Climbing Narcissist

UBC Pro Tour Heading To The Northwest

Narc — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:07:23 +0000

The UBC Pro Tour has added stop at Stone Gardens Bellevue to their 2012 calendar with a $17,000 cash purse set to lure bouldering’s elite to Seattle September 21-22nd. This is the first UBC comp to take place in a climbing gym in quite some time, so it will be interesting to see how that environment differs from the bigger venues they’ve been operating the past couple of years.

The inevitable question many of you may want an answer to is whether or not there will be a live feed. I wish I could confirm that there would be, but the answer to that question remains to be seen. There wasn’t enough support in the industry to get a feed running at ABS Nationals, but there is still plenty of time for things to get sorted out for this comp. Let’s hope it happens.

Here’s the full release:

UBC Pro Tour Heading To The Northwest from Climbing Narcissist

Get the ClimbingNarc iOS app in the App Store to enjoy all this site's content on your iPhone or iPad

Oz

Narc — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:25:46 +0000

This incredible photo essay by Keith Ladzinski from his trip to Australia last year with Dave Graham, Nalle Hukkataival and Ian Dory would make a great coffee table book don’t you think? