and weightlifting, which led to what he calls his
rst quantiable improvement since 2010, when he sent his rst 5.14d
(Kryptonite in western Colorado). When [sending Biographie] nally
sank in, it felt like more than just a reection of the last six months. It
was a reection of the last 10 years of my climbing life.

How to Redpoint Like a Pro

CAMERON MAIER; CELIN SERBO (INSET)

JUST DO IT

STAY POSITIVE

Hard redpointing is bigger

than climbing. It allows you
to grow as a human being
because you have to deal
with failure, frustration, inner
dialogue, stress, and anxiety.
Its not always fun when its
happening, but what it creates is a much more valuable
and meaningful experience
in the end. You shouldnt be
stressing every day about
the weather or your skin, but
having that process at least
a few times is great. It makes
you a better person.

Sometimes its OK to walk

away, but it depends on
how much the route means
to you. I prepared by telling
myself I would try it for 11
weeks, but it would be OK
if I got on the plane and had
sent nothing. This goal was
about improving and learning somethingmore so
than ticking a 5.15. You want
to look back and know you
gave everything you had,
even if you didnt send. If it
becomes a negative experience, consider moving on.

As told to Julie Ellison

3
TRAIN AWAY
WEAKNESS
I dont have inherent talent,
but I worked really hard. I
trained for months and tried
the route for 30 days. Everything I did, day and night, was
for the route. I made sure my
skin was good, ate healthy,
drank a gallon of water a day,
slept well. I love running, but
I stopped so I could focus all
my energy on climbing. My
biggest weakness is power,
so I trained two hours a day
on the campus board a few
times a week.

4
ADAPT
Not reaching your goals is
hard. I remind myself that its
important enough to me that
Im just going to keep trying.
Instead of pressuring myself
with each attempt, Im always
thinking ahead: OK, I have
partners for Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Whats the route
going to be like in late June
when its hotter? Embrace
the general attitude of this
could take a while, instead of
feeling pressure to send every
day. I also quit caffeine; coffee gave me the jitters!

5
EMBRACE THE
ROLLER COASTER
Going through the range of
emotions is mandatory, and
thats one of the coolest
and most frustrating things. I
get emotional. I get close in
the beginning and think, Im
gonna do this thing! Then its,
Im never gonna climb this
thing! No matter how much
you want to skip the highs
and lows, you cant. Youll
often nd success in the next
phase when you nally say,
Im just gonna keep trying,
and maybe one day Ill do it.

CLIMBING.COM

| 27

GG UU II DD EE

CRAGS

Epicenter: Chattanooga, TN

Teaming up with our friends at mountainproject.com, were creating the ultimate primers to our countrys premier climbing
towns. In this issue, we spotlight one of the Souths most happening areas. BY CAROLINE MELEEDY

KINGS BLUFF

Daniel Boone
National Forest

BIG SOUTH FORK

40 routes

31 routes

24

BACKBONE ROCK

5 problems, 2 routes

75

DEVILS RACETRACK

24 routes

OBED & CLEAR CREEK

198 routes

Nashville

NORRIS LAKE

Kingsport

1 DWS route

Big South Fork

National River &
Recreation Area

26

81

HIGHBALL AREA

40

6 routes

DAYTON POCKET/
LAUREL FALLS

5 problems

SUCK CREEK CANYON

19 routes
75

TENNESSEE WALL
24
FOSTER FALLS

9 problems

Catoosa Wildlife
Management Area

STONE DOOR

40

BLUE HOLE FALLS

Knoxville

18 problems

8 routes

LEDA

40

Great Smoky
Mountains
National Park

40 routes

Asheville
STARR MOUNTAIN

185 routes

7 routes
26

2 routes

CASTLE ROCK

7 routes

Pisgah National
Forest

LOOK ROCK

100 routes

DOG BOY VILLAGE

Cherokee National
Forest

Chattanooga
59

SUNSET PARK

81 routes

DEEP CREEK

28 routes

STONE FORT

Chattahoochee
National Forest

171 problems

TRAD

TOPROPE

SPORT

BOULDERING

THE SCENE
Nowhere in the South is there such a high
concentration of lifelist climbing destinations. Within an hours drive of Chattanooga are eight crags, each with enough
routes to last most climbers a lifetime.
And if you ever get tired of Chattanooga
(not likely, its population has grown every
year for the past 20), there are dozens of
other climbing areas to keep you busy
near Nashville to the northwest and
Knoxville to the northeast, both less than
two hours away. The city of more than
170,000 just opened one of the countrys
most innovative rock gyms. High Point
Climbing and Fitness has 28,000 square
feet of climbing insideand out. The
facility has transparent exterior walls with
multiple routes. The town has even lured
badasses like Lisa Rands and Wills Young
to take up residence; the pair runs High
Points climbing school. In short, this laidback town is a must-stop for any road
tripper or itinerant rock climber looking
for a home.
Much of the climbing in Tennessee is
on the Cumberland Plateau, a 300-mile

ridge that stretches into Alabama and

Kentucky. The rock is hard, high-quality
sandstone, and the terrain can include
long crack climbs as well as overhanging
jug-fests; the variety is incredible.
The area boasts climbing year-round,
and in the dead of winter, youll see
climbers on the rock in their T-shirts at
south-facing crags like Tennessee Wall
(aka T-Wall). When summer is at its hottest, Sunset Park is a great destination;
the west-facing cliff stays shady until well
into the afternoon. But its not all milk
and honey; it can get stiingly humid in
summer. Plan for a fall or winter visit. October and November are pitch-perfect.
Theres plenty to do no matter what
your climbing style. For trad leaders,
T-Wall and Sunset are the top choices;
others include Suck Creek Canyon and
Prentice Cooper. Sport climbers can
clip bolts at Foster Falls and Obed. And
theres a little of both at Leda. For the
truly adventurous who want to carve out
their own routes, theres Big South Fork, a
real climbing frontier.

Tyler Wilcutt on the

rst ascent of the
hardest route near
Chattanooga: El
Camino del Diablo
(5.14b).

MATT BALLARD

Southern Cragging Capital

POWERED BY
28 | OCTOBER 2014

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GUIDE

CRAGS
LOCALS KNOW

Where climbers:

A welcome hands-free
rest on the pumpy
Twistin in the Wind
(5.12c) at T-Wall.

[eat/drink]
Check out the Flying Squirrel (yingsquirrelbar.com). This local bar and
restaurant is a favorite among traveling
climbers. Open until 3 a.m., this joint
serves everything from kale salads
to duck tacos. They have a Sunday
brunch menu as well, with Sriracha
Bloody Marys and a dish called
Dirtbag Benny (two small pieces of
wafe, fried eggs, avocado slices, and
bacon bits with molasses). With an
extensive list of craft beers and house
cocktails, this place is sure to please.
(Tip: If youre staying at the Crash
Pad, be sure to mention ityoull
get a discount on your bill.) If youre
looking to get caffeinated before a
day of climbing, head to Mean Mug

Coffeehouse (423-825-4206) for locally

roasted coffee, specialty lattes, and a
full lunch menu.
[gear up]
Rock/Creek (rockcreek.com, 888707-6708) has four locations in
Chattanooga alone. They carry a wide
variety of outdoor gear, from apparel to any climbing gear you left as
booty at the last crag. These guys are
super-involved in the climbing scene
in Chattanooga and have helped
with many projects over the years,
including building the parking lot
and camping area at Tennessee Wall.
Look around the store for local gear
company Granola. They hand-build
chalkbags, day packs, and the Camp
Grounds Coffee Kit, which includes
an AeroPress, a burr grinder, two cups,
and locally roasted coffee.
[learn the ropes]
Let Rocky Top Guides (rockytopguides.com, 706-333-2089) show you
around. They offer a wide variety of
courses, including a rescue course and
a Transition from Indoors class, for
those who want a bit of training before
taking on real rock. Or look up Lisa
and Wills if you stop into High Point
Climbing and Fitness (highpointclimbing.com, 432-602-7625). They offer
everything from basic instruction to
personal training and guiding.

METRICS
STYLE
Paradise of sport and trad cragging

QUALITY

DIFFICULTY

Nearly 600 routes at 3 stars or higher

A moderate climbers heaven

240

30 | OCTOBER 2014

150

300

450

3
5.1

2
5.1

5.1
1

0
5.1

5.9

60

5.8

TR
25

1 star

120

5.7

2 stars

Sport
461

le
ss

3 stars

180

or

Trad
384

5.6

4 stars

MICAH GENTRY

[stay]
If you want to set up camp, hit the
parking lot of Tennessee Wall in the
Prentice Cooper Wildlife Management
Area. There are plenty of car camping
sites and a pit toilet. Bonus! Its free
rst come, rst served. If youd like
a real bed and roof (or need to nd
climbing partners), try out the Crash
Pad (crashpadchattanooga.com, 423648-8393). This hostel is the unofcial
basecamp for visiting climbers (hikers
and boaters, too) with community
rooms (starting at $28 per night for a
bunk) and private rooms. Nice: free
Wi-Fi and a DIY breakfast bar.

ROUTES

Chatty Classics
The 10 best 4-star routes as ranked by Mountain Project users
Golden Locks (5.8+)
Tennessee Wall
Beautiful splitter crack with exposure
above the Tennessee River, the most
popular and perhaps the most sandbagged route.
Open Casket (5.9)
Tennessee Wall
You think this cannot be 5.9, yet unlikely reaches to secret jugs with wild
stemming across the chasm and locker
hand jams under the huge chockstones prove you wrong. High Indiana
Jones value on this one.
Holy War (5.9)
Foster Falls
Argued to be the best of the grade
at Foster Falls, and I would have
to agree. The climbing is pretty
continuous and interesting with a

wide variety of movescrimps, jugs,

flakes, and even a mono pocket!

but itll cost you some burn time on

those forearms.

Hurts So Good (5.10a)

Foster Falls
A long, fairly sustained route with a
bouldery start followed by a very thin
nish with lots of jugs in between.
Crux comes at the roof and the thin
face crimpers near the end.

Somethings Always Wrong

(5.10d)
Foster Falls
No argument about it. Best 5.10 at
Fosters. Move left after the roof for
a good rest before you tackle the
overhanging face at the top.

Stepping Stone (5.10a/b)

Tennessee Wall
This is one of the best single pitches
you will do anywhere. Place your pro
well on the bottom section. Easy
and well-protected terrain leads to a
committing situation on the arte, at
which point youll want to begin channelling your inner sport climber by
ring for the top like you really mean
it. Good pro is there for the taking,

Sugar in the Raw (5.11a)

Tennessee Wall
Classic route with bouldery moves
and small but good gear. Milk all the
rests and dont pass up any placements. Pull a hard roof and then
move to good stances. Follow the
thin cracks with decent pro to the
crux that comes in the middle, then
go up through several moderate
roofs to the anchor.

POWERED BY

Heresey (5.11b)
Obed
Probably my favorite climb at the
Obed. The sloper crux down low is
a fun little boulder problem, and the
jug-fest roof is just good, clean fun.
Highly recommend this one. Its like
climbing a sandstone jungle gym.
Solstice (5.12a)
Obed
This is a pumpy climb with an amazing roof. Fall off anywhere, and youll
have a heck of a time getting back on
the route.
Twistin in the Wind (5.12c)
Tennessee Wall
Touted by some as one of the best
sport routes in the South. Certainly
one of the best at T-Wall and is a
must-do if you have what it takes.

*Stats are for the immediate Chattanooga area. Get route beta, photos,
and topos for the whole state at mountainproject.com/tennessee.

Details That Matter

What does a hiking boot company like LOWA know about climbing shoes? We dont have
any rock stars, we dont have any rst ascents, we havent given away tons of product,
but heres what we do have: 90 years of boot-making experience that, among other
things, has taken climbers to the summit of every 8000 meter peak in the world.
Our new X-BOULDER carries our legacy forward.

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2014 LOWA Boots, LLC. VIBRAM, the Octagon Logo, and the Yellow Octagon Logo and the color Canary Yellow are registered trademarks of Vibram S.p.A.

NEW X-Boulder

GUIDE

INSTANT EXPERT

Squeeze Tactics

Conquer chimney sections with these experience-driven techniques

BY JULIE ELLISON

ROYAL ARCHES, Yosemite. KOR-INGALLS ROUTE, Castleton

Tower. DURRANCE ROUTE, Devils Tower. What do these superclassic moderates have in common? They each have a physically
demanding chimney. This term refers to any ssure that your
body ts inside, ranging from a squeeze chimney (one to two

feet wide) to much wider, where you must stem the gap with a
foot and hand on each side. Each width requires its own set of
unique movements, so we talked with wide-crack wizard Rob
Pizem (who points out that this was one of the earliest climbing
techniques) to break it down into a step-by-step process.

Movement
A

A SQUEEZE

The tightest of the tight, where just breathing in

can prevent you from moving upward. Remove any
bulky gear (pack, shoes on harness, etc.), put it on
a sling, and clip it to your belay loop so it hangs
down. Choose a side to stick in rst: If the crack
gets tighter as it goes deeper, put your dominant
hand inside for jamming, or if there are more edges
on one side, face it so you can use them for holds.
This style is anything goes, but every movement
should be small and approached with patience.
Look for narrower sections to wedge your feet
with heel and toe smeared on opposite sides,
like youre standing. Try heel-toe cams, twisting
your ankle so your foot cams sideways into place
(Pizems favorite), or a T-shape (feet perpendicular,
with the heel nested into the arch of the other

foot). Hands should be doing anything: nding edges/crimps (including on the face next to the crack!),
smearing with palms, and arm-barring or using a
chicken-wing (palm on one side and upper arm on
the other)try elbow up and down. Inhaling may
lock you into place, so exhaling might release you.

B FROGGY STYLE

This is required for chimneys that are just bigger

than squeeze but not expansive enough to fully
stem. Back on one side, knees pushing into the
other. With the soles of your feet pressing into
the back-side, push out with your palmsngers
pointing down or to the sidekept low for leverage. Lean your upper body slightly forward, and
push down and out with your feet and hands so
you can scoot your butt and lower back upward. It

CHIMNEY CHEATS with Rob Pizem

will be slow and steady, but push with everything

to hold you in place while your upper legs lift your
body. Repeat pushing to slide your legs up.

C STEMMING

For the widest chimneys out there, put your left

foot and hand on one side with the right hand and
foot on the other. Press and push your feet and
hands outward, trying to maintain as much external
pressure as possible. Think about pushing through
the wall, Pizem says. Most people slip because
they are pushing down when the holds actually
require them to push out. Always be looking for
edges, bumps, or slabbier sections to use as footholds. Pull down on holds above or palm the wall
to get some downward force so you can move up
one foot at a time.

technique, then attack the longer ones. Plan on being runout

at times, but totally secure. Breathe and climb from rest to rest.
This will keep you focused on the few feet in front of you.

Gear

down and out of the way by clipping it to the belay loop.

Tie your knot with a longer bight so its below your crotch.
Take your helmet offjust put it back on when its over!

Mental
I tell myself that the rst ascensionist would have placed a bolt
if it were really bad! The only reason youll fall is if you quit
or go limp. Start on shorter chimneys to build endurance and

32 | OCTOBER 2014

Protection
Place when you can, not when you want to. That means taking
everything you can get: small nuts, slinging blocks, or walking a
huge cam up next to you. Look for spots on the face, too. Pro
will be limited, but your position is surprisingly secure.

Rest
Find a way in which you are not applying external pressure
but you still wont slide down. Turn your upper body so your
shoulders are wedged, or inhale to lodge your chest in place. In
froggy style, lean forward so your chest is against the rock, or
sit down on your wedged feet. Look for any holds, bumps, or
edges to put your feet on. You have to rest your way up.

ANDREW BURR (3); SKIP STERLING

No tight, downturned shoes; think at, stiff, and supportive.

Check belay loops, waistbelt, and leg loops for damage.
Use a webbing strap to move your chalkbag (side or front).
Pants, pants, pants! Protect your legs with jeans or canvas.
Put all pro on a sling. If the chimney gets tight, hang the gear

Made In Spain

FIXEhardware
Introducting the Alien Lite
25% Weight Reduction

Stronger, Abrasion
Resistant Dyneema
Sling

Ergonomic Rubber
Thumb Pull

Stronger Aluminum
Cable Swage
Higher Strength
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Cable
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Design

20% Reduced
)FBE1SPmMF

GUIDE

TRAINING

BY CAROLINE MELEEDY

Complete Core
Build a powerful base with these 10 effective (and fun!) exercises
A STRONG CORE IS CRUCIAL to progressing as a climber. Body tension,
keeping your feet on, moving efciently, toeing-in on overhangsit all revolves around the core. Plus, a solid core helps prevent injury. Youve probably
heard a core-strength evangelist preach the benets before, and youve probably been pointed toward endless crunches or even expensive programs like Pilates, TRX,
or yoga. Get ready for a new approach: varied exercises that are specically targeted to
work multiple parts of your body at the same timejust like climbing does.

1. Hanging Leg Lift

Start on the jugs of a hangboard or a pull-up bar. Keep your arms straight,
shoulders engaged (squeeze shoulder blades together), and legs straight
down. Lift your legs up so your hips are at 90, without bending your knees.
When you lower back down, keep your body as still as possible (youll have a
tendency to swing). Raise your legs again without using momentum. Do three
sets of 15, resting about one minute in between.

GUIDELINES
Pick ve or more of these exercises and
do them at least three (and up to ve)
times a week for best results.
Add as many sets or exercises as you
need to feel the burn; you should be
struggling to complete the last set.
Do these any timeend of a climbing session, on a rest day, in the morning
before workbut avoid doing them right
before you climb, as this could make your
base tired and give you poor, injury-causing technique.
A good core workout hits all aspects of
your trunk, not just the abs in the front.
Each of these exercises has varied motions
to work your front, back, and sides.
Take at least one to two rest days every
week to let your muscles recover.
If you have a history of back or neck
problems, consult your doctor before
starting high-intensity exercises like these.

Variation: For a tougher challenge, raise your legs with knees bent, pulling
them all the way into your chest. Or try just hanging with knees bent, hips at
90, and have a friend put weight on your lap. Start with 10 to 15 pounds, hanging for 15 seconds. Have your friend remove the weight before lowering legs.

Focus: Abs, lower back, hip exors

2. Arm Dip
Stand straight, feet shoulder-distance apart. Choose a dumbbell that will
provide good resistance; 15 pounds is a good starting point. Hold it in your left
hand and slowly lower your left shoulder straight down, as far as it will go. Try
to keep your right hip in line with your body; dont let it jut out to the side. In
a controlled motion, bring the weight and your body back up to the starting
position. The up and the down should be two separate motions. Do 20 reps
and then switch arms.

Focus: Obliques

3. Sit Up, Stand Up

Lie with your back on the ground, knees bent, feet at on the oor. Hold a
weight plate (start with 20 lbs.) near the ground with arms straight out from
your head. Using momentum, do a sit-up with the plate in the air, get your
feet under you near your butt, and stand up all the waykeeping the plate
in the air. Lie back down in the starting position (plate doesnt have to be up
when sitting back down, but dont put it on the ground); repeat 15 times.

4. Wheelbarrow
Walk
Those wheelbarrow races you did as a kid
are actually great for your core. Get into a
high plank, with your hands directly below
your shoulders. Have a partner lift you by
your ankles. Keeping your body straight
(dont dip at the waist) and looking straight
ahead, move your right hand forward about
six inches. Then move your left hand up
six inches past your right, nding a good
pace for you and your partner to avoid
face planting. Keep your core and glutes
contracted to maximize the movement.
Go about 30 feet, then switch with your
partner. Try to do ve rounds, without compromising technique.

Focus: Obliques, abs, lower back, glutes,

Focus: Abs, hip exors, hamstrings, quads, shoulders

34 |

OCTOBER 2014

shoulders, arms

5. Oblique Knee Raise Plank

Start in a high plank. Bend one leg and bring your knee to just outside the corresponding elbow. This should open your groin up to the ground as you move
your knee up. Return to starting position and repeat with the other leg. Keep it
controlled but maintain a steady pace. Do this for one minute.

Focus: Abs, lower back, obliques, glutes, hip exors, shoulders, chest

6. Farmers Walk
Pick two weights that are in the high end of your comfort range. Holding one in
each hand, start walking. For this motion to be effective, keep your core tight
and your posture straight, standing as tall as you can. Either go for distance (50
yards) or time (1 minute). If you want to test yourself, walk until your arms are
about to give out; just be careful not to drop the weights.

9. Kettlebell
Figure Eight
Start with legs a little wider than
shoulder width, and bend at the waist,
keeping your back flat and head up. Use
a lightweight kettlebell and go around
your right leg with your right hand, then
pass it under your right leg to your left
hand. Repeat on the left side. Thats one
rep; repeat 15 times.

Focus: Abs, lower back, glutes, hip

exors, obliques, arms, quads

Variation: Instead of using the same weight in each hand, hold a weight thats
about ve pounds heavier in one hand. This will force you to keep your core
tight as you try to balance the two different weights.

Focus: Lower back, obliques, abs, forearms, hamstrings, quads, calves

7. A-Frame Arm Drop

Begin in a C-sit position, knees bent at 90, abs engaged so upper body is off
the oor, and just heels on the ground. Put both arms straight above your
head, holding palms together. While keeping your upper and lower body completely still, slowly lower your arms down to the right of your hip, tap the oor,
and bring them back up overhead. Now lower to the left side. Do 30 total, 15
per side.

Focus: Abs, obliques, lower back, shoulders

LESLIE HITTMEIER (11); SPECIAL THANKS TO COURTNEY SANDERS

8. Plank Variations
With a full-body burn, its hard to ignore planks as an effective core-strengthening exercise, but here are a few variations to keep it interesting. For each,
keep muscles engaged and actively holding the plank. Start with three rounds
of one minute, resting one minute between rounds.

10. The Matrix

Start on knees that are hip-width apart
with a straight back. Hold a weight near
your belly button and slowly lean back
as far as you can, keeping your back
straight. Hold for three seconds, and
then slowly come back to the starting
position. Repeat 20 times.

Focus: Abs, lower back, glutes, quads,

hip exors

Elevated plank: This is a standard high plank, but you want your toes up on an
elevated surface (bench, chair, etc.), so that your whole body is parallel to the
oor. Use a wobbly exercise ball for increased difculty.
Sideways walking plank: Get into high-plank position. From here, move your
right hand about six inches to the right, and then move your left hand six
inches right. Move your left hand back to starting position and follow with
your right. Go to the left side, then repeat.
Side plank with leg raise: In a side-plank position (left hand on oor directly
under shoulder, body straight, balancing on outside edge of left foot), raise the
right leg so your feet are wider than your shoulders and hold.

Focus: Full body

CLIMBING.COM

| 35

GUIDE

NUTRITION

Wild Oats

Power up for long days with this energy-lled breakfast

BY LESLIE HITTMEIER

OATS FIRST HIT the breakfast scene in about 1000 B.C. in central Europe. Theyve been the quick and gut-lling choice for
farmers, warriors, and anyone else with a big day ahead (hello,
climbers) ever since. Sadly, oatmeal also has a tendency to
go down like glue. Until now. Bijus Oatmeal is not only quick and simple
to make, but its also tastyand super-charged to help you tackle huge
objectives. Add the fact that its easy on sensitive stomachs, inexpensive,
and a great base to customize to your personal taste, and youve got an
unbeatable morning meal. Make it at home or on a camp stove, and the
complex carbs and ber will give your muscles long-lasting energy and
keep you full until lunch, all while warming your body from the inside
out. The sugar, molasses, and banana provide immediate energy, while the
added water makes the oatmeal easy to digest. Use Bijus as the starting
point and then add whatever you want, from chia seeds to dark chocolate chips to almond butter (check out the next page to see pro climbers
picks). Vegan (with non-dairy milk), vegetarian, gluten-free, and delicious,
this is the perfect kick-start to a day of hard climbing.

Directions
In a medium saucepan, bring water and salt to a low boil.
Add oats and cook about ve minutes, stirring frequently.
Add milk and brown sugar, then return the mixture to a low
boil. Add molasses, banana, and raisins, continuing to stir until
oatmeal reaches desired thickness. Remove from heat. Let it
sit for 10 to 15 minutes if you have the time.
Finish by adding other desired toppings and a splash of milk.

TIP: Use any kind of milk you want: dairy, soy, almond, etc. Start
with one cup and add more to achieve your desired consistency.
Nutrition Facts
per serving (half total amount)
Energy 490 cal
Fat 6g
Sodium 181mg

Carbs 102g
Fiber 10g
Protein 19g

Ingredients

1 cup water

Dash of salt

1 cup old-fashioned
rolled oats

1 to 2 cups milk, depending

on desired thickness

1 banana, chopped

1/4 cup raisins

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 tablespoon molasses

36 | OCTOBER 2014

*Republished with
permission of VeloPress
from The Feed Zone
Cookbook. Try more
recipes at feedzonecookbook.com.

BEN FULLERTON (5);

(10) LESLIE HITTMEIER (4)

FILL UP!

and, of course, make everything taste better!

Next Level

Adrian Ballinger:

How the pros do oatmeal

Steph Davis:

I love oatmeal.
Iusually like to
add dried mango and dried
bananasthe whole, soft
kind, not banana chips
with powdered soy milk
and cinnamon.
The kind of bananas
Davis uses are much healthier
because theyre simply dried
bananas, while banana chips
usually have added sugar and
oil. Powdered soy milk is a
great way to add texture and
thickness to the oatmeal if
you dont do dairy. Research
from the American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition shows that
cinnamon slows digestion
after meals, so seasoning a
high-carb food like oatmeal

with cinnamon can lengthen

the time that your body
draws energy from breakfast.
Conrad Anker:

Oatmeal is the
best. I suggest
adding soy-based protein
powder, dates, and dried
blueberries. Mix everything in a bowl before you
go out, and then package
into pre-built meals. In
the Himalaya, you can use
tsampa instead, which is
roasted barley flour.
Roasted barley our is high
in complex carbs, ber, protein,
and certain vitamins and minerals; it also has a moist texture
and nutty avor. Sometimes
real nuts or protein sources are

a luxury when weight counts, so

replacing those with packable
protein powder that offers the
nutrients without the weight is
a great idea. Dried fruit is also
lightweight and adds sweetness
when you cant t a bottle of
maple syrup or agave.
Kate Rutherford:

Whatever you
doadd fat! My
favorite is real butter, nuts,
or nut butter. Coconut
shavings are awesome,too.
Otherwise Im hungry again
all too soon.
Healthy fats like the ones
Rutherford suggests are an
ideal part of a morning meal
as they help you feel fuller
longer, offer sustained energy,

I have a love/
hate relationship
with oatmeal. It works; its
fuel; its warm. But damn,
I hate it most of the time!
My secret for big-mountain,
high-altitude oatmeal is
a hefty pad of butter and
some good dark chocolate. It
makes a gooey, chocolatey,
high-calorie, high-fat mess
that keeps me warm and
climbing hard. I learned the
trick from my Alaska mentor
Aaron Zanto on my rst trip
to Denali. It kept me warm
then, and now I look forward
to it when Im cold and wet
in a tent, waiting for daylight.
Eating it means Ive got a big
day coming up.
Again, added fat is good for
climbers. And theres nothing
wrong with that little extra
sugar; youre denitely going

to need those calories on big

days. Some other sources of
good fats: avocados, nuts,
seeds, eggs, and even olive oil
if you prefer a savory avor.
Will Gadd:

Plain oatmeal
is horrible, a
gastronomic crime right up
there with serving spaghetti
without sauce. But add
some dried apricots, a little
maple syrup, some pecans
or cashews, a bit of salt,
and boom! Now you have
food instead of glue! I look
at oatmeal as a platform
on which to do culinary
experiments with whatever
is hanging around my house
or camp pantry.
Pecans, cashews, salt,
apricots, and maple syrup are
brilliant suggestions. A great
balance of protein, sodium,
sugar, and carbs adds a huge
amount of avor to your
breakfast bowl.

OVERNIGHT OATS

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY; MAX LOWE; COURTESY (3); LESLIE HITTMEIER

A no-cook breakfast for alpine starts

If youre heading out early, throw everything in a jar the night
before, leave it in your fridge, and in the morning, youll have
fresh-made oats ready for youno stove required! If you prefer
hot oatmeal, add a splash
of water in the morning (to
keep it from drying out) and
put your meal in the microwave or on the stove for a
few minutes. Oats soak up
whatever liquid you leave
them in, so you can use any
kind of milk or yogurt. The
difference for overnight
oats is that using only milk,
rather than part milk, part
water yields better results.
Use equal parts oats and
milk, but add or subtract
based on the thickness you
prefer. Dont forget to jazz
it up with your personal
additions (chocolate chips,
chia seeds, cinnamon, bananas, etc.).

BARTLETT
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scarpa.com/stix

You only get 26,320 days, more or less. How will you spend them?

THE
PRIMER

CLIMB

GEAR

Rock Shoes

An embarrassment of riches. Thats what this fall brings to the

rock shoe scene. New models and new companies are offering
more womens-specic pairs as well as high-quality budget
options. Our test team tried them all out and narrowed it down
to the 11 top performers on the following pages. But rst, take a
look at how climbing shoes are made.

LESLIE HITTMEIER (2); SPECIAL THANKS TO EVOLV FOR THE LAST AND MAD ROCK FOR THE DISSECTED SHOE

Step 1 The last is a hard plastic cast

that is in the shape of the foot and
ankle; this is the foundation that the
shoe is built around. Every size of the
shoe has its own last, and while multiple
models can use the same last, most
styles require a unique one.

Step 2 Since climbing shoes conform

closely to the wearers feet, the materials that make up the shoe (upper, sole,
lining, and closure systems) are cut using stencils made from molds that were
formed around the last.

Step 3 Pieces of the upper are sewn

into a bootie, which is put on the last.
The rand and sole rubber parts are
heated, stretched, and then applied.
Stretching the rubber before applying,
called tension randing, creates a snug t
and helps funnel power to the toe.

Step 4 After the sole is on, the shoes

are put into a special machine that
compresses the whole unit to get a tight
seal on the newly glued rubber.

Step 5 The nal step is hand-grinding

the outside to get clean, fray-free edges
on the rubber, including a brushed nish
on the sole and rand for extra strength
and durability.

See the sum of the above parts

the Mad Rock Lotuson page 43.

CLIMBING.COM

| 39

GEAR

BIG REVIEW
BY JULIE ELLISON

Rock Shoe Roundup

Top out with these 11 new kicks

Shoe

Thanks to the widespread growth of

climbing as a sport,
new companies are
popping up (or expanding into the rock shoe
market), veteran manufacturers are rounding
out their collections
with more models, and
many brands are targeting the female climbing
populace with additional womens-specic
options. The result is
tons of new rock shoes
for fall, and our test
team cant complain.
They took more than
a dozen pairs of top
contenders to some of
the best climbing hot
spots in the U.S.: big
walling in Zion, topping
out boulders in Little
Rock City, Tennessee,
bolt-clipping at Wild
Iris, Wyoming, getting
funky in the Gunks of
New York, and lots of
other crags in between.
Rock shoes are the one
piece of gear that can
make an immediate
impact on your climbing, and no matter your
discipline, we promise
youll nd your next
favorite pair in the
subsequent pages.

Performance

Prole

Conclusion

Bottom
Line
40 |

OCTOBER 2014

Boreal Satori

Scarpa Booster S

$159; e-boreal.com

$175; scarpa.com

Right out of the box, the Satori impressed

testers with well-thought-out details, a nearperfect t, and an aggressive feel. The forefoot is
designed to scrunch your toes for precision and
power, but designers lifted the roof of the toe
box to give those cramped digits space, instead
of smashing them down. Boreals proprietary
Toe Flexion System also kept the forefoot very
exible. I could wear these bouldering V6 in the
alpine, and then rock them for three-hour sport
sessions in the gym, one tester said of the Satoris versatility and comfort, the latter thanks to a
foot-hugging sock-like lining on the top that sits
underneath a padded tongue. The lacing system
is the best of two worlds. You get the simplicity of a single Velcro strap, but laces cover more
than half your foot, so you can dial in a snug,
tightened-down-all-over t, one tester said. It
really locked my foot in place, which was great
when combined with the all-rubber, narrow heel
cup that made even the most technical heel
hooks a breeze. By placing additional toe rubber
over the entire top of the forefoot, testers could
toe hook at all types of angles, even on the most
extreme and awkward features. However, the
shoes overall stiff feel, even in the upper, made
these less than perfect on anything slabbier than
vertical.

These are like a decked-out Formula 1 race

carthey just scream performance, one tester
said after using the Booster S on roofs in Wild
Iris, Wyoming, and American Fork Canyon, Utah.
The ultra-downturned platform and perfectly
chiseled toe combined with ample rubber on the
top of the forefoot and a suction-cup heel make
this a masterpiece of a rock shoe. It has ruined
me for all other shoes. Testers found the toe
to be very sensitive (especially compared to the
manufacturers other high-performance shoes,
which are stiffer) and the midsole incredibly
exible, which together made nding the sweet
spot on the tiniest nubs and toeing in hard on
steeps quite easy. Proprietary Tri-Tension Active
Randing places a piece of rubber on the midsole
that funnels power and precision from the sides
and the back of the foot to the forefoot and
toe, without sacricing any ex or sensitivity.
The amount of power my toes get is unbelievable, considering how lightweight and minimalist
this shoe is, another tester said. The two Velcro
straps dialed in a great tbetter than other
Velcro shoes in the testthanks to the design
that places one strap low over the top of the
foot and one high, with opposite tightening
directions, meaning one closes on the right and
one closes on the left. Con: Price is high.

[ AGGRESSIVE ]

[ AGGRESSIVE ]

Boulderers and bolt-clippers take note: These

shoes rival some of the highest-performance
climbing shoes on the market with their aggressive downturn, super-sticky rubber, chiseled toe,
and dedicated heel cup.

If your project is past vertical, in a cave, has a

roofthis is the shoe for you. A sensitive and
precise toe sits in front of a exible midsole that
offers maximum torque, which then leads into
a narrow, snug-tting heel thats wrapped with a
band of rubber that pushes power to the toe.

Stiffness for Steeps

Overhang Ace

GENDER BIAS

Womens-specic climbing shoes might be a relatively new addition to the market, but dont let the gender label fool you:
Men might nd these shoes t better than some unisex models. Originally, designers would take a mens last (see p. 39 for denition) and chisel it down to
create a shoe with less volume. But that wasnt good enough. Mens and womens feet are similar, but not the same. If you start with a mens last, it wont
t a woman perfectly, even if you make several changes, says Mad Rock Sales Manager Kenny Suh. With the number of ladies in the climbing scene
growing rapidly, manufacturers have chosen to start from scratch, building lasts that are more specic to womans foot. Typically women have higher
arches, a thinner Achilles, and narrower feet, says Suh, so we are doing things like Arch Flex technology that creates a higher arch in the shoe, minimizing dead space and increasing tension throughout, so it hugs the foot all the way around. Although theyre designed for women, it doesnt mean some
men dont share the same foot traits, and in the end, its all about nding the right t for your foot. The opposite also rings true: Some women might have
wider, atter feet. The moral of the story is to choose a shoe based on the t for your specic foot shape, regardless of gender. LESLIE HITTMEIER

Butora Mantra

Five Ten Hiangle

Mad Rock Lyra

$145; butora.com

$150; veten.com

$105; madrockclimbing.com

Present-day Gunks-goers and Eldo-lovers will be

smitten with this super-stife just as much as the
Stonemasters would have loved it for their bold,
long, technical ascents in Yosemite, one tester
said. And thats exactly where the designer got
his inspiration for this comfortable, board-lasted
kick. Its got a time-tested design with a modern
aesthetic and thoughtful updates. Putting small
patches of memory foam against the pinky toe on
the interior of the shoe makes foot jamming fairly comfortableIve never said that before! one
tester exclaimed. Plus, a padded tongue kept the
tops of boney feet happy, making the shoes easy
to wear all day. To-the-toe lacing means you can
dial in a solid t so the shoe doesnt slide around
when youre in a precarious position, but the low
prole, lack of metal, and eyelets in the added toe
rubber mean the laces dont dig in when jamming.
This has more support and stiffness than some of
my approach shoes, one tester said of the multipart sole that includes a full-length midsole, an
additional layer of memory foam under the heel
and arch, and a soft footbed. That rigidity made it
excellent for edging, and it stood out on slabs and
straight-vertical terrain alike. The absolute stiffness and support of the Mantra means sensitivity
and precision you get from a softer shoe are missing, but testers found it still smeared well.

Downturned but not too downturned. Soft but

not too soft. Stiff but not too stiff. One tester
called these the Goldilocks of performance
shoes because of the balance between comfort
and technical performance. However, the shoe
did go to one extremeSticky, sticky, sticky! is
how another tester described the tried and true
Stealth C4 rubber. The aggressive prole, pointed
toe, and sensitive feel made this great for the
overhangs and steeps of Little River Canyon in
Alabama, but a stiffer midsole meant that testers
could still edge well on the vertical walls of Shelf
Road in Colorado. Wears like a slipper, performs
like a Velcro, said one tester of the single strap,
which is placed high over the arch of the foot
to lock everything in place. A slightly oversized
toe box allowed testers toes to have room to
curl up so they could wear them for long gym
sessions and only take them off a few times.
Plus, the unlined leather upper proved itself to
be stink-free for four different testers after ve
months of use. Even though it is a leather shoe,
meaning it will stretch slightly over time, the
sizing is quite small, so go up at least a half size
from your street shoe. Testers found it was difcult to get onlike putting a large orange in a
small sock. Narrow-heeled testers said the heel
felt slightly baggy and insecure.

Ideal for harder multi-pitch routes, because

it feels like a comfort shoe, but it has the
performance of a more precise kick, one tester
said. A atter, less-downturned prole and a
supportive midsole that runs from the forefoot
down to the start of the heel made this shoe
great for when one tester was on her feet for
ve pitches of foot jamming in Rocky Mountain
National Park. A tension-randed piece of rubber
underneath the arch of the foot provided additional support and rounded out the easy-t
features. However, the Lyra has the extra toe
rubber, the dedicated heel cup (one piece of
rubber as opposed to rubber and leather or synthetic leather), the precise toe, and the band of
rubber that wraps around the Achilles (pushing
power to the forefoot) of a high-performance
rock shoe. Designers added a few more strips of
soft Velcro, so testers could change the angle of
the closure straps based on foot size and shape.
Bonus: With everything I can wear this shoe
forbouldering, trad climbing, after-work gym
sessions, sport climbingthis is a true bargain!
Testers reported the rubber started to wear
down after about two months of use. Though
not quite as sticky as other shoe rubber in the
test, this degradation didnt affect performance.
It immediately became my go-to shoe.

[ FLAT ]

[ AGGRESSIVE ]

[ FLAT ]

Traddies and alpinists who want full support and

stability from a sticky-rubber rock shoe will love
the Mantra and its old-school style that has added
comfort and thoughtful features.

With a comfortable t and medium-high level of

performance, the Hiangle is excellent for climbers looking for their rst pair of aggressive shoes
or those who want a higher level of performance
in the gym.

One shoe to conquer them allthe Lyras atter

build and supportive midsole make it easy to
wear all day outside or for hours in the gym, but
certain features (heel cup, precise toe, power
platform) give it excellent performance.

Stiff Trad

Goldilocks Perfomance

Ladies Quiver of One

CLIMBING.COM

| 41

GEAR

BIG REVIEW

Shoe

Boreal Dharma

Evolv Axiom

Butora Sensa

$159; e-boreal.com

$125; evolvsports.com

$98; butora.com

Performance

Not only are these shoes very burly and

durable (proven after six months of bad
footwork and four-times-a-week use),
they have a specialized anti-deformation midsole designed to keep the toe
curved down over the life of the shoe
perfect for steep bouldering and sport
climbing. Many of my high-performance
kicks have attened out over time,
one tester complained, but these have
maintained their shape very well, especially in the toe, despite cramming into
packs and walking around the gym oor.
Zenith rubber was delightfully sticky on
all types of rockpolished limestone,
granite, sandstoneand generous application on top of the toe, up on the
sides, and a one-piece heel cup meant
testers could do virtually any type of
foot movement and be touching sticky
rubber to rock. The sock lining on top of
the foot vacuum-sealed a snug but not
overly tight t, and then cranking down
the three Velcro straps kept everything
in place without restricting easy on
easy off usage. Testers also lauded the
Rand Wrap that put tensioned rubber
(meaning the rubber was stretched out
before it was applied) under the arch and
behind the heel, which hugs the foot
and funnels strength into the toe. With 4
to 4.5mm of rubber (depending on shoe
size) and relative stiffness in the toe and
heel, these shoes werent ideal for slabs,
smearing, or any smedging moves that
might require more sensitivity.

On the comfort-performance spectrum, these fall almost smack dab in the

middle because theyre easy to wear for
eight or 10 hours, but I can edge like a
champ on vertical faces and nd micronubs on slabs, one tester said. Although
rare for a at-lasted shoe, the band of
rubber up and over the Achilles really
drove power to the toe and forefoot
for precision moves on the stem-fest
Not My Cross to Bear in Penitente
Canyon, Colorado. Testers feet werent
the least bit fatigued on 10-pitch routes
in Red Rock, Nevada. Testers praised
the Tongue-Lock System, which placed
Velcro between the tongue and the side
of the shoe that prevents the super-soft
and cushy tongue from sliding out of
place when twisting and torqueing your
foot into place. A full-length midsole
and 4.2mm of TRAX rubber meant
testers could stand at belays for hours
without foot fatigue or arch pain, and
they added to the durability of the
shoe: From Vedauwoo to Tuolumne
Meadows, Ive tried to beat these up,
but theyre not wavering in the least.
Plus, thicker rubber on the toe prevented one climbers bad footwork from
burning through the easily damaged
forefoot area. The leather upper will
stretch about a half-size, which might
also mean a few weeks of discomfort in
the shoe before it molds to your foot.
Wide or high-volume feet should look
elsewhere.

With some of the best climbing shoes

on the market coming out of Europe,
American shoe brands denitely have
something to prove, and Californiabased Butora has charged out of the gate
with some of our favorite shoes of the
year. The Sensa is a classic slipper design
with a exible, at sole. One tester loved
it for foot jamming on Melvins Wheel in
Lumpy Ridge, Colorado, but also found
the sensitivity and softness great for
smedging (smearing + edging) on the
dime edges of J Crack, also in Lumpy.
Testers found the proprietary Butora
rubber to be just as sticky as the namebrand rubbers of other shoes in the test:
From rst wear, I never questioned the
stickinessespecially because that rst
wear was on slightly damp granite! A
synthetic upper wont stretch over the
life of the shoe, so size accordingly. Super-awesome, far-out bonus: The price!
Dont be fooled by that sub-$100 price
tag; these shoes are truly high quality,
one user said. This two-man startup, run
out of a garage, owns the factory where
they produce shoes, and they intentionally keep overhead minimal so they can
keep prices low. This shoe quickly proved
itself to be on par with some of the best
currently on the market. Full sensitivity
means just that, and some users experienced foot fatigue and/or pain after
wearing them for all-day routes. Like
most classic slippers, its slightly challenging to get them off and on.

[ AGGRESSIVE ]

[ FLAT ]

[ FLAT ]

If you want a high level of performance,

enough comfort to wear for a few hours
at a time, and an all-around shoe that
edges all day, the Dharma will quickly
turn into your go-to pair of high-performance but wearable kicks.

A solid, do-it-all shoe that is comfortable on everything moderate: cracks, in

the gym, and on 10-pitch sufferfests. A
leather upper and laces allow you to dial
in a full-comfort t or a tighter one, with
unbeatable edging power.

Slipper purists that dont want anything

fancyjust a sticky-rubber sockwill
love the Sensa for its simple, straightforward design, not to mention the
phenomenal price.

Everlasting
Performance

Comfy All-Around

Sensitive Slipper

Prole

Conclusion

Bottom
Line
42 |

OCTOBER 2014

Shoe

Tenaya Tarifa

Mad Rock Lotus

Butora Endeavor

$165; trango.com

$119; madrockclimbing.com

$98; butora.com

Performance

Following Tenayas motto that high

performance doesnt have to mean low
comfort, the Tarifa is a medium-stiff
shoe that has top-notch performance
on every angle and type of terrain. Its
stiff and supportive where you need it
heel cup and forefoot, but completely
exible in one key spotthe arch/
middle of the foot, one tester said of
this narrow-lasted shoe. That means
I can edge on a razor crimp as well as
I can smear on a low-angle section as
well as I can dig in deep on tiny nubs on
a roof. Its versatility is unrivaled. The
Tarifa really shined on a 5.12 sport route
in Boulder Canyon that required a perfect balance of stiffness and exibility. A
tted interior sock makes the shoe feel
snug from the get-go, and with slight
padding in the sock, you can crank down
the laces as much as you want when
ne-tuning t for hard bouldering. Vibram XS Grip rubber extends all the way
around the shoe and up on the sides,
including an extra-large patch on the toe
for hooks and bicycles. It was extremely
sticky on all rock types, from craggy
limestone to polished granite, and it
showed no signs of wear or lessened
stickiness after three months of heavy
use. The right size can be a challenge to
nd because the shoe is so comfortable
that you can literally go down multiple
sizes (one tester was a full 2.5 sizes
down from her other performance kicks)
and it will still feel good on your foot.

With full-on exibility throughout the

shoe and maximum sensitivity, the Lotus
performs like a slipper, making it an
excellent choice for steep terrain with
small holds, competition climbing, and
everything in between. As their rst
foray into womens-specic shoes, Mad
Rock nailed the t with their ladies last
thats narrower through the length of
the foot, especially in the heel, with a
lower-volume prole. Bam! The best t
everright out of the box, one smitten
user said. No gaps, no uncomfortable
pinching, no cramped toes, and no saggy
heel! A small piece of plastic is used
as a minimalistic midsole, offering a
small amount of support under the ball
of your foot so your toes dont have
to do all the work but you dont lose
sensitivity. A single Velcro strap runs over
the middle, but then zig-zags back over
the very top to dial in t, and a padded
split tongue directly underneath allowed
testers to crank it down without pain
or discomfort. The split also makes it
easier to pull on than other standard
slippers. Testers lauded the rubber heel
cup, which wraps the heel of the foot in
one piece of stiff rubber, no saggy upper
to stretch out, reducing performance.
A pronounced strip of rubber runs right
down the middle of the heel, offering
security that one tester trusted more
for heel hooks. If youre used to more
support and stability, it might take a
while to maximize these super-softies.

As the one-stop shop of rock shoes,

the Endeavor is a durable, medium-stiff,
medium-ex, sticky-rubber kick that is
at home on vertical, slabby, and even
slightly overhanging terrain. If I could
only climb in one pair of shoes for the
rest of my life; these would be it, one
tester said after a few months of easy
bouldering, moderate sport routes, and
big multi-pitch days. With the addition
of a few thoughtful features, this shoe
rises above the dozen other moderateperformance pairs on shelves now. A
welded polyurethane reinforcement
in the leather-upper heel gives more
stability and security in the back of
the shoe without the full rigidity of a
one-piece rubber heel cup. A strip of
welded polyurethane on the upper runs
across the toe for increased durability
and structure, preventing the forefoot
from stretching out or caving in. The
double straps of Velcro are opposed
(one latches down on the left, the other
on the right), with double and triple
attachment points so that when testers
pulled one strap, they could feel the
shoe tightening down all around their
foot. The Endeavor also has a two-face
upper, with leather in the back half for
breathability and comfort, and synthetic
in the front that wont stretch out or
deform. Sweet: Its available in half sizes
from 5 to 15, with a wide option. Ding:
Although its good at everything, it
doesnt particularly excel at anything.

Prole

Conclusion

Bottom
Line

[ AGGRESSIVE ]

[ AGGRESSIVE ]

[ MODERATE ]

Bouldering, sport, hard trad, single-pitch,

or multi-pitchthe Tarifa can do it all.
If youre looking for top performance in
an easy-to-wear package, look no further
than this all-around ass-kicking pick.

If you love the t and sensitivity of a

snug slipper, but want slightly more support for toeing in on steeps, this is your
shoe. Even the narrowest-footed ladies
will get excited over the well-designed
t, and the perfect heel is unbeatable.

Great performance without downsizing,

an aggressive curve, or any pain. The
dirtbag-friendly price makes this an excellent option for gym or mileage shoes,
and the well-designed details mean way
more value for your money.

Master of All Trades

Cinderellas Slipper

Quiver of One
CLIMBING.COM

| 43

GEAR

TESTED

Field Notes

The latest and greatest from our diligent testers

BY JULIE ELLISON AND LESLIE HITTMEIER
QUICK-CLIPPING DRAW

Petzl Djinn Axess

After testing no fewer than 10
types of quickdraws this year,
our Colorado tester declared
this one my hands-down
favorite. What separates one
draw from another? With the
Djinn, its the extra-large
carabiners with a
slight bump on
the outside
of the spine.
The size and
bump give
the biners an
ergonomic
t that nestled
perfectly in testers hands.
Combine that with a wide
gate opening, and youll get
the clip the rst time with
less bumbling and fumbling.
A smooth, snag-free nose
shape kept the biner from
catching on bolt hangers
when cleaning, and a small
indent on the straight-gate
biner made clipping the bolt
easier and smoother. The
Axess sling is durable and wide
enough to grab in a pinch,
but not so hefty that it adds
a ton of weight; the 12cm
version weighs in at a mere 3.8
ounces. $1718; petzl.com
ULTRA-LIGHT, PACKABLE
DIGS

Brooks-Range
Tension 30
This three-season, twoperson tent packs down to
the size of a loaf of bread and
weighs less than two large
cans of beans (2 lbs., 7 oz.),
but its not a imsy shelter
that needs to be babied. One
carbon ber pole cuts down
signicantly on weight but
increases strength, two other
aluminum poles offer a nice
balance of strength for the
weight, and a 2mm cord sewn
into the seams increases the
structural integrity of the
tent body without adding

44 | OCTOBER 2014

noticeable weight. Together

these three factors offer a
sturdy, storm-worthy shelter
for alpine missions. After
comfortably riding out 30+
mph winds on Gothics in the
Adirondacks this spring, our
tester said it laughs in the
face of a stiff wind, practically
disappears in my pack, and
doesnt skimp on space.
I packed, unpacked, and
generally beat it upI knew
it could handle the abuse,
but I wasnt hurting because
of any extra weight. He
went on to say, This will be
perfect for a full fall of alpine
climbing in Europe because
the 30 square feet of space
is perfect for my partner and
meand were big guys.
Ding: Vestibule space is just
more than six square feet, so
testers had to cram and pile
gear in the small space. $420;
brooks-range.com
BLAZE OF GLORY

Bosavi USB
Headlamp
With a high light output,
scant weight, and USB
rechargeability, the Bosavi
headlamp is a must-have
for climbers and alpinists
who should always carry a
head torch in their pack. The
110-lumen light reached far
out enough for our tester to
run quickly downhill through
a scree eld. White and red
LEDs provided options for
seeing at night, whether it was
on the rock or reading in the
tent, and the pleasantly light
weight2.1 ounces, battery
includedwas unbeatable.
(Compare to other lights with
similar specs: 3 oz. without
the battery.) But its usefulness
isnt limited to camp and
alpine starts. Wrap the light
with its own packaging to
create a lantern, or pop it on
your bike with the included
mount for late-night returns
from the gym. The strap was

comfortable on
sweaty heads, and it
easily transitioned from
skull to brain bucket.
Our testers praised the
versatile functions and
intuitive interface: You can
remove modes you never use,
like red or strobe, to simplify
dialing in what you want,
and a lock button prevents
unintentionally draining the
battery while in your pack.
$70; bosavi.com
ONE-POUND
CHILLAXING SYSTEM

Grand Trunk Single

Hammock
Hammocks are popping
up more and more at crags
across the country, and just
like anybody else, we get
annoyed by folks taking over
an entire area by hanging a hammock, but these
elevated beds are heavenly
for chilling in camp, a quick
nap, or even for sleeping
overnight in fair weather. (Or
use it in a friends backyard
so you dont wear out your
welcome by overtaking his
couch.) Perfectly comfy and
an easy setup for relaxing
on hot afternoons while
waiting for temps to cool in
Bishop, one tester said. Just
nd two trees, tie a quick
girth-hitch, and youre ready
to go. Testers paired it with
the Packable Travel Blanket
($80) to create a super-cushy
bed setup for short afternoon naps that had them
rested and recovered for the
evening session. It weighs in
at one pound and packs to
the size of a grapefruit, and
the high-strength nylon with
triple stitching can hold up to

400 pounds. Everything

you need to hang it is
included, and the fast
assembly, small size, and
budget-friendly price make
it a dirtbaggers dream. $55;
grandtrunkgoods.com
END-ALL, BE-ALL
DAY HAULER

Trango Crag Pack

Think durability and comfort
cant come in a light, functional package? Think again.
My favorite crag packout
of about 10from rst wear,
said our tester after he lugged
it a few dozen miles over
the course of two months
throughout Colorado and
the Rockies. The 3.6-pound,
48-liter bag has a haulbag-like
designand the corresponding burlinessbut it

carries as comfortably
and loads up as smartly as
a techy alpine pack. Nice
touches: A mesh pouch on
the outside of the pack for
shoes helps them dry quicker
(and stink less), a side zipper
gives immediate access to the
inside, and an included mini
tarp keeps ropes clean. A at
bottom helps it stand upright
when digging for gear, and
the vinyl Titan Wrap fabric
proved more durable than
any other pack weve tested
in the last year (dedicated
haulbags excluded). With
smooth zipper operation,
padded (but not bulky) straps,
and a side pocket big enough
for even the thickest of crag
bibles, our tester was rst in
line to purchase his own: It
has no annoying hiccups, its
comfy, and its more than capable for cragging and donein-a-day alpine adventures.
$99; trango.com

R
IE

A
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) A KA
J O N AT H A N S I E G R I S T B I O G R A P H I E ( 5 1 5 a

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THE
BEGIN HERE

CLIMB

CLINICS

USING THE SHELF

By Julie Ellison

KEEP ANCHORS CLEAN

AND ORGANIZED WITH THIS
SIMPLE TRICK

* STANDARD

Efficiency is directly related to

success on any multi-pitch climb,
and being neat and tidy from the
beginning is a key to efficiency.
With ropes, belay devices, cordelette, and slings
crowding the anchor, its easy for this important setup
to become an overcomplicated rats nest. Keep your
belay orderly with this effortless technique: using the
shelf. The shelf is a secondary point (the rst being
the master point) you can use to clip into directly. On
a standard cordelette anchor built with at least two
attachment points, it sits right above the knot. Using
this redundant and full-strength clip-in spot keeps
the master point free for the belay device and for your
follower (or followers) to clip into. It streamlines
the whole setup, especially if you have three or
more climbers clipping into the anchor. Here, weve
explained two common scenarios and the proper way
to use the shelf in each.

through the master pointweighted

or unweightedso theres no way
the knot can come undone. Clipping
the belay device to the master point
for use in guide mode is sufficient.

Use a cordelette to build a solid,

equalized, redundant, efficient, and
extension-free anchor (SERENE/
ERNEST) that includes a master
point. Above the knot that creates
the master point, there will be two
strands of cord running from each
piece of gear (you must have at least
two pieces for this to be redundant)
into the knot. Grab a strand from
each pair and clip a locking biner
through all of them. Make sure the
biner goes through the strands,
not just around them, which could
result in the biner slipping down
and coming off the anchorvery
bad! Tie a clove hitch on the biner
with the rope from your harness.
Lock the biner and youre clipped
in. Note: For this system to be
solid, you must have a biner clipped

* TREE

g. 1

g. 2

ANCHOR (Fig. 2)
Use a double-length sling or cordelette to create an anchor around a
solid tree thats at least ve inches
in diameter, rmly rooted in the
ground, and alive. Wrap the sling/
cord around the tree, match the ends,
and tie a gure eight on a bight to
create a master point. The difference in this scenario is that to make
it redundant, you must clip all the
strands on one side of the knot, as
opposed to taking a strand from each
pair of strands like in the previous
example. If you were to clip one
strand from each side of the knot and
one loop (top or bottom) failed, the
biner would be clipped to nothing.

SUPERCORN (2)

CORDELETTE
ANCHOR (Fig. 1)

CLIMBING.COM

| 47

CLINICS

RIPPED FROM
THE HEADLINES

LAWS OF LIGHTNING
By Julie Ellison

LEARN THE TRUTHAND MYTHSABOUT LIGHTNING TO STAY SAFE ON YOUR

NEXT ADVENTURE
In July 2014, two hikers in Rocky Mountain National Park of Colorado were killed by lightning
strikes in two separate incidents on back-to-back days, and collectively, about a dozen others were
injured. While these fatalities occurred on hiking trails relatively close to the road, lightning is an
even bigger risk for backcountry and alpine climbers who are committed to being far away from a
safe place for hours at a time. As the number of these climbers grow, its important to realize that
lightning is a very serious threat that occurs practically every day in the high country. We teamed
up with meteorologist William Roeder, who works with the U.S. space program in central Florida
(aka Lightning Alley), and NOLS Curriculum and Research Manager John Gookin to compile the
most pertinent information and best protocol for backcountry climbers.

First and Foremost

The only places that are completely safe from lightning are in a fully enclosed building with wiring and plumbing (house,
office, restaurantnot a gazebo or open-sided shelter) or in a vehicle that has a solid metal roof and solid metal sides. That
means the biggest and best rule for lightning safety is not to be outside when a storm hitsperiod. Time your activities
so youre not outside if a storm is coming, or turn back on the approach or bail off a climb if a storm is moving in. Roeder
says, You should never refer to outdoor lightning safety; instead, you should call it lightning risk reduction. But even if
youve done everything to mitigate risk from the start, a storm you dont expect can still present problems. When lightning
threatens, your rst goal should be to get indoors or back in your vehicle. If thats not possible, the next step is to get to the
safest place available; follow the diagram below to see where the safest spot is, based on where you are.
1

1 Most danger

2 Moderate danger

1
2

3 Least danger

3
2
3

PROTOCOL
If you are in the backcountry and get stuck in a storm, immediately move
to the safest position possible, following the diagram above. However, two
common situations that climbers might nd themselves in that are not covered in the diagram are: being stuck on a vertical face or in a large, treeless
bouldereld. Both of these situations are risky
and subject to judgment based on the specic
situation as to where lightning might strike.
The spots most likely to be struck are based on
three factors (in order of importance): relative
height (summit vs. valley), isolation (think tall
tree in an open eld), and a streamlined, skinnier shape (tree vs. a boulder). Rock shelters
and cave entrances are also dangerous because
lightning will travel along any surface to reach
electrical ground. If any part of your body
touches any part of these surfaces, the lightning
will travel through your body (g. 1).

g. 1

48 |

OCTOBER 2014

Bouldereld: Sit on a dry crashpad

(or sleeping pad or packwhatever
you have with you), not a wet one.
Both hiding in rock caves and
sitting exposed out in the open
are dangerous, but since most
people wont want to get drenched
during a storm, youll probably take
shelter under the rocks if available.
In this situation, the biggest risk
is lightning flashing over rocks.
Mitigate cave risk by sitting far
back from the entrance and having
as much space between your head
and the rock ceiling as possible.
That means potentially finding a
different cave to wait out the storm.

Vertical face: Generally, its best to

keep moving down to safer terrain,
unless you come to a spot thats more
dangeroussuch as a rock cave on
the side of a face (g. 1). If the storm
is right on top of you, get into the
lightning position (see next page)
until the storm moves away. If the
storm is still pretty distant, sneak
across the danger zone as quickly as
possible. Same goes once you reach
the ground: Keep moving until you
hit a dangerous area (e.g., exposed
ridgeline). If the storm is right over
your head, assume the lightning
position. If not, move over that spot
as quickly as possible.

FIRST AID PRIMER

Lightning fatalities and injuries occur due to the high voltage of electricity, the
heat, and the blast of air (like an explosion). While burns, temporary loss of hearing, unconsciousness, and other injuries can occur, the most serious problems are
cardiac arrest and respiratory arrest, so the most important rst aid is CPR. (Call rescue services,
911, or emergency medical professionals immediately.) Roeder recommends following the most
current CPR procedure, which emphasizes chest compressions rather than rescue breathing. AEDs
(automated external debrillators) work well, too.

MythsBusted!
Rubber tires or shoes
insulate you from lightning.
The amount of rubber in
these items is way too
small to insulate from the
incredibly high voltage of
lightning; its actually the
metal body of the car that
protects you. When a car is
struck, the current travels
around the outside of the
vehicle (only if it has a metal
top and sides), protecting the
people inside.
Your rack or cell phones

attract lightning. Metal

rods on skyscraper roofs do
attract lightning; your cams
and biners wont. Dont
waste time shedding gear;
focus on getting to safety
early and quickly.

should be respected and

taken seriously, even if you
have to change your plans.

Someone who has just

been struck will electrocute
you if touched. Nope, you
should immediately start
providing rst aid.

Thunder doesnt mean

lightning. Thunder is caused
by lightning, so if you hear
thunder, there IS lightning.
The ash can hide behind a
mountain, deep in a cloud, or
just the opposite direction of
where youre looking.

It wont happen to me.

Possibly the most dangerous
myththe threat of lightning

IMPORTANT
VOCABULARY
Ground current is when the voltage from a
strike runs along the ground; this happens
with every bolt.

Lightning never strikes

the same place twice. False!
Youre not safe until youre
inside a building or vehicle.

INJURY-CAUSING
MECHANISMS
Upward leaders Direct strike Contact voltage
12%

3%

4%

Side ash jumps from tall objects (trees,

antenna) when that object is struck.
Contact voltage comes from touching a
conductive object that was struck (wire fence).
Upward leaders originate from tall, pointed
conductors trying to touch the approaching
lightning a split-second before the strike.
Direct strikes are just what they sound like:
The bolt hits you directly.

Ground current

Side ash

50%

31%

LIGHTNING POSITION

SKIP
SKIP STERLING
STERLING (2)
(2)

The most important part of this position is to stand with your feet together, which reduces exposure to ground current. You can stand or squat, on top of a pad or a pack if you have it, just keep
your footprint on the ground as small as possible. Your biggest goal is getting to one of the two safe
places listed earlier, and only do this lightning position if you experience the signs of an imminent
strike (see Quick Hits). After 10 seconds, feel for signs of an imminent strike again. If present, get
back into position. If not, continue seeking shelter.

JOHN GOOKIN
As the Curriculum and Research Manager for the National Outdoor Leadership
School, John Gookin, Ph.D., is an expert in backcountry lightning risk management. Hes also on the Lightning Safety Team for the National Weather Service.

Quick Hits
Rule of thumb for time: On top by 10 a.m., off by noon.
Only 10% of those who encounter lightning are killed,
but 70% of survivors have lifelong debilitating injuries.
When thunder roars, go indoors.
Spread out when hiking in a storm; current jumps
from person to person. Aim for 20 feet between people
to reduce the chances of others getting hurt, but make
sure youre within hearing distance.
Signs of imminent lightning: hair standing up, cracking/static sounds from the air, skin tingling, light metal
objects (cams, biners, ice axe) or your rope vibrating.
NEVER lie at on the ground, which increases your
exposure to ground current.
Turn around immediately if you hear thunder, which
means lightning is less than 10 miles away.
Sounds travels one mile every ve seconds. Count the
seconds between the ash and the bang, then divide by
ve. Thats how many miles away the storm is.
Avoid any and all water.

Real World
Phil Broscovak
It felt like being stung by 10,000
wasps at the same time, from
the inside out. I cant describe
how much pain I was in. Id had
more than a dozen close calls,
ground shocks, and near-death
lightning experiences on serious
climbs before being blasted nine
years ago. After all that, to nally Ed. Note: Broscovak,
be lit up ripped my life apart. now 57, was struck
This is a subject that strips me on Edwards Crack
bare and exposes the rawest edg- in Vedauwoo on
es of my being, and I do not take August 13, 2005. He
it lightly. The real Phil Brosco- was retrieving gear
vak died that day. And since from the climb after
then, Ive dealt with the con- getting his group
sequences: a lifetime in a very (two of his kids and
personal but invisible hell while a nephew) to safety
everyone tells me how lucky I when the storm
am to have survived. The elec- moved in. Lightning
trical shock caused a traumatic struck the rock about
brain injury thats left me with eight inches from
periods of normalness punctuat- his head and then
ed by massive mood swings, hy- traveled to him.
persensitivity to sound, difficulty
writing and speaking, insomnia, extreme fatigue where I
can barely force my eyes open, and an inability to regulate body temperature (sweating at 30F and shivering at
80F). This has affected every one of my relationships, and
it was a huge factor in my divorce. Its only been in the
last two years that I have begun to normalize around bad
weather. People acknowledge some of the risk, but they do
not comprehend any of the consequences. If any of my stories can promote greater awareness, then I will continue
to talk about it. No one dies from awareness.

CLIMBING.COM

| 49

CLINICS

SHOP TECH

FRICTION SCIENCE
By David Flanagan

LEARNING THE PROPERTIES OF FRICTION WILL HELP YOU SEND

Friction is the magic ingredient in climbing. Its what keeps you off the ground and makes subtle
weight shifts and delicate sequences successful. Understanding the how and why will make you
a better climber. In simple terms, friction is the resistance that one surface encounters when
moving over another. In high school physics terms, friction is independent of the contact area,
but in a climbing context, friction is proportional to the contact area (more contact equals more
friction). Well look at three materialsrubber, skin, rockto see how each behaves.

RUBBER
Climbing shoe rubber is designed to be soft enough to mold to the rock,
and this softness results in increased friction because it wraps around the
irregularities in the rock, upping the contact area between the two surfaces.
This softness and the resulting performance vary based on temperature; this
means some days you can stand on a certain foothold and others you cant.

Temperature
Climbing shoe manufacturers design
their rubber to work best in a specic
temperature rangeapproximately
32 to 41F. (Of course, all rubber
compounds are different, but this
is an average according to shoe
manufacturers.) Below this range,
the rubber is harder and wont mold
well to the shape of the rock. Above
it, the rubber will be too soft and will
deform easily, causing it to slip. The
reason climbing shoes work best in
the cold is because they are designed
to. But why such a low temperature
range? At temps above that range,
most peoples hands will begin to
sweat (even ever so slightly), which

g. 1

reduces gripping ability. So shoe rubber is designed to function best at the

same time that we have optimal hand
grip. The 32 to 41F range is too cold
for hands to sweat, but its not so cold
that you cant warm your mitts up relatively easily. The variability of rubbers friction with temperature means
that a climbing shoe that works well
when bouldering in Hueco in January
wont have maximum performance
sport climbing in Rie in August.
(Thats not to say climbing in Rie in
the summer is pointless; your shoes
just wont be in the absolute optimal
temps for highest friction.)
When Formula 1 cars hurtle
around a track at 200 mph, the tires
heat up signicantly, so F1 tires use

rubber that works best at those high

temps. This is why pit crews pre-heat
their tires before a raceso they work
optimally right from the start. Climbers can do the same thing with some
very simple tactics. During winter
when your shoes are cold and dry, try
warming them up by putting them in
your puffy next to your heat-radiating
body, and during summer, leave them
in the shade or next to a chilled water
bottle after you take them off.

Edging
When standing on a small, at edge,
friction isnt the deciding issue; this
is why mountaineering boots are reasonably good at edging. Standing on
an edge is mainly a mechanical act, so
the best rubber for edging is actually
stiff, meaning it wont deform and
roll off the edge. In contrast, smearing is most effective with soft rubber.
Manufacturers compromise by
choosing a rubber compound that lies
somewhere in the middle, striking a
reasonable balance between smearing

and edging performance. Reasonably

new shoes tend to be more effective
on really small edges, as their more
pronounced toe allows them to maximize the contact area (g. 1).

Tread
Car tires have tread to improve grip
in wet conditions because it allows
the water on the surface of the road
to escape as the tire presses down on
it, improving the contact between the
tire and the road. Without treads, the
water is unable to escape, and a thin
layer of water remains between the
road and the tire, reducing grip.
However, if the road is dry, the
tread reduces the contact area between the tire and the road, thereby
reducing potential grip. This is why
treadless tires are used in motor
racing when the track is smooth and
dry. This is the same reason climbing
shoes dont have tread while sneakers
and approach shoes do.

g. 2

As a climber, writer, and freelance journalist living in

Dublin, David Flanagan has developed and published
guidebooks for several areas in his home country. His
newest book, Bouldering Essentials, has practical advice
for everyone interested in boulderingbeginner or expert
(threerockbooks.com).

50 | OCTOBER 2014

SKIP STERLING

DAVID FLANAGAN

ROCK

Rock factors that determine friction:

Anyone who has climbed on a variety of rock types knows that rougher rock
(limestone, unpolished sandstone) seems to have more friction. But rougher
is better only up to a point. On really rough rock, the irregularities are so large
that the rubber cant adapt to them. This is the point when increasing roughness reduces friction (g. 2). Softer rubber is particularly effective on rough
rock, as it molds better. Similarly, rubber will perform better on rough rock at
a slightly higher temp than the aforementioned range (32 to 41F). Morals
of the story: Smooth rock is best climbed in temps on the lower/colder end
because you dont need rubber to be at maximum softness. Rough rock is best
climbed in temps on the higher/warmer end because of increased softness.

g. 3

Grain Size The physical dimensions of individual particles of rock: Some are
larger, and you can see the big crystals (coarse-grained quartz monzonite of
Joshua Tree); some are smaller, and the rock seems more uniform (negrained granite of Yosemite).
Grain Shape Sharp grains will have higher friction than round ones. How the
rock was weathered (wind, water, glaciers, etc.) inuences the grain shape to be
smoother or more jagged.
Porosity The proportion of the non-solid volume to the total volume (g. 3).
Greater porosity (meaning denser rock, less airimage on right), the larger the
surface area for rubber contact (read: more friction).
Sorting Rock that consists of a range of different particle sizes is less porous
than rock that is well-sorted (uniform particles size), as the smaller particles
ll the gaps between larger ones.
Composition Chemical components in the rock; e.g., granite is largely silicon
dioxide and aluminum oxide. Certain compounds have more or less friction.
Cementation How well the rock is held together.

SKIN
The skin on our ngertips gets a lot of punishment from friction, and its
not unusual for sore or bloody tips to force a session to a premature halt.
Our tips can only bear a certain amount of pressure before the skin starts to
tear. This pressure (force over a given area) can consist of a low force on a
small area (a tiny crimp on a slab), a high force on a large area (a big sloper
on an overhang), or anything in between. Get more mileage from skin by
maximizing contact area with the rock, which spreads the load and reduces
the chance of damage. Contrary to what you might think, if your skin is
feeling thin and damaged, avoid crimps and small holds, aiming for climbs
with bigger, slopier holds that require more skin contact.

Temperature
Like rubber, skin is affected by
temperature. Obviously if its too hot,
your skin sweats and creates a layer
of moisture between your skin and
the rock, hence reducing friction.
Also like rubber, your skin grips best
at a certain temperature range. It
varies by person because of the differences in the temperature at which
people sweat, but generally speaking,
it works best in the 32 to 41F
range mentioned previously. Cold
makes the skin become harder (it
reduces the uidity of the liquids that

constitute our cellular membranes)

and prevents sweat. When it gets too
cold, your ngers will get numb, and
that will prevent you from climbing.
Keeping hands warm between burns
is crucial to being able to grip on
super-cold days. Beyond that, very
dry air in 30 and below temps can
cause your tips to get smooth and
hard, sometimes described as glassy.
This condition reduces grip, especially on smoother rock types (some
types of granite, polished sandstone),
and it can cause your hands to slip
quickly and without warning. Warm
your hands and then use sandpaper

REMEMBER THIS: Think in terms of the

Goldilocks Effect. The rubber on your shoes
should be soft but not too soft, your skin
should be hard and dry but not too hard and
dry, temperatures should be low but not too
low. While we cant manipulate many of the
environmental factors that influence friction,
there are a few simple things that we can do to
tilt the odds in our favor.

Choose cold, dry days with highs in the 40s

(noaa.gov has the most accurate weather

lightly on the tips to roughen skin for

increased friction and prevention of
that glassy feeling.

Best Qualities for Skin

Smooth There should be no rough
spots where dead skin is hanging
off and can easily tear. Use sandpaper to remove this fraying skin
and to smooth the tips between
attempts.
Thick Calluses These make climbing on rough rock or sharp holds
more comfortable, meaning you can
bear down more and increase the
contact zone. However, if they get
too thick, there is a danger that the
entire section will rip off in one massive chunk. Your skin will be naturally thick in some spots, but use
sandpaper to smooth calluses down
so theyre even with the rest of your
skin. It shouldnt stick out at all.
Dry Moist skin is slippery, so dry is
good. Sweat, water, or any other liquid on your skin acts as a lubricant,

reports) to attempt your projects.

Wear quality climbing shoes that have brokenin but not damaged (fraying or hole-lled) toes
and soles.
Carry a small carpet or utilize the included
patch of carpet on your pad to clean your shoes
of any major dirt. Taking it a step further, use a
damp rag to fully clean the soles, allowing a few
minutes to air-dry.

decreasing friction. But if skin gets

too dry, it becomes brittle and tears
easily, so moisturize regularly.

Chalk
In 2001, researchers from the
University of Birmingham came to
the conclusion that chalkwait for
itreduces friction. Participants in a
study were asked to hold a at rock
in their hand while an outside force
pulled it away. The coefficient of
friction (basically how much friction
existed between the two surfaces)
was less when participants hands
were chalked (vs. unchalked). So
why do we use it? Because a chalked
hand still has better friction than a
sweaty, unchalked hand. If you are
lucky enough to have hands that
dont sweat, then you can enjoy
great grip without chalk. Otherwise,
only use the bare minimum of chalk
necessary. Once you dip your hands,
remove the excess by blowing it off
or patting your pants before you start
climbing. Try one of the brands of
chalk that contains an extra drying
agent to increase sweat absorption.

Use the minimum amount of chalk necessary,

remove any excess from your hands before you
climb, and never put chalk on footholds.
Brush the holds between attempts to remove
chalk, thereby increasing contact and friction
between your skin and the rock itself.
Keep your skin in good condition by
moisturizing consistently and sanding it as
appropriate.

CLIMBING.COM

| 51

THE
CLIMBER WISDOM

CLIMB

VOICES

Whats the nal word on booty?

Brittany S., Little Rock, AR

Ask Answer Man

He knows climbing. And he knows it.

BRETT AFFRUNTI

Clipping your toenails in the middle of the gym is totally

disgustingam I right?
Zack N., Augusta, ME
You are. And its not the only nasty gym-etiquette offense. For easy identication, Ive made a list of the nastiest offenders and how they can de-grossify.
The Clipper. Those fungus-laced, ballistic stench-crescents cannot be contained
no matter how hard you tryand I dont want to step on them or have one land in my
chalkbag. Alternative: Clip nails at home, out by your car, or in the gyms bathroom.
The Biohazard. We all know the mlange of moist awfulness that graces a bathroom
oor. Dont go in there in your climbing shoes only to sashay back out and smear every
surface (and handhold) available with your toddler footwork. Alternative: Take 10 seconds to put on your street shoes or a pair of ip-ops. And wash your hands. You nasty.
The Yard Sale. You open your gear bag and spray forth stuff like the Mount St.
Helens of chalk, nylon, sticky rubber, and beanies. Alternative: Every gym has cubbies. Full? Keep stuff youre not using in your bag and neatly stow the bag somewhere.
The Bleeder. You huck big for a grainy jug, catch the hold, swing out, and rip a massive apper in the process. Then you laugh, ll it with chalk, and continue climbing,
leaking blood everywhere. Great job. Alternative: Head to the front desk for some tape
and a Band-Aid. Then, march your ass straight to the bathroom (wearing appropriate
footwear, see above), clean the area, apply the Band-Aid, and tape over it.
The Greased Pig. I see folks over in the workout facility wiping down machinery
every time they use it. This is not a thing that greasy climbers seem to worry about as
they slip-slide all over the crashpads. Alternative: A shirt helps. So does Speed Stick.
And a healthy dose of self-awareness.

AND OTHER
TOPICS...

Wow, quite a softball for me, the Barry Bonds of

innuendo. If I werent so tired from day drinking
after my sesh, Id be working hard to offend every humanities professor with a gender studies syllabus from
here to England. Lucky for you, Deep Eddy vodka was
on sale, so Ill keep this schlort. I mean quick.
If you nd a single bail biner or a lone piece of gear
on a route and you can get it out, its yours to keep, but
keep in mind a warped cam thats been jammed in a
crack for months might not be safe to use. Never take
any part of a permanent anchor (quick links, chains,
rings, etc.), xed rappel station, or any perma-draws,
whether theyre on every bolt of a steep climb or a couple that are strategically positioned for easier and safer
cleaning of a traversing or roof-lled route.
Stashed gear (e.g., a guide companys alpine cache) is
not up for grabs, and neither is anything you nd at the
base: shoes, gear, sunglasses, etc. Either leave it where
it is, or (if it looks abandoned or lost) earn some karma points by taking it with you and posting on Mountain Project or SuperTopo (or even Craigslist) that you
found some gear at X crag on Y day, and actively try to
nd the owner. If no one responds within a few weeks,
do whatever you want with it.

Can you officially say you sent a route like

El Cap even though you only climbed the 15
easiest pitches on lead?
Max G., Monroe, NJ
Well, lets clear one thing up: El Cap is not, like, a
route. Shaming aside, the answer is both no and
yes. Way back when, Tommy Caldwell and Beth Rodden free climbed the Nose as a pair, swapping leads. The
second would follow (without falling I might add), and
upon reaching the top, they celebrated with a collective
ascent. However, as Tommy is wont to do, he set out
to lead the whole thing himself (in 12 hours no less!) a
mere two days later. He, as well as a host of other climbers, nd value in complete ownership of a climb, i.e.,
sending every single pitch in a continuous push.
While sport climbing is slightly more black and white
in its appraisals of particular ascents, big walls require
more elaboration in style and technique. In your case,
if you didnt cleanly follow the harder pitches, then no,
you did not send the route. In the end, being clear, concise, andabove allhonest about your ascent is what
matters. But lets not forget that youre not Tommy
Caldwell, and climbing El Cap, in whatever style, is
righteously cool.

Do you need a car to be a dirtbag? With charm youll graduate to Resident Dirtbag. // Can I smoke at the crag? Only if you brought enough for
everyone. // Is it OK to point out dabs to strangers? What are you, 12? // How redundant is too redundant? When you no longer get to climb.

CLIMBING.COM

| 53

VOICES

THE WRIGHT STUFF

Good Work
If You Can Get It
BY CEDAR WRIGHT

Living out every bouldering

bros fantasy, Cedar Wright
offers an up-close-andpersonal spot to a birthday
suitclad climber chick.

54 |

OCTOBER 2014

It wouldnt be Deans rst time surviving on next to

nothing, though. He is, by my estimation, the longest
standing dirtbag in the history of Yosemite, with an
illustrious career spanning from the 1970s to current
day. In fact, he was recently found scrubbing toilets
in Yosemite with one of the most stalwart new-school
dirtbags, James Lucas. Fidelman has photographed everyone from John Bachar and Lynn Hill to Dean Potter
and the Huber brothers, all while sleeping in his car
or in a cave. And for the last 15 years Dean has been
coaxing women (and for a short time, men) out of their
skivvies to pose for nude black and white images, which
he still shoots on medium format lm. In the past 15
years of producing his calendar and a coffee table book,
hes reached more than a million people through sales,
website hits, and video content. Hes received recognition in the New York art scene from fashion photographer Bruce Weber, and is, in my opinion, one of the
few true artists of our community. But in spite of all its
merit, Stone Nudes had met its tragic end.
Back in the late 90s when I rst met Bullwinkle,
somewhere along the Yosemite to Joshua Tree climbing-bum circuit, Stone Nudes had not yet been conceived. A couple years later when Dean rst discussed
creating a calendar of artistic black and white photographs that celebrated the contrast of the soft and owing female form against hard and angular stone (aka
naked women bouldering), I remember thinking it was
a solidif not geniusidea.
But where would Dean ever nd 12 climbing girls
who would pose for nothing, wearing nothing, high up
on some rock? I couldnt deny that t climbing women
were the perfect models for ne art nudes, and in fact,
it seemed to me this would be a unique and original
exploration, perhaps even an elevation of nude photog-

DEAN FIDELMAN (LEFT)

I was watching a mans dream

crumble before my eyes.
Its over, Dean Bullwinkle Fidelman, creator of the black and
white nude bouldering calendar Stone Nudes,
said with tears welling up in his eyes. Ive lost
my funding. With Deans yearly income in the
very low ve guresmostly thanks to Stone
Nudesit was looking like a four-gure year.

raphy. But it seemed like an insurmountable goal for the dirtiest of dirtbags. Plus,
Dean had recently dropped his camera off a cliff. But he had a dream, and like a man
possessed, he pushed forward.
Dean had grown up in the Stonemaster era of climbing, and many of his partners
from those bygone years had since become successful businessmen. So he called up
his old buddy Charles Cole, founder of Five Ten, and borrowed his large format camera. Right around that time, I pulled off the ultimate coup for a destitute Yosemite
climber and somehow landed a shapely, young National Park Service employee as
a girlfriend. She was an accomplished climber, and after quite a bit of coaxing and
a ip through Bullwinkles truly impressive portfolio of climbing photography, she
agreed to be one of his rst Stone Nudes.
Having cracked the code, I would become Bullwinkles top talent scout over the
years. This was never a paying job, though the position bore certain rewards, you
could say. And as Dean, uh, eshed out his body of work, it became easier for me
to convince potential talent that this project was a ne art endeavor and not some
creepy dude-climber wank-along fantasy. In fact, Dean was capturing unique harmonies of light, bodies, and rock, and the results were at times remarkable, far surpassing all the other nudes I had seen. Not that I have ever studied nudes, you understand, or ever ferreted around the Internet for naked women. Im just saying...
Soon Dean was photographing some of the worlds most beautiful and talented
climbersall nude. Professional climber Kate Rutherford wrote in Deans coffee
table book: I could see that he really loved to, and was especially skilled at, capturing beauty. To travel in the vertical landscape requires me to use strength along with
instinct to unlock natures puzzle. Deans Stone Nudes depicts that puzzle of mind,
muscle, and stone in simple and true images. And, of her own Stone Nudes experience, she said, I had a dark bruise on my shoulder and another on my hip from
climbing, but Deans eye made my scrappy, tired body look downright elegant.
Anyhow, a principal benet to being Bullwinkles close friend was standing in as
his assistant during the actual shoots. This work was often slow and surprisingly
strenuous. For instance, it was more aesthetic to feature the models in bare feet. So,
it fell on me to muscle a gorgeous, curved, toned, ripped, taut, naked women up into
a precarious position, somewhere directly overhead on the rock. In the name of art,
and you can read it and weep, I saw and had the pleasure of hoisting onto the rock
some of the most stunning and athletic women in the worldbuck naked.
Stone Nudes wasnt all glory, though. One day I wrenched the crap out of my back
while boosting a model up to an out-of-reach perch. I spent the following week in
bed with a compressed spine. Another time, a model from Spain pitched off near the
top of a boulder. I plucked her from the air bare-handed and got dump-trucked onto
the stony ground so mercilessly that I bruised my sacroiliac joint. I couldnt sit down

Dean Fidelman
shooting for his Stone
Nudes project at
The Wave, near the
Arizona-Utah border.

for a month, and my girlfriend had a bad knee so she

couldnt stand up. (It was odd going for a while in our
little SAR tent-cabin at the back of Camp 4.) There was
also the day I spotted the late, great Jose Pereyra, for
the short-lived Stone Nudes companion piece, Stone
Dudes, which it turns out lacked a substantial audience in the largely male-dominated climbing scene.
The climb in question was so high that, for Joses safety,
I had to spot from directly below him, staring straight
up at a dark and troubling eye that was staring straight
back at me. Not good.
My time as Deans spotter and talent recruiter is
special to my heart. I took true satisfaction in helping
a master make his art, just as Picassos wine-gopher
mustve felt. And the thought that some young climber
dude might not get to take my place as safety on Deans
shoots seemed unfair. Im going to start a Kickstarter
to help self-publish the calendar this year, Dean told
me. If theres one thing Dean is, its tenacious; this was
the guy who, against all odds, had already published 14
calendars and a beautiful coffee table book through the
sheer power of determination.
I loyally stepped back to the plate as one of Deans
biggest recruiters, this time recruiting people to preorder the calendaror even better, both calendars and
printsso that Dean could make his fundraising goal
before it was too late. I worked my social media and
climbing connections, trying to get anyone and everyone on board. I personally ordered enough nude prints
to wallpaper my man cave.
The fact that for so long, the climbing community has
supported a quirky art project like Stone Nudes is something I nd heartening. We arent the most mainstream
group of people, and we have a nice history of helping
eccentric characters climb to greatness. So, it was immensely reassuring to see Bullwinkle scrape past his
funding goal with just a couple days to go. Things felt
right in the world. Stone Nudes was back.
I believe that Americans lack the Europeans acceptance of nudity, which is a shame, because the simple
unadulterated human form is a wondrous thing, and
the bodies of climbers are some of the most beautiful
of all. But the fact is that Americans are kind of prudes,
so nding funding for the calendar is an uphill battle
each time. It is, year after beautiful year, a labor of love.
Dean has gone into debt, survived on a pittance, driven
around the country, and own around the world, all
so a small but faithful audience can continue to enjoy
his work. As time goes on, Stone Nudes has deservedly
become an iconic part of the wildly diverse world of
climbing. All along, the project has transcended both
the individuals involved and the community from
which it sprang. And so, Stone Nudes lives on... and I
will be calling Bullwinkle to get my old job back.

Cedar Wright is a professional climber and contributing

editor for Climbing. He will spot you any time.

CLIMBING.COM

| 55

VOICES

SEMI-RAD

The
Accidental
Art of
Punting
BY BRENDAN LEONARD

I traversed over to the tree at the top of

the West Chimney (5.6) on Eldos Redgarden Wall, pouring sweat. I hadnt touched
real rock in a month, so I was pleased to
have made it to the top of the first pitch of
The Great Zot (5.8+) without falling, without pulling
the loose block out from under the roof, and without
doing anything really embarrassing. After the difficulties ended, I carefully moved right to get us to the West
Chimney, where my girlfriend would take us up Swanson Arte (5.5) (one of her first trad leads), so I could
take photos of her for a guidebook project.
I tied a cord around the tree, clipped myself in, yelled
down to Hilary that I was off belay, and felt around for
my belay device on the back right loop of my harness.
Where it wasnt. I felt the back left loop. Not there either. I twisted to look at the loops, left, then right, because no way did I just climb up here without my goddamn belay device.
56 | OCTOBER 2014

Alas, I did just climb up here without my goddamn belay device.

I said nothing. I went over the options in my head. I could lower off,
except I was 130 feet off the ground, so Id need to have Hilary lower me
to the rst set of anchor bolts, clip in, and then have her lower me to the
ground, where I could walk back down to the van, grab my belay device,
walk back up the approach trail, and nally re-lead that pitch again. Of
course, Id probably need to drink a half gallon of water to get rehydrated,
and by the time I walked down and back up, wed have a good chance of
getting caught in an afternoon thunderstorm, this being Colorado and
all. I could lower off and we could go home, depriving Hilary of her rst
lead in Eldo and requiring me to climb this route again to get the photos
for the guidebook. Or I could belay Hilary off a Munter hitch, if I could
remember how.
I went with the third option. I twisted the rope around a locking carabiner, playing the Is this a Munter hitch or not? game for a couple
minutes, making sure it worked properly, because Hilary is not only my
climbing partner, but also my girlfriend. I chose to not tell her about any
of this until she got to the belay.
The Munter worked, though it kind of kinked the rope and slowed

PUNTING

# of mistakes

A LOT

Time it takes to climb

WAY TOO
MUCH TIME

Brendan Leonard is a contributing editor for Climbing. He lives for the

relentless pursuit of 5.fun and writes at semi-rad.com.

Jake Miller on Snake Watching, 5.13a, Flatirons, CO. P: Adam Sanders

things down a little. We climbed, I shot photos, and at the top, we decided to rappel since no one was below us. I lowered Hilary down each
of the four single-rope raps, then rappelled myself, which took forever
and turned a three-pitch casual outing into a long endurance day. Low
rumbles of thunder got closer and closer as we made our way down the
Redgarden Wall, and I continually cursed myself for leaving my belay device clipped to a different harness in the van.
Just as we pulled the rope from the last of the rappels, the sky opened
up and started pouring rain on Eldorado Canyon. We walked down the
trail and got soaked, but we werent stranded up high, we didnt get struck
C
C
by lightning, we werent injured, and we werent having a full-blown epic.
M
I just kind of blew it, and an easy climb took us embarrassingly long. M
Y
The next week, when I went out climbing with my friend Chris, I said
Y
something about having long days full of mistakesgetting off route, getCM
CM
ting rap ropes stuck, getting lost on the approach, and generally just takMY
MY
ing longer than usualbut not quite having an epic.
CY
At the office, we just call that punting, he said. His office being Black
CY
Diamonds headquarters in Salt Lake City, where the tradition of Dawn
CMY
CMY
Patrol has employees knocking off half-day skiing and climbing objectives
K
K
before 9 a.m. on weekdaysunless they punt and show up late for work.
Ah yes, punting, I said. Im an acionado.
I heard the East Slabs descent was straightforward, but we picked the
wrong gully and after a couple rappels, were going to be late picking our
kids up from day care. I picked the wrong left-facing corner, which led to
a dead-end unprotectable slab, so we rapped the off-route pitch. Turns
out that took a while, and now the suns going down and even if we climb
the last two pitches super-fast, theres no way were going to make it to
that barbecue on time. I couldnt nd the alleged third class downclimb,
and then the rap rope got stuck, and neither of us brought a headlamp,
and if we get back tonight at all, your signicant other is never going to
let you go climbing with me again. Hell, Ive even punted in the American
Alpine Club LibraryI thought I was going in to nd one book about
one place, and then sat down on the oor with a half-dozen books and
Whoa, would you look at the time!
There is no great honor in punting, no pride of surviving an open bivy
or a freak storm. There is also no great dishonor, just a sheepish admission to very few people, and maybe an apology for taking so long. Sometimes you set out with the idea that youre dialed on everythingOh
yeah, its two hours car to carexcept that thanks to the accidental art of
punting, you forget your belay device, and now youre clocking in at a notso-proud ve hours. But at least in punting, you can learn something. As
the saying goes, Good judgment comes from experience, and experience
comes from bad judgment.

tarifa
FALL 2014
FALL 2014

PROFILE

YOSEMITE

The Long View

Meet Tom Evans. From his perch at the bridge in El Cap Meadow, hes a one-man news source
and historian for climbing in the Valley.
BY DAVE DAVIS AND MARY GRANDELIS

Every day during El Caps two climbing seasons

spring and fallTom spends his time watching and
photographing the big wall climbers on El Caps East
and West faces from his vantage point on the bridge
or from El Cap Meadow. At the end of the day, he selects the best photos, writes summaries of the climbers
progressor lack thereof, and then posts it all to his
site. Hes been posting online since 2007, but hes been
taking pictures of El Cap climbers since the mid-1990s
when a Glen Denny photo (glendenny.com) caught his
eye. It was then that he started practicing photography, particularly telephoto style, seriously. He switched
from lm to digital photography in 2005 at the suggestion of another well-known climber/photographer/
friend of his, Dean Fidelman (stonenudes.com, nd
more on p. 54), and this made it possible for him to
start posting his pictures online.
Our rst day with Tom did not disappoint. We had
barely set foot on the bridge when Cedar Wright came
by to chat with Tom and see who was doing what on the

58 | OCTOBER 2014

Tom Evans on
the last pitch of
the Nose on El
Cap in 1983.

Captain. We recognized Cedar from a climbing lm we had seen, and Tom made the
introduction. Within the hour we also met, either directly through Tom or because
of him, a shopping list of top international climbers: Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin,
Ivo Ninov, David Hahn, Thomas and Alex Huber (see a video clip climbing.com/
elcapreport). It was a lot like getting a backstage pass at your favorite rock concert
and then meeting all the guys in the band. These big-name climbers welcomed us, in
no small part because of our new association with Tom.
Tom, in our experience, is a straight-shooter kind of guy. He tells it like he sees it,
often mixing in sarcasm and humor. Hes tough on the guys who can take it, but hes
considerate of the feelings of those who cant.
He attributes a lot of his ways to a turning-point event in his life. After high school,
he wanted, in his own words, to go to a party school. But he had no money to enroll.
Toms father gave him the option to go to Virginia Military Institute instead, offering
to pay the tuition. Tom went, and hes glad he did. He feels this training gave him
the discipline and logic necessary to develop the skills of a big wall climber at a time
when it was more a trial-and-error kind of effort.
In the mid-1960s, Tom was in the Army and doing some climbing at places like
Seneca Rocks in West Virginia. There he met a guy who told him about Yosemite and
big wall climbing. On leave in 1967, he made his rst trip out West to climb in the
Valley. Having seen El Capitan, he became determined to return and tackle the Nose.

GRAHAM SANDERS

We had just arrived in Yosemite

Valley while working on a documentary about our buddy Mike
Kozukos quest to solo a big wall (elcapreportthelm.com), and we had asked him
to be himself and do what he usually doeswe
just wanted to tag along.
Since checking in with Tom was the rst
thing that Mike would normally do, it was what
we did. And it was the right thing to do.
Tom has an encyclopedic knowledge of the
100 or so climbing routes on El Capitan. He
intimately knows the features and the pitches.
He knows the alternates and the variations. He
knows the trade routes (the easier, more popular lines) from the hard-core routes that only
the toughest, most seasoned climbers would
tackle. He knows the history, the backstories,
the controversial climbs and controversial
climbers alike, and he knows pretty much all
of the serious, well-known climbers who still
make the pilgrimage to the Valley every year.
He knows all this in part because of his blog:
the El Cap Report (elcapreport.com).

COURTESY

To put this in context for younger climbers, this was

back when there were only a handful of routes on El
Cap and only a couple of handfuls of ascents. The Nose
had been conquered less than a decade earlier, and it
had taken 47 days for a team of climbers to make it
to the top. Tom wasnt exactly a pioneer, but he was
certainly an early settler. Climbing techniques and gear
were still in the early stages of development, and Tom
pounded in a lot of pitons back in the day.
Tom took a practical approach to climbing the Nose.
The day he got out of the Army in 1969, he drove straight
to Yosemite to spend six weeks climbing smaller walls to
build his technique, knowledge, skills, and strength. Finally in 1971, he teamed up with Paul Sibley to make his
rst ascent of El Cap via the Nose route. It was a classically
epic six-day ascent for the pair, storms and all.
After an unsuccessful attempt on Dihedral Wall in
1972, Toms personal life kept him at a distance from
Yosemite for several years. But by the mid-1980s, he
had moved to California and could spend more time in
the Valley. His last El Cap success was Zodiac in 95 at
the age of 51. He tried several more times after that, but
by then his main interest had turned to photography
and documenting and eventually reporting on El Cap
climbs on his blog. As Tom himself likes to say, El Cap
Report currently justies his standing in the climbing
community. Judging from all the people weve talked to
over the years weve been working on our lm, climbers
feel the same. They respect Tom and what he does, all
agreeing that he provides a valuable service. And Toms
base on the bridge is one of the handful of places that
climbers regularly gather to talk shop, compare notes
and beta, and then brag and tell stories about their big
adventures on one of the most famous and beloved big
walls in the world.
Climbing gear, techniques, attitudes, and abilities
pretty much everything has changed since Tom rst
climbed the Captain all those years ago. While his initial intention was to do a climbing photography book,
as new technologies came along, his goals evolved into
what enabled him to launch the unique El Cap Report.
Mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, and lovers of rock
climbers around the world check Toms report when
someone they care about is up on the wall. Tom has
threatened to shut down the Report for different reasons at various times, and has even done so once or
twice. But to his followers, hes there, solid as rock, consistently reporting each days efforts for all the world to
follow along. He has a name for climbers who are stuck
at a desk job somewherecubicle pukes. Not unlike us,
these are the folks who wish they were there, climbing El
Cap. And when they nally do, theyll check in with Tom
at the bridge rstif they know whats good for them.

Dave Davis and his partner Mary Grandelis lmed the

documentary El Cap Report, which will air on PBS stations this fall. Find more at elcapreportthelm.com.

Tom Evans in his

natural element
long lens pointed
up at El Cap.

CLIMBING.COM

| 59

BLIGH GILLIES

60 | OCTOBER 2014

5 ordinary climbers who saved a life

By Dougald MacDonald
nless youre part of a search and rescue team, you dont head out for the
day expecting to be thrust into a life-ordeath situation. Heroism, like the accidents and epics that might prompt it, is
something you cant plan for.
Yet because of experience and training, innate
ability and fortitude, or just instinctive reactions
in moments of crisis, average climbers can respond
to deadly emergencies in extraordinary ways. With
courage, calm, stamina, strength, and ingenuity, on
a day when nobody expected anything but the simple
pleasures of climbing, they end up saving a life.
What would you do in a similar situation? How
would you perform? Research psychologists have
determined that heroes share a few common traits:

Many are open to new experiences, dependable and

disciplined, extroverted, compassionate, and emotionally secure. They usually have strong feelings of
morality and responsibility. In addition, according to
a 2012 article in the Wall Street Journal, Heroes tend
by nature to be hopeful, believing events will turn out
well. They consciously try to keep fear from hampering their pursuit of goals, and they tend to block out
the possibility of injury or material loss. They sound
a lot like climbers.
We combed through dozens of stories of climbers
helping other climbers to nd the ve amazing examples reported here. Hopefully youll never have to respond to a similar crisis. But if the proverbial shit hits
the fan, it just might help to know that other climbers
have been there before.

CLIMBING.COM

| 61

Kerry Pyle

62 | OCTOBER 2014

ANDREW BYDLON

Had I fallen, he would have held me,

even after death.

A Proper Belay
Peter Terbush
GLACIER POINT APRON, YOSEMITE VALLEY
JUNE 1999
Never take your brake hand off the rope. That lesson is drilled
into every climber from the first day he or she ties in, yet its all
too easy to witness climbers disobeying this fundamental rule
simply to swat a fly or reach for a snack. Now imagine keeping
your brake hand on the rope even as you stare death in the face.

The Scene

On a warm evening in June, Pete Terbush and two friends, Joe Kewin
and Kerry Pyle, were climbing Apron Jam, a single-pitch 5.9 on Glacier Point Apron in Yosemite. All in their early 20s, they had met in
Colorado, where they had attended Western State Colorado University. Pyle led the climb as Terbush belayed and Kewin hung out at the
base. Its easy to imagine their chatter, rehashing the climbs theyd
done and making plans for the summer. Far overhead, mayhem was
about to erupt.
As Pyle neared the two-bolt anchor on Apron Jam, an estimated
525 tons of rock broke loose from the cliff more than 1,000 feet above
the climbers. The rockfall originated several hundred feet to the
right, but as the blocks fell, they shattered into thousands of pieces
and sprayed the slabs and talus below. Kewin ran to the foot of the
wall and took shelter as best he could. Pyle scrambled up the last
few feet to the anchor, clipped a quickdraw to each bolt, and started
tying a knot to clip in. But as rocks pelted down around him, several
pieces hit him in the headhe was not wearing a helmetso he just
grabbed onto the quickdraws, pressed himself against the cliff, and
tried to hang on. The tag line he had trailed for rappelling was severed right below his knees, and his scalp was severely cut. Pyle nearly
fainted but did not fall.

When the barrage stopped, Pyle yelled down to see if his friends
were OK. Kewin said he was alright, but Terbush had taken a direct
hit to the head.

The Response

In his last minutes, no doubt torn between seeking cover and making
sure his friend stayed on belay, Pete Terbush held his position and kept
his brake hand rmly on the rope. Joe had to pry Peters hands from
the rope in the locked position just to release it from the belay device,
in order for me to rappel back down, Pyle said. Had I fallen, he would
have held me, even after death.
John Dill, the longtime Yosemite climbing ranger and rescuer, wrote
of Terbushs nal moments in Accidents in North American Mountaineering: Well never know his thoughts or intentions, but he did know
that his partner was still on belay. Whether deliberate or instinctive,
he stayed put, maintaining that belay at the expense of his own safety.
In a eulogy, Dr. James Terbush said his son Peter grew up reading
about heroes. We have an entire shelf of hero books at home, and Pete
had read most every one. The family had traveled widely when Peter
was growing up, and he and his dad climbed together in the Himalaya.
While in India we came upon an accident where a bus had rolled off a
cliff and down the side of a mountain, Dr. Terbush said. The passengers were scattered all over. Since we were some of the rst people there,
Peter and his Singaporean friend Justin took charge and rigged a climbing rope over the edge, rappelled down, and began to assist the injured
back up to the road. His mind was lled with examples of heroism under circumstances of great dangerhe was ready when the time came.

COURTESY

Afterward

Terbushs gravestone

Kerry Pyle, who runs a custom woodworking company in Gunnison,

Colorado, has developed vertigopossibly hereditary, no cure yet
over the last couple of years and hardly ever climbs. He has lost touch
with Kewin, who moved back to his home state of New York. In 2001,
Western State, the three mens alma mater, launched the Peter Terbush Memorial Outdoor Leadership Summit, a week-long program
held each June to train collegiate outdoor leaders in rock climbing and
mountaineering. Thanks in part to gifts from the Terbush family, participants receive $1,000 in scholarship assistance. In 2002, in the nearby Black Canyon of the Gunnison, several students from the Leadership
Summit established Peter Terbush Tower (5.11-), a ve-pitch route to a
previously unclimbed summit. An e-book on Terbushs story will be on
Amazon this fall..

CLIMBING.COM

| 63

If it meant
walking to Seattle
I would do it.
The limitation
was time, not my
determination.

Charlie Sassara

Going for Help

Charlie Sassara
MT. AUGUSTA, YUKON TERRITORY
JUNE 2002
The brotherhood of the rope is the unspoken bond between
climbing partners who trust each other with their lives. But what
happens when the best way to aid your stricken partner is to leave
him behind?

The Scene

Twelve pitches up a 7,000-foot new route on the north face of Mt. Augusta, a 14,072-foot, seldom-climbed peak in the St. Elias Range, on
the border of Alaska and the Yukon, Charlie Sassara and Jack Tackle

64 |

OCTOBER 2014

were looking for a place to rest. The climb was going well, but there
was a growing problem: It was getting warm, and melting ice had begun launching rock missiles around them. At around 8 p.m., as Tackle
was probing for a ledge about 60 feet above Sassara, a block the size of
a briefcase fell from high above and smashed into his back.
Tackle cartwheeled off the face. Although Sassara held his fall, Tackle
was partially paralyzed and felt severe pain in his chest and abdomen.
(Doctors later determined he had a broken back and neck, bruised spinal cord and other nerves, torn cartilage, and severe contusions.) Sassara lowered Tackle to the belay stance, spun him upright, anchored
him to the wall, and set to work stabilizing his partner. He chopped a
shoulder-width ledge and pulled a sleeping bag and tent over the injured man. Throughout the night he pumped uids, food, and painkillers into Tackle, all the while working out how they could both get down
the mountain.

COURTESY

Charlie Sassara
on Mt. Augusta,
before the accident.

COURTESY

The Response

Both men had experienced the other side of the coin in such a situation.
Fifteen years earlier, Sassara and his climbing partner, Dave McGivern,
were avalanched near the foot of Mt. Johnson in Alaska, and in the
ensuing tumble, the rope wrapped around Sassaras neck and nearly
choked him to death. McGivern had to resuscitate his partner before
they could descend. Twenty-three years before the accident on Augusta,
Tackle was the one with a seriously injured partner high on a mountain:
Ken Currens had taken a 250-foot fall on a new route on Denali and
suffered a head injury and broken femur. Tackle had to downclimb the
face and ski 10 miles along a glacier, unroped, to call for help.
On Augusta, Sassara said, he recognized the enormity of the situation
yet remained focused on the steps that would give them the best chance
of surviving. Once past the adrenaline rush, there is simply the work,
he explained. I segmented it into phases: take care of Jack, get down
the face, get to our skis, get to camp. I said to myself, Im not going to
think about all of it now. Im just going to think about this phase. And if
I have the opportunity to think about the next one, Ill deal with it then.
At rst Sassara assumed the next phase would be lowering Tackle
down the wall. I could visualize every anchor and the problems associated with each, how I was going to lower him, and everything else Id
have to do, he recalled. Yet I had a real sense that it would probably be
fatal to both of us, whether because of rockfall or poor anchors.
Tackle spared him that thought. You cant do that, the injured man
groaned. I cant do it. The best option is for you to go down by yourself
and get to the sat phone in our tent.
After doing everything he could to prepare Tackle for a long wait for
help, Sassara checked his anchor and clipped into his rappel device.
Travel safe, Tackle said to him. At 6:30 a.m. Sassara began rappelling.
It took him ve hours to make 13 rappels to the glacier, using nearly
all of their gear and segments of their ropes to build anchors. A temperature inversion had hit the mountain, and the wall was coming unglued, Sassara said. It was like rappelling into a melting gravel pit.
Despite the hazards of falling rocks and concern for the state of his
stranded partner, he took great care with every step. It was the discipline of the worknot cheating, not compromisingthat kept me safe,
he explained. Testing everything, planning where to go, hiding in safe
places, and timing rockfall.
After a nal rappel down an ice pitch
that was now the consistency of a vanilla
slushy, Sassara faced an unroped glacier
Tackles tent dangles
traverse over sagging snow bridges to
on the steep face after
reach his skis. While climbing, the climbhe was cut out of it
during the rescue.
ers had watched an active icefall obliterate the route he would have to cross. But
the 45-year-old remained condent. Back
at the bivy site, when Tackle asked how he
was doing, Sassaras response was, Dont
worry, I am the strongest motherfucker
on the planet. On the glacier, he recalled,
I had the notion that if it meant walking
to Seattle I would do it. The limitation
was time, not my determination.
Sassara carefully crawled and leaped
through a mineeld of holes and drooping snow bridges. He took his time, even
pausing at the edge of one crevasse to admire the gorgeous abyss and the spectrum of icy light inside: black, blue, violet, and white. It was super-quiet at that

time of morning, and I felt like my senses were heightened, he said. I

felt like I could almost hear the holes.
Fog had rolled in by the time he reached his skis, and he could see
no more than 100 feet ahead. He left the skins on the skis so he could
move down the glacier slowly and ever-so-carefully, navigating by the
summit of Mt. Logan looming above the clouds. In midafternoon, eight
hours after leaving Tackle, he reached the tent and called Kluane National Park and his then-wife, Siri Moss, to raise the alarm.
Tackle would be alone on the face for more than 30 hours before
a helicopter crew from the 210th Rescue Squadron of the Alaska Air
National Guard spotted him through a break in the clouds. They lowered pararescuer Dave Shuman at the end of a swinging 170-foot wire
and plucked Tackle from the face, with low-fuel warning lights ashing
inside the chopper.
Sassara emphasized that he was only one person among many who
took risks and worked tirelessly to save Tackles life. The reason we
got out is because our friends pulled out all the stops, he said. Siri
and Lloyd Freese and the Kluane National Park staff. Daryl Miller at
Denali National Park, who secured permission for the U.S. military to
conduct operations in Canada within one hour. The crew on board that
helicopter, including pilot Rick Watson, ight engineer Tom Dietrich,
Denali ranger Joe Reichert, and pararescue jumper Dave Shuman. Ultima Thule pilot Paul Claus ying over in his own plane and radioing
when the weather broke. Climbers Mike Alkaitis, Colby Coombs, and
Kelly Cordes, who ew to Yakutat, prepared to climb the wall if the
helicopter couldnt get in. All of this was possible because we had dear
friends who loved us and trusted that we would not call for help unless
it was really, really necessary. All I had to do was not fuck up.

Afterward

Charlie Sassara, a native Alaskan, cofounded the Alaska Rock Gym and
served as president of the American Alpine Club in 2012 and 2013.
Jack Tackle, a longtime mountain guide and gear rep based in Bozeman, Montana, has continued to put up new routes around the world.
In 2003 the AAC honored both men for their rescues of fellow climbers with the David A. Sowles Memorial Award (see sidebar, next page).
The U.S. Air Force gave Sergeant Dave Shuman the Airmans Medal
for his bravery.

CLIMBING.COM

| 65

The Ultimate Body Anchor

Roger Putnam
KEELER NEEDLE, CALIFORNIA
JULY 2011
A tiny ledge three pitches off the ground. The anchor is unclipped.
Your belayer has just fallen over the edge. Now what?

The Scene

Harrison Forrester and Roger Putnam were seasonal employees in Yosemite National Park and in terric shape. They didnt expect much
problem with the Harding Route (5.10+) on the east face of Keeler
Needle. They camped near the base of the 14,260-foot satellite peak
of Mt. Whitney in the southern Sierra Nevada, approached pre-dawn,
and expected to be up the 1,500-foot route by noon.
Forrester and Putnam, both 27 at the time, were swinging leads,
and Forrester quickly dispatched the 5.10 double cracks of the third
pitch. In the cramped alcove below the wide crack of the next pitch he
plugged a No. 1 cam into a crack and slung a horn for an anchor. He
doubled his cordelette before throwing it over the horn, and then tied
a gure eight on a bight with both strands, thus making two clip-in
loops. Forrester clipped his daisy chain into both loops, backed them
up with the cam, and called Off belay! to his partner down below.
However, he neglected to back up his connection to the anchor with his
lead ropethe rst in an intertwined series of errors that would soon
lead to a near-fatal accident.
When Putnam reached the stance, he looked up at the next pitch,
and both climbers commented that the offwidth didnt appear as hard
as theyd expected. Putnam clipped a locking carabiner into the power
point of the anchorthe two loops protruding from the gure eight

knot on the cordeletteand tied in with a clove hitch. Or, at least he

thought he had attached himself to the anchor. Instead, he inadvertently clipped his locker between the loops instead of through them.
The only thing keeping Putnam attached to the anchor was Forresters
daisy-chain carabiner, clipped properly through the loopsthat carabiner was outside of Putnams biner, thus closing the chain. Error No. 2.
As Putnam racked for the next pitch, Forrester took their small daypack and clipped it to the gure eight loops on the cordelette with a
locking carabiner. Since he had to nd room for this biner next to Putnams, he ended up clipping it in the same orientationbetween the
two clip-in loops instead of through themthus inadvertently mimicking his partners mistake. Error No. 3.
One more potentially fateful mistake remained. As Putnam prepared to set off on the next pitch, Forrester realized the lead rope was
running under his daisy chain and the loops of rope he had aked over
it, and it would be difficult to feed out as Putnam led. I need to x this,
Forrester said, as he grabbed the anchor with one hand and unclipped
the daisy with the other in order to move it underneath Putnams lead
rope. Be careful! Youre not in on anything else! Putnam cautioned.
Forrester realized Putnam was righthe had forgotten to back up his
anchor connection with the lead ropeso he quickly moved to reclip
his daisy chain. Since the clip-in loops on the cordelette had dropped
a little out of reach, he gured he might as well clip into the locker
holding the backpack. But now that he had unclipped his daisy chains
carabiner from the anchor, there was nothing preventing Putnams
carabiner nor the backpack biner from
simply sliding out from between the
two loops. Both men were effectively
unanchored. Forrester leaned back to
weight the anchor and immediately fell
backward off the belay ledge.

Harrison Forrester (left)

and Roger Putnam on one
of their many climbing
adventures together.

66 | OCTOBER 2014

Just like you hear, Putnam recalls,

time slowed. He remembers watching
his partner fall, realizing that he was no
longer clipped to the anchor, wondering if he had time to pull a sling off his
harness and clip himself back in, and
then deciding he didnt have time and
he had to hold on.
Putnam shoved his arms down
through the loops of the cordelette and
tried to squeeze himself into the alcove.
Im a tall, scrawny guy, maybe 160
pounds, and my partner is this big guy,
over 6 feet and 190 or 200 pounds, he
said. He braced for the impact of what
he expected to be a 200-foot fall that
likely would pluck him from the ledge
like a hand-tied y snatched off the
surface of a stream by a shermans
backcast. Putnam remembers thinking:
You HAVE to hold this!
As Forrester fell, the rope whipped

ROGER PUTNAM

The Response

Just like you

always hear,
time slowed.
Then I remember
thinking, You
HAVE to hold this!

BLIGH GILLIES

Roger Putnam

CLIMBING.COM

| 67

through his belay device as if hed let go of a rappelthe friction possibly slowed the fall a little. He also bounced off at least one ledge,
slowing his fall a little more. About 70 or 80 feet down, still a couple
of hundred feet off the ground, the loops of extra rope Forrester had
stacked by his waist at the belay stance snarled and jammed into his
device, and he bounced to a stop.
Eighty feet overhead, Putnams arms were wrenched against the
cordelette so violently that his shoulder is still tweaked three years
later. He was pulled down onto the ledge, shins slamming into the
rock and leaving gouges that are still scarred. But he held on.
Grab the rock! Get your weight off the rope! he screamed down
to Forrester. Coincidentally, Forrester had come to a stop by a small
ledge. He stood up, wondering what the hell had gone wrong. Putnam
xed the rope at the anchor beside him, and Forrester carefully rappelled down to the next anchor. Once reunited, they continued down
to the snoweld below the face and assessed Forresters injuries: He
had rope burns and a badly sprained ankle, but was otherwise unharmed. He limped out to the trailhead that day.

Afterward

Immediately afterward I swore off climbing, but only for a few weeks,
Roger Putnam said. But it was a wake-up call for me. I was denitely
more reckless and fast in the mountains before. Now Im a lot more
careful. Putnam now lives in Sonora, California, and teaches geology
at a local college. Harrison Forrester, who works as a seasonal hydrologist in Yosemite National Park, didnt climb for months. But he too has
bounced back, and the two men still climb together. This past summer
they did the 24-pitch Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome in less than
seven hours.

Roger Putnam
aid climbing in
Yosemite Valley.

Life-Saving Ingenuity
Joe Faint
SENTINEL ROCK, YOSEMITE VALLEY
JUNE 1965
Were told to carry the Ten Essentials, but were also told light
is right. Most of the time we climb without all the survival gear
needed for every possible scenario. Improvising with the gear we
do have becomes essential.

The Scene

First climbed in 1950 over 4.5 days, the Steck-Salath route up the
1,500-foot north face of Sentinel Rock is rated easy 5.10 today, but
it is a notoriously punishing 15-pitch route that takes most climbers
a very long day to complete. In 1965, a time when El Capitan ascents
were still rare and Half Dome had only two routes up its northwest
face, the Sentinel was still a major objective for Yosemite hardmen.
And Joe Faint, though not nearly as well known today as many Golden
Age climbers, was as hard as they came. Faint was a partner of Warren
Harding and Yvon Chouinard, and his alpine climbs included the rst
ascent of the north face of Mt. Assiniboine in the Canadian Rockies
and the north prow of Mt. Kennedy in the Yukon. In 1965, at age 26,
he was a Camp 4 denizen working his way through the major climbs.
For the Sentinel, Faint paired up with Peter Spoecker, 24, who had
done a couple of minor new routes in the Valley. The two thought they
might do a variation to the Steck-Salath and brought a bolt kita
decision that would prove crucial. Both Faint and Spoecker have passed
on, but Jeff Foott, a friend of Faints who later became Yosemites rst
climbing ranger, remembers they had climbed to somewhere near the
Narrows, only a few hundred feet below the top of the face. Spoecker
was pulling on a large ake when it suddenly detached, crushed his
right hand, and fell onto his right leg, breaking his femur. Foott recalls
the ake was about 5.5 feet long, two to three feet wide, and several
inches thick. At those dimensions it would have weighed more then
600 pounds. The rock slid onto Spoeckers leg, pinning him to a ledge.
Faint tried heaving the rock off, but it wouldnt budge.

In 1965 there was no YOSAR team in the Valley to call for help. In
those days you couldnt really count on a rescue, Foott said. If you
went off to do a climb, you told your friends where you were going and
you expected them to come get you if you got in trouble. But time was
of the essence: A broken femur can cause internal bleeding and other
potentially fatal complications.
Faint thought about what to do next. The two men carried pitons,
hammers, and nylon aiders. Maybe he could work out a way to use this
gear to winch the giant ake off his partners leg. Faint pounded two
solid angle pitons into a crack above the climbers, and then, in order
to grab ahold of the ake, he drilled a hole into the smooth granite
and drove home a bolt. Next, he strung two aiders tied from nylon
slings between the piton and the bolt, inserted a hammer between the
strands of one of the slings, and twisted it so the sling tightened. He
then wedged that hammer handle against the cliff to hold it in place
(a technique called the Spanish windlass) and twisted the other sling
with the second hammer. In this way, taking turns with each hammer,
he slowly lifted the huge block off Spoeckers leg, just enough for him
to slide it out.
The ordeal wasnt over. Spoecker was too immobilized by his injuries
and pain to continue up the route. They decided to signal for help, but
night fell without anyone hearing their calls. Down in Camp 4, across

68 | OCTOBER 2014

COURTESY

The Response

If Joe hadnt
got that ake
off Petes leg,
hed have
been a goner.
It was pretty
ingenious.

Jeff Foott

GLEN DENNY

Joe Faint reects

in Yosemite.

Yosemite Valley, Glen Denny noticed a ashing light that didnt behave
like the usual climbers headlamps on a wall. He drove over to the foot
of the Sentinel, and in the calm, quiet night he was able to yell up to the
climbers and learn that they needed help.
Denny and fellow climber John Evans wanted to climb to the top of
the Sentinel that night and begin a rescue, but rangers insisted they
wait until morning, when a helicopter would be availableit would be
the rst helicopter-assisted rescue in Yosemite climbing history. The
wind was gusty the next morning, and the chopper couldnt land on
Sentinels rugged summit, but it put a skid down on a boulder and
Foott, Denny, Evans, and other climbers and rangers jumped out.
Before long they were able to set up a lowering station and prepare
to haul Spoecker out in a litter. Since Faint had managed to free his
partner, the rescue went smoothly and quickly, and soon the injured
man was helicoptered off the summit and down to the hospital. Foott,

the rst climber to reach the stranded men, recalls, If Joe hadnt gotten
that ake off Pete, hed have been a goner. It was pretty ingenious.

Afterward

With their typical dark humor, the climbers of Camp 4 reacted to the
rescue by giving Faint grief for carrying a bolt kit on an established
climb. He has since passed away. Peter Spoecker, who was never a
major gure in Yosemite climbing, nonetheless remained an active
climber and outdoorsman, living in Joshua Tree and exploring the
Sierra. He became a pioneer in electronic music and what is now
called world music, popularizing the Australian didgeridoo through
performances, recordings, and teaching. In 2005, at age 64, he went on
a solo backpacking trip in the Sierra to pursue his avocation of landscape
photography. Hikers discovered his body a couple of weeks later in
Evolution Lakehe had apparently fallen through thin ice and drowned.

CLIMBING.COM

| 69

Out of Thin Air

Nick Yardley
RUMNEY, NEW HAMPSHIRE
EARLY 1990S
Everyones heard the story about a distraught
mother lifting a car off her baby pinned
underneath. Hoisting a falling climber back up
onto a ledge comes pretty close.

The Scene

Back in the early days of sport climbing, around the

late 1980s and early 90s, lowering anchorsif they
existed at alloften were placed over a cliff on a nearby tree or boulder. Climbers still had the traditional
mentality of topping out a route, and many climbers
set up topropes from above, extending the anchors
over the edge with slings. Such was the scene at the
5.8 Crag at Rumney, the rst real sport climbing area
in New Hampshire, when Nick Yardley went out for a
day of casual cragging. A native Englishman, Yardley
had emigrated to the U.S. in 1986 to work as the head
guide at the International Mountain Climbing School
in North Conway. He also volunteered as a leader of
the local Mountain Rescue Service. As he said, I got
to do a lot of rescues and picked up some broken bodies, but the most profound life-changing moment happened that day at Rumney.
As Yardley nished a lead of Romancing the Stone
(5.10), he stepped onto the narrow ledge at the top and
prepared to clip the anchor at the back of the ledge,
about waist high. A few feet to the left, at head height,
was the anchor for Milk Snake (5.10). A college student
had hiked to the top of the cliff and rigged a toprope
through this anchor. Now she prepared to rappel the
overhanging wall to the ground, about 60 feet below.
As she backed up to the edge and began to lean over,
Yardley and she both noticed simultaneously that she
had only clipped one strand of the rappel ropes and was
about to freefall to the deck.
Yardley remembered: You could just see it in her
eyes: Oh my god, I fucked up!

The Carnegie Medal

Since 1904, the Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Hero
Commission (carnegiehero.org) has been singling
out civilian heroes for recognition and nancial
support ($36.2 million has been given in onetime grants, scholarship aid, death benets, and
continuing assistance since the awards inception).
As of this summer, 9,697 Carnegie Medals have been
handed out ( ve people have won the award twice).
There are countless tales of everyday people putting
themselves in harms way to save anotherfrom
drowning and burning building rescues to these
climbing-related acts of heroism.

70 | OCTOBER 2014

Nick Yardley in Salt Lake

City, August 2014.

DAVID NYMAN
In 1989, in one of the great
epics of Alaskan climbing
history, Nyman worked
for eight days to save his
partner, Jim Sweeney, whose
femur had dislocated from
the hip socket during a
fall on Mt. Johnson. After
lowering Sweeney off the
mountain, Nyman spent the
next week trying to get help
and keep his partner alive
as repeated avalanches hit
the pair, including one that

pushed them into a crevasse.

Ultimately, Nyman stomped
a trench through a mile of
fresh snowup to four feet
deepand dragged Sweeney
down the glacier until a helicopter picked them up.

SCOTT MATTHEW BLIGH

AND GARY A. KNEESHAW
These two San Diego County
sheriffs deputies, a helicopter pilot and tactical flight
officer, plucked a pair of
27-year-old climbers from El

Cajon Mountain in Southern

California as a wildfire swept
up the mountain in 2010.
The two had climbed three
pitches to the top of First
Tier and called for help as the
fire approached. Bligh flew up
to the ledge system between
cliffs and went toe in with
a skid of the helicopter. With
one of the climbers on board,
Kneeshaw stepped out to
wait for Bligh to returnin
such difficult conditions, the
small chopper could carry

The Response
It was black and
white. If I did
nothing, she would
have died. If I did it,
she lived. The line
between life and
death is very ne.

Nick Yardley

As the slim girlYardley estimated her weight

at 110 poundsteetered on the edge of the cliff,
Yardley jammed two ngers of his right hand
into one of the rings on the anchor bolts in front
of him and simultaneously reached across with
his left hand, grabbed the belay loop on the
womans harness, and yanked her back onto
the ledge. It wasnt a Herculean effortI just
had to change her center of balance, he said.
Nonetheless, he added, I almost slammed her
face right into the rock by the anchor.
Yardley would have taken a monster fall if he
hadnt been able to keep the girl from pitching
off, but he was still on belay and likely would
have been ne. But he has no doubts about
what would have become of her. It was black
and white, he said. If I hadnt done that, she
would have died. If I did it, she lived. The line
between life and death is very ne, and that hit
home so hard that day.

Afterward

Nick Yardley is CEO of Julbo Inc., the Burlington, Vermontbased U.S. arm of the French
eyewear manufacturer. Amazingly, he never
got the young womans name after he saved her
life, nor has he ever heard from her. We didnt
say much, he recalled. We both shook and
dry-heaved and nervously went our own way. I
headed to another cliffI just wanted to boogie. I was feeling sick. Modern sport climbing
anchors have been installed on Romancing the
Stone. The route Milk Snake is rarely climbed
today and still has traditional anchors set back
from the top.

BEN FULLERTON

Complete the Circle: Do you know the

woman Nick saved all those years ago? If
so, contact us at letters@climbing.com, and
well bring her out to meet him.

only one climber at a time.

When the helicopter came
back, wind had pushed
flames within yards of the
remaining pair, and Bligh
could barely see the cliff as
he maneuvered his machine
closer, embers and engine
alarms filling the cockpit.
Once the other climber was
aboard, Kneeshaw wasnt
going to wait for a third
triphe jumped onto the
skid and hung on outside
the helicopter as Bligh flew

out of the firestorm.

MATHEW VIZBULIS
In late July 2006, Vizbulis was bouldering on
the limestone blocks of
Niagara Glen when he
heard screaming from the
river below Niagara Falls.
Vizbulis ran to the bank and
saw three people face-down
in the river. A teenager had
gone in to help his younger
brother, and their father had
jumped in after themand

none of the men knew how

to swim. Vizbulis waded in,
swam through turbulent
water to the victims,
andone after the other
dragged the three men to
shore, saving all three.
Fun Fact: Well-known blind
climber Erik Weihenmayers
great-grandmother, Lucy
Ernst, won a Carnegie
Medal for helping save her
cousins life after a rattlesnake bite in 1905.

The Sowles Award

Established in 1981 in memory of a 29-year-old climber
killed by lightning in the Alps, the American Alpine Clubs
David A. Sowles Memorial Award is conferred from
time to time on mountaineers who have distinguished
themselves, with unselsh devotion at personal risk or
sacrice of a major objective, in going to the assistance
of fellow climbers imperiled in the mountains. In
33 years, the award has been given only 16 times. In
addition to Charlie Sassara and Jack Tackle, honorees
include Ed Viesturs, Anatoli Boukreev, Pemba Gyalje
Sherpa, and the 1953 American team on K2. Learn more:
americanalpineclub.org/p/sowles-award.

CLIMBING.COM

| 71

IM GOING TO DIE.

SHIT.
SO PUMPED!

IM SCARED.

DAMMIT!

THIS IS SKETCHY.

THE
MIND
GAME

IS THIS HOLD
GOING
TO BREAK?

OH NO...

IS MY BELAYER PAYING
ATTENTION?
IM TOO
WEAK.

MY LEG WONT
STOP SHAKING.

After a near-death climbing experience, I was inspired to dig deeper into the
psychology of fear and nd out what I could learn about its effect on performance,
how it wells up in the rst place, and what we can do to deal with it. What I found
will take your climbing to the next leveland could save your life.
BY MATT LLOYD

72 |

OCTOBER 2014

D. SCOTT CLARK

WELL,
CRAP.

DONT FALL, DONT

FALL, DONT FALL,
DONT FALL, DONT
FALL, DONT FALL,
DONT FALL!

JUST KEEP
BREATHING...

THIS IS A
BAD IDEA.

I DONT WANT
TO DIE.
UH OH...

SCOTT CLARK

THESE FEET
ARE SO BAD!

CLIMBING.COM

| 73

CRAP!

THE AUTHOR SOLOS

GREEN GULLEY (WI3+),
PINE CREEK FALLS, NEAR
BOZEMAN, MONTANA.

Four years ago, I was in Vail, Colorado,

climbing a spectacular 90-foot curtain of
ice at the Fire House. It had formed a thin,
fragile pillar running from the ground to
the top in one continuous, beautiful blue
column. An ice climbers dream.
Things were going well as I moved up
the route; it was a challenging climb, but
not at my personal limit. I climbed 50 feet
up, placing several ice screws and feeling
calm and focused. Then, all of a sudden,
a tremendous crack shattered the stillness
and my focus, like a cannon going off in

74 |

OCTOBER 2014

a library. Looking down, I was horried

to discover the entire pillar had broken
horizontally just above my knees. Now,
both frozen masses were perched like two
school buses balancing nose to nose.
The gravity of the situation registered
immediately in my body and mind. I was
motionless for a few seconds in hyperawareness. The silence that felt expansive
earlier now seemed to close in on me.
Time slowed, and I watched for signs of
the whole climb collapsingwith me on
it. My mind was a white-hot fury of in-

put, and an electric heat ran through me.

Thoughts red in disjointed fragments:
Screw placements? Belayer out of harms
way? How far to the top? It nally occurred to me that I was attached to a
100,000-pound ice bomb that was about
to explode. I started to shake uncontrollably, the vibration pulsing out to my grip
on the ice tools. I had never experienced
anything like this, and there was nothing
I could do to stop the shaking. I knew I
had to control it or there would be fatal
consequences. After what seemed like an

D. SCOTT CLARK

My feet are slipping, and Im already so gripped! Is this tool going

to hold? Stick, damn it! This ice is shattering everywhere. I dont
want to fall; I REALLY dont want to fall. Shit! Did the entire column
just shift? This whole thing is coming down, and Im attached to it!

WHAT WOULD
HAPPEN IF I FELL
RIGHT NOW?

BRETT LOWELL

ALEX HONNOLD
IN HIS ELEMENT:
FREE SOLOING
ON LIBERTY CAP
IN YOSEMITE.

eternity, I began taking deep breaths and

forcefully exhaling the air to try and take
command of the sinking ship that was my
nervous system. It started working, and a
plan took shape.
I focused my mind on small, specic
tasks: Yell to belayer to unclip and move
to safety. Untie my own knot with one
hand. Toss rope down. I thought every
second that passed was going to be the
end, but I persisted in focusing in on each
little step. The realization that I was now
50 feet up a WI5 pillar without a lifeline
sunk in, and I stopped to take a few more
breaths. The panic nally gave way to
clear, pragmatic thinking. I need to get off
this piece of ice, and I need to do it now. I
reminded myself, Matt, you can climb this
without falling, without getting pumped.
You can climb this perfectly. One move at
a timeswing, stick, pull, repeat, I pulled
over the lip 15 minutes later. Safely on
top, I inhaled deeply for what felt like the
rst time in forever.

The Science
So what the hell was happening to me
throughout this ordeal? Psychologist Peter
A. Levine, Ph.D., who has studied stress
and trauma for 35 years and served as a
stress consultant for NASA, says there are
three distinct stages to any traumatic experience, which every climber has gone
through at some point, whether getting
Elvis leg ve feet above a bolt, ailing on
the topout of a 25-foot boulder, or running it out over a questionably placed cam.
First, there is an event. Second, there is
shock. Third, there is the bodys response.
This response can take three forms: ght,
ight, or freeze. Fight or ight confronts
the threat directly, like seeing a bear and
running away. Both of these responses
discharge the energy that accumulates
in the body. More common in climbing,
the freeze response can be complex since
you cant exactly run or ght when youre
faced with a hard move above your bolt.

Unfortunately, that energy can transform

into a sort of full-body handcuff that paralyzes your entire being.
The bodys response comes from the
activation of the sympathetic nervous
system that floods the body with catecholamines (aka adrenaline). While
these hormones can enhance a bodys
ability to deal with certain situations
(brain on high alert, muscles tensing,
etc.), it can be dangerous in climbing,
which requires mindfulness and technique. The ability to make and execute
calm and calculated technical decisions
can get totally hung up by the subsequent freeze response. According to
Levine, if you are unable to discharge
the built-up adrenaline, you wont be
able to move forwardor up. In such
cases, Levine describes that the body has
a natural shaking release. This is what
happened to me. My body was overloaded with an overwhelming charge from
my sympathetic nervous system, and
the shaking allowed me to purge it and
move on. The shaking, which at the time
made me feel out of control, was actually the fear (adrenaline) leaving my body.
After the shaking, instinctive responses
(and some active self-talk, which well
discuss later) got me back on course.

Real vs. Perceived

Danger
As the greatest free soloist of our generation, Alex Honnold believes most climbers
confuse the feeling of fear with experiencing real danger. A combination of factors
makes people feel fear, then they assume
that the fear means its dangerous, he explains. I think its important to untangle
the various threads that lead to the feeling
of fear. A clear example of this is watching
a scary movie: You sit safely in the living
room, experiencing the physical and emotional components of fear (sweaty palms,
racing heart, anxiety), but youre not in
any real danger. However, distinguishing
between experiential fear and actual risk is
more difficult while hanging on the side of
a cliff, so its important to know the true,
real risk of a chosen adventure before you
embark. Then, when youre faced with the
fear response, take a minute to evaluate
what caused it. Is it bad weather moving
in or loose rock above you? Thats real danger. Is it the fact that youre a few feet above
your bolt or youre doing hard moves on
toprope? Thats perceived danger.

CLIMBING.COM

| 75

Honnold employs a sense of cautious

realism and pragmatism with his own ascents by examining two factors: the potential consequences (e.g., falling to your
death) and the probability of it happening
(e.g., low if youre on toprope). This means
that if youre bouldering at your limit ve
feet off the ground, the probability of falling may be high, but the consequence is so
minimal that the risk is somewhat negligible. The inverse situation would be if youre
a 5.12 climber soloing 5.2 terrain high off
the ground. The consequence is high, but
the probability of a fall is so low that, again,
the risk probably seems acceptable. The
real danger in both examples is low.

WHY AM I DOING
THIS AGAIN?

STEPH DAVIS ON A BOLD SOLO

OF PERVERTICAL SANCTUARY
(5.11A) ON THE DIAMOND,
LONGS PEAK, COLORADO.

76 | OCTOBER 2014

It would be silly and, quite frankly, lifethreatening to reason that just anyone
could employ Honnolds rationale to justify free soloing El Cap or Half Dome or
Moonlight Buttress, because the true level
of risk is dependent on something unique
to each individual climber: personal ability. Accurately assessing your personal
ability is an important part of proper risk
management, but this may not always
prove easy. (Of course, it does not determine the probability 100%, as there are
always objective hazards like weather or
rockfall.) Underestimating will leave you
stuck in the potentially boring middle
ground of not progressing, while overestimating could put you in a dangerous or
fatal situation. Be realistic, base it on your
climbing experience and mileage, and if
you do have to guess, do it in a low-consequence situation (sport climbing, toproping, etc.) as often as possible so you can get
a better idea of your ability.
One strategy to assess your skill level
effectively is to recall prior, similar experiences. The trick is to recall the facts rather
than the emotions. Dont think about how
you felt about the comparable climb, but
rather analyze the outcome of the event,
comparing factual details while carefully
avoiding emotion. If you regularly climb
5.9 on gear without falling, it would be fair
to say your experience will be similar on
most comparable routes.
Dont compare apples to orangesjust
because you ailed on a 5.10 slab doesnt
really say anything about your potential
performance on an overhanging 5.10.
Evaluate your memory as rationally as
possible by differentiating between real

BRIAN KIMBALL

Assessing and Trusting

Ability

and perceived dangers you experienced on

past routes.
When world-class free soloist and BASE
jumper Steph Davis is faced with a big
jump or climb, she knows its within her
ability, and she fully trusts that ability.
This allows zero mental space for doubt
or fear to slip in and send her on a downward spiral of anxiety. The best perform so
well because they know, without a doubt,
that they are capable of attaining an objective, and then they fully believe it when
performing. Davis purposely empties her
mind beforehand of negative mental dialogue, which she says also helps her enjoy
those pursuits even more: When Im not
being held back by fear, Im free to really
enjoy climbing, and Ive spent a lot of time
guring that out.

ANDY MANN

Avoid the Fear

State Altogether
All the pro climbers I interviewed said
that completely avoiding the fear state was
the single most effective way to perform in
high-intensity situations. Chris Schulte,
V15 boulderer, rst ascensionist, and highball guru, says, The minute you get scared
youve done yourself the worst damage,
because your body is just going to take
over from there. If youre scared enough,
youll lose control, and you wont be able
to get it back. Everything tightens up, you
start over-gripping, and your whole being
retreats within itself. The best and boldest
climbers consciously avoid triggering their
fear response because they understand the
danger of falling into their bodys natural ght-ight-freeze response. Ill have
some little thing happen, and I think,
Thats scary, Honnold says, but I feel like
Im pretty good at clamping it down and
not letting it go down the path of getting
more and more scared until I fall apart.
Here, Honnold stops the negative self-talk
(I cant do this. Im going to fall. This is
scary.) before it triggers the emotional response of fear. He doesnt allow the story
of falling to enter his mental dialogue at
all, thus completely avoiding one of the
precursors to fear.
One way to avoid this state is being fully
prepared and equipped to handle the objective. Before alpinist Kelly Cordes was
blasting up Great Trango Tower, he was a
nationally recognized collegiate boxer. He
recalls standing in the ring before his rst
bout, hoping his opponent wouldnt show
up. He was lled with fear of failure and of

the unknown. After four years and dozens

of ghts, Cordes stood in that same situation awaiting the arrival of his opponent.
Even though the danger of the situation
was the samewalking into a ring with a
man who is trying to hurt youhis level of
experience and preparedness had changed
his perception of the danger. He was ready,
he was trained, and he had been there before. He says, I was standing there thinking, This guy better show up!
When youre prepared and well-practiced, you have no reason to doubt yourself. Its not about closing your eyes and
jumping into the unknown. Its about having eyes wide open to the dangers around
you but knowing that youre as ready as
you can be. Trust in your training and preparedness will give you the required condence to apply your skills to the task at
hand. Then when youre performing, pay

close attention to possible trigger thoughts

as they appear. Stopping them before they
manifest into negative emotional responses is paramount.
Certied sports psychologist Dr. Lisa
Lollar, who coaches professional athletes
in realizing their goals, says, You have to
believe and know that your skills and the
challenge match. Then while performing, the pros work consciously and in the
current moment. They focus on the task
at hand rather than the outcome, staying
present rather than thinking too far into
the event or about the nish. Honnold
says, You might have moments along
the way where your body is scared, but
you know that you can [accomplish the
climb]. To me it takes [a certain kind of ]
rationale to look at it from the outside and
say, Im scared, but Im still holding on.
Im still ne.

CHRIS SCHULTE FULLY

COMMITS ON WHITE
LIGHTNING (V8), MT.
EVANS, COLORADO.

I HOPE MY
HEEL STICKS.

CLIMBING.COM

| 77

So, what if the plan of avoiding the fear

response fails? Like my incident in Vail,
everything can be ne until some objective
hazard or mistake triggers that feeling.
When it comes to managing fear and
improving performance in climbing, its
critical to be able to transition out of fear.
Imagine a sport climbing scenario where
youre several feet above a bolt. Youre
breathing hard and start to over-grip,
body tensing and locking up. Ultimately,
you either need to keep climbing up or
downclimbor else youre gonna take the
whip anyway. Transitioning out of fear is
crucial to making an informed decision
as to what you should do next. As weve
seen, ght, ight, and freeze are a limited
repertoire, especially in climbing, where
calm is the name of the game. Fortunately,
we humans have something special to
combat these sometimes irrational, limited
responses. Thats the prefrontal cortex,
and it gives us the ability to inhibit the fear
response of the amygdala, which is part of
the lower brain. The prefrontal cortex is
the rational, conscious part of our brain,
the part that makes us civil and human
by its ability to reason and lter out our
animal instincts. Without the ability of
our prefrontal cortex to reason with the
instinctual amygdala, wed never get off
the ground in the rst place.
Lollar helps athletes overcome the fearridden brain to arrive at a place of mental
clarity and presence that optimizes performance, and she uses psychological tools
like centering, visualization, and self-talk.
These bring the prefrontal cortex back online, calming the emotional and instinctive
parts of the brain.
VISUALIZATION. Use this as much as you
can before you even get off the ground,
while lying in bed at night or driving to
the crag. The basic idea is to imagine
and clearly see yourself completing each
move with ease. Lollar says it works best
when you add as much detail as possible:
how your body feels pulling over the
crux, the breeze on your face, ngers
clamping down on the cold, gray granite.
Go through each move step by step from
bottom to top.
This mental rehearsal is surprisingly
similar to physical practice; you can actually perform better without lifting a
nger. You are also likely to experience
an improved sense of condence after visualizing, which will decrease your risk of
slipping into the full-edged fear response.

78 | OCTOBER 2014

This technique can encompass more than

just your physical experience on the climb,
too. Think about how you want to feel on
the route in addition to how you want to
move. I imagine myself staying calm and
devoid of panic, should a foot slip or I
fumble the beta on a specic move during
a free solo. I visualize myself letting the error pass without any internal reection or
unnecessary mental dialogue, keeping my
focus on the moves in front of me.
CENTERING. Best done right after coming
out of the initial fear ood, it involves
paying conscious attention to breathing
and bodily sensations. Lollar says staying
focused and avoiding distractions are
critical to performance. Centering helps
the athlete stay in the moment and release
past and future thoughts, worries, and
plans. When Cordes feels the oh shit fear
welling up, he says, I zoom in and focus
on each move, each motion, and I dont
get overwhelmed by the bigger picture.
Lollar recommends practicing centering regularly so it can be there when you
need it. The next time youre climbing, see
how much of your attention you can bring
to the present moment. Notice each inhale,

THE AUTHOR ON A RELATIVELY

NONCHALANT FREE SOLO
OF THE FOUR-PITCH HEAVY
WEATHER (5.9), ELDORADO
CANYON, COLORADO.

exhale, and the sound they make, feel for

the pulse in your chest, and observe the
way the rock feels under your ngertips.
Using this will bring you back to the present moment, which is where you need to
be to perform. The trick here is to practice
this when youre not scared. Observe yourself when youre calm and climbing well,
so it will be easier to gain presence when
youre entering a dangerous move or hazardous terrain. Repetition is the father of
learning. Steph Davis says, Careful, this

WHOA!

STEPH DAVIS TAKES

FLIGHT FROM THE
TOMBSTONE NEAR
MOAB, UTAH.

A FALL
WOULD NOT BE
PRETTY.

BAILEY SPEED (TOP); D. SCOTT CLARK

Coming Back From Fear

CRAIG SCARIOT

kind of mental and physical training takes

practice. Everyone knows you cant get
strong ngers in one campus board session; its the same with your mind. The important thing is to realize that and take the
rst step down the road of learning.
SELF-TALK. Use this at any time to quiet
the amygdala, awaken the prefontal
cortex, and regain your calm. Either out
loud or in your head, talk to yourself.
When you hear the fear response (Thats
not right. Im scared.), recognize those
words for what they areproducts of
the part of your brain responsible for
generating fearand force your brain to
say something else. Make it simple: Im
ne or I can do this or I got it. If you
are struggling with negative thoughts and
cant break out of the cycle, force yourself
to smile and hear yourself say, Im OK.
It might be all you need to relax back into
your ow state.
Honnold employed this method on his
2012 solo of the Yosemite Triple: There
were a half-dozen times when something
unexpected happened, and I had that moment of Oh, thats not right. I was scared,
but each time I wouldnt let it get to the

next level. I would shut it off. I would say,

Im ne, and keep moving. Schulte employs similar techniques: There are all
these little monsters you can get rid of with
just the right words.
While fear can seem like the enemy of
any climber, Ive learned that there are several things you can do before leaving the
ground to mitigate its effect. Step 1: Do risk
and ability assessments. Step 2: Have condence in your ability and preparedness to
avoid slipping into the fear state. Step 3:
Push negative thoughts out of your mind
the moment you feel them start to pop up.
Step 4: Employ visualization, centering,
and self-talk to prevent or come out of the
fear state. Step 5: Review the climb and recall the things you did well. Lollar suggests
focusing on actions, thoughts, and behaviors that helped you perform well.
Its been a few years since I was on that
particular ice pillar. Looking back, there
is little I would haveor could have
changed; luckily things worked out in my
favor. That doesnt mean I rack up my
experience to good fortune and move on.
Instead, I have used that experience as a
jump-start for my mental training. These

days I dont look at my emotions as random and uncontrollable, but rather a biological process that can be mastered. So
when those fear moments do arrive, youre
more than ready.
On a recent 5.11 free solo in Golden,
Colorado, I sat at the bottom of the climb
thinking about how quickly panic sets in.
Something as simple as an insecure foothold or a single moment of uncertainty
can trigger a ood of negative self-talk and
then the biological, chemical response that
can so profoundly affect your performance.
I then imagined myself handling that experience calmly, breathing deeply, and saying
to myself, Relax, you can do this. I still get
scaredhell, what climber doesnt?but
now Im better equipped to keep my cool,
and thats made all the difference.

Denver-based pro climber, writer, and

guide Matt Lloyd has been climbing for 15
years, free soloed 5.12d, survived heinous
weather in the high mountains of the Cordillera Blanca, and led 5.13 R routes, but
he has yet to conquer his biggest objective
ever: his own mind.

KELLY CORDES APPROACHES THE

5,000-FOOT AFANASSIEFF ROUTE
(AKA FRENCH NORTHWEST
RIDGE) ON FITZ ROY, PATAGONIA.

JUST KEEP
MOVING...

CLIMBING.COM

| 79

P R O M OT I O N

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the climbing environment in Western
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Making
Bargains
With God

COURTESY

When four young climbers with big-mountain

dreams went north to tackle Canadas highest
peak, they had no idea how close theyd come
to never returning. Here are their stories.

Mount Logan kills by a

variety of ways, most
often by turning down the
thermostat. Temperatures
below -100F have been
recorded on the summit
plateau. If you survive that,
a two-week storm can blow
in without warning.

Liam Suckling, 27
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Every mountain has a story to tell and lessons to impart. The ruthless ice elds of the St. Elias range and its
crown jewel, 19,551-foot Mount Logan, would teach me
something about boundaries.
At 11,400 feet, pain pierced every extremity. Within
minutes, I had gone from lucid cognition and physical
uidity to burning muscle spasms and a mental maelstrom. One moment I had been focused in full swing,
pushing my own limits and leading up two pitches of
bottomless, steep, sugary snow, and now I was breathing re in an inverted world beyond a darker and more
mysterious boundary.
The turbulence escalated. A ripple of agony curled my
toes up, and I collapsed onto my anchor. I couldnt speak
coherently. I was disintegrating.
I felt a deep frustration with myself for holding the
team up, but I couldnt make sense of the scene. Id felt
great climbing at almost twice this altitude in the past.

82 | OCTOBER 2014

I was well-hydrated. Why was the machine of my body

failing me at such a crucial moment? Later I would learn
that my symptoms came from too much carbon monoxide exposure due to cooking in the tent without enough
ventilation, combined with rapid-onset altitude sickness. Id pushed beyond the limits of my physiology for
the speed at which we were gaining altitude.
Matt, Noah, and Jason gathered near me and commenced organizing a rescue plan; their mental dexterity
was mesmerizing to me. Guilt and frustration stabbed
again. I knew of being the rescuer but not of being rescued; it was agonizing to accept. I felt like I was oating,
and rather than having thoughts, I was somehow watching those thoughts from afar with decreasing conviction
that they were somehow related to me.
Keep moving, man, I could hear Jasons voice and
feel the axe in my hand plunging into the slushy snow.
We were descending to meet the chopper that would
take me in for evaluation. The familiar human limitations eventually returned, though I remained less convinced of how strict those boundaries are.

Timeline
BY NOAH MCKELVIN
In total, we were in
the Great White North
for more than 45
days. We bought an
old van in Anchorage
and drove to British
Columbia to charter
a bush plane into the
St. Elias range with
our sights on Mount
Logan, Canadas
highest peakand
the biggest chunk of
ice and rock on the
planet. Its remote
and notorious for
foul weather, so few
attempt it. Some
years, only a couple
people (literally)
reach the summit.
Inauspiciously, the
van broke down a few
times on the way. We
were on the glacier
for 21 days, and upon
hearing we had a
seven-day weather
window, we went for
it. We were on the
East Ridge of Mount
Logan for 15 days.

6/1 STARTED UP
EAST RIDGE
AND CLIMBED
THROUGH THE
NIGHT (WITH
A TWO-HOUR
SITTING BIVY).
6/2 ARRIVE AT CAMP
1 (9,500 FEET).
STORMS A LITTLE
THAT AFTERNOON.
6/3 MOVE TO CAMP 2
(10,800 FEET).

Jason Mari, 28

COURTESY (4)

HUMBLE, TEXAS
It started at 11,000 feet as a little discomfort. At
12,000 feet, it felt like someone was standing on my
chest. At 14,000 feet, the gurgling started. If I fell
asleep, I would immediately wake up in terror to the
sensation of drowning, so I didnt sleep. I was suffering
from HAPE (high-altitude pulmonary edema), a condition that causes a climbers lungs to ll with uid. The
only treatment is to descend to a lower elevation.
Three days later, having summited Mount Logan and
started the descent toward the Kings Trench Route, we
were pinned by a storm. In my tent, the only consolation
was being sheltered from the storm that was raging outside. At night, the winds picked up, and the temperature
dropped to -40F. During the day, the storm continued,
and in our desperation, we tried to move our camp in
the whiteout. We might have made it a few hundred feet
across the glacier.
My promise to my partners was that I would keep going until I dropped. Their promise to me was that if I
did, they would drag my lifeless body home. I have always taken pride in being tough. Not the strongest or
fastest or smartest, but tough. That can count for a lot.
But near the summit plateau, I broke down completely,
realizing that I might be a liability for the team. This experience would forever change my perception of myself,
mountaineering, and what a team is capable of.
Over the course of those tent-bound days, I had a lot
of time to think. I didnt question our decision-making,
as I believed we were correct in the moment (and still
do in hindsight). But I did wonder about our fate. Every
extra minute we spent on the summit plateau worsened
our chances of survival. Mount Logan kills by a variety
of ways, most often by turning down the thermostat.
Temperatures below -100F have been recorded on this
plateau. For that matter, a two-week storm could blow
in without warning. For obvious reasons, we would
have a hard time surviving either event. The possibility of death lingered constantly, and it enraged me. My
thoughts continually wandered back to my family and
friends at home. My responsibility for the people I love
and specically thinking of a letter my sister wrote to me
before the trip were the fuel that drove me up the nal
1,000 feet to gain Prospectors Col and our eventual exit

from this peak.

In our nal moments on the plateau, my physical
condition deteriorated substantially. Each weak step required two of the most painful, shallow breaths that my
lungs could bear, after which I proceeded to gasp for air
in between ts of coughing, weighting my single, broken
trekking pole. For what seemed like an eternity, I alternated crying tears of despair and throwing ts of rage.
My mind was host to a circus of emotions. Each time I
felt like giving up, I was overcome by a fury that I cannot
understand or really explain. It pushed me through the
descent and ultimately led to my survival.

6/4 ATTEMPT KNIFEEDGE CRUX, GET

SHUT DOWN
BY MIDDAY
HEAT CAUSING
UNSTABLE
CONDITIONS.
6/5 REST.
6/6 MOVE OVER CRUX
AND REACH CAMP
3 (11,975 FEET).
LIAM EVACUATED
THAT AFTERNOON.
6/7 TENT-BOUND IN
WHITEOUT.

Noah McKelvin, 22
DENVER, COLORADO
Mount Logan is not of this Earth. So remote, harsh,
and endless. Its a place where time doesnt exist.
During the two-day storm we weathered near 12,000
feet, I listened to my stomach grumble and stared at our
food, nervously anticipating the moment wed run out.
Wed planned for a week-long climb, and I questioned
every step that got us here. I knew how easily these tentbound days could turn to weeks. How much snow could
we melt with our meager fuel supply? A dark mood de-

6/8 TENT-BOUND IN
WHITEOUT.
6/9 LEAVE CAMP IN
EVENING AND
CLIMB OVERNIGHT
TO CAMP 4
(13,943 FEET).
6/10 REST.

CLIMBING.COM

| 83

Mount Logan held

on to us with an
unexplainable
grip, but we held
on to each other
even stronger. This
changed us forever.
84 |

OCTOBER 2014

scended over us.

I prayed to God. For me, the thought of dying without
having felt that I truly gave life everything I had scared
me. I told God that if I made it out, I would use my second chance to care for others more than myself, never to
waste a moment of life, to push myself as a climber and
as a human being.
My past became a dream, and the future was uncertain. There was simply this mountain and nothing else.
The moment I tried to take comfort in what life was like
back home was the moment I lost concentration.
The whiteout soon turned into a bone-chilling cold
snap, and I felt we needed to move or we risked never
getting out alive. The views at night were something
from a dream: innite snow and ice, the silence deafening. I set off on a steeper pitch of ice, soon encountering
snow-covered mixed slabs. I hammered in one picket
and belayed. I was exhausted, weighed down, crouching with my head on the snow. There was only onward.
Snow conditions were dangerous enough that descending wouldve been a nightmare. The rope so frozen, we
soon started hip belaying. We made it to a wide, at spot
with a sea of clouds below.
Gaining ground boosted our spirits ever so slightly. We had to give it everything we had. Every day we
moved, we did so until we could not take another step
forward. My body tried to nd the strength somewhere
as it slowly ate away 15 pounds of itself over the course
of only 15 days. Pulmonary edema was becoming a horrifying reality for Jason, but we thought of every step
forward as a step to safety.
Though Mount Logan was holding on to us with an
unexplainable grip, we held on to each other even stronger. This changed us forever. My old self died on that
climb, and I was reborn with a new respect for life. Ultimately, I think thats exactly why we climb and what
we went for.

6/11 GAIN THE

PLATEAU; BIVY
AT CAMP 5
(17,600 FEET).

Matt Grabina, 28

COURTESY (4)

BOULDER, COLORADO
There would be no point in delaying. We had already
traveled far beyond our comfort zone. At home in Colorado, I would never have dreamt of stepping onto such a
slope, but here, little choice remained.
The handwritten route beta (above right) suggested we had reached the end of the major difficulties,
but this information was 15 years old, so who knows.
What we did know was that the climbing wouldnt
be technically difficult but deep powder promised an
aerobic workout and heightened fear given the avalanche danger. And damn, was it painfully cold! The
darkest hours of the Yukon night are simply too icy to
get any quality rest, so we planned to move again just
to keep warm.
The bit of comfort the team had taken in reaching
the end of those technical cruxes faded as we faced off
with a danger we had little control over. This slope
could rip at any moment. Here we traded in run-ofthe-mill fear for terror in the face of a truly objective
danger. We moved slowly, fighting for every step.
We found ourselves outside of time, unsure of what

6/12 TRAVERSE
EAST AND
MAIN SUMMITS
TO CAMP 6
(17,550 FEET).
6/13 BAD WEATHER.
ATTEMPT TO
MOVE CAMP,
MAKE IT A FEW
HUNDRED FEET.

our future held. I found it best to set aside fear of

what I could not control, with hopes of making room
for courage or anything else to take its place. Soon
enough, the going became safer and easier, and the
sun was up. When we reached Camp 8, it was difficult to recall how cold and bleak things had been just
hours before.
An expedition is full of highs and lows. This one gave
us the lowest Ive ever felt, but I knew in that moment that
the lows forced us to climb on and live life for all it could
offer. But looking out over the ice elds and countless
summits, each begging for adventure, I felt only the highs.

6/14 DESCEND TO
KINGS TRENCH
AND CAMP 8
(13,451 FEET).
6/15 DESCEND
REMAINING
ROUTE AND FLY
OUT! AN 11-DAY
STORM HITS 12
HOURS AFTER
OUR DEPARTURE.

CLIMBING.COM

| 85

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THE FLOW
Are You a Climbing Accident
Waiting to Happen?
BY KEVIN CORRIGAN

IN THIS ISSUE, we presented an array of hero climbers (p. 60). These are seless people who went above and beyond to ensure the
safety of others, sometimes at their own peril. And then there are the climbing liabilities. Theyre cavalier about essential safety
practices. They get themselves in over their heads. And they dont know what to do when things go wrong. Follow the chart below
to nd out if youre the kind of climber that gets people into troubleor out of it.
START HERE

HAVE YOU EVER REQUIRED

RESCUE IN THE PAST?

No.

How long have you

been climbing?

To what would you attribute your

flawless safety record?

Years and years.

Yes.

Which time?
That? That could
almost denitely
but probably never
happen again.
I have acquired
a healthy respect
for the mountain
environment.

Did you learn from

your mistakes?

You are well-versed in selfrescue techniques, right?

Yeah.
Im not
crazy.

Oh no, youre a liability! Youre

putting yourself, your partner, and
the inevitable search and rescue
team in danger by heading into the
hills without the proper skills. The
good news is that its not too late
to change.
88 | OCTOBER 2014

I can tie a Munter-mule or execute

a counter-balanced rappel with my
eyes closed, but I wouldnt, because
that would only add more variables
to an already-dangerous situation.

But you at least discuss your plan with your

partner and double-check each others
knots before starting up a route... right?

Im just kind of
guring it out as
I go.

I dunno.

I just started! Its

so much fun!

No, I just dont

fall so its ne.
Nah. I know how
to tie a gure eight; I
dont need to waste time
asking my partner to stare
at my crotch before
every climb.

I can recite
Freedom of the
Hills from cover
to cover, and Im
meticulous about
best practices.

Not too long, but

Im not brand new
either.

Im taking
classes with
my local gym
or guiding
service.

Youre not the most dangerous

climber, but you could stand to
take a self-rescue course and
bone up on your safety knowledge.
Remember: You cant plan for an
accident, but you can and should
be prepared for them.

When someone offers

you safety advice, you...

Tell them to shove

it. I lead 5.11. I know
what Im doing.

And how
have you
been
learning?

Listen attentively.
My skills can always
be improved.

I have an
experienced
mentor showing
me the ropes.

Youre on the right track! Keep

educating yourself and some day
youll be able to mentor other
climbers in the fine art of not dying. Just remember to practice
all your new skills on the ground
before taking them up the wall.

Books,
credible
Internet articles,
YouTube
videos.

Congratulations! Youre a safe

climber. You know how to prevent
accidents and what to do if things
do go wrong. If the world were
just, thered be 10 climbers banging on your door, begging to cruise
multi-pitches with you right now.

ALTO

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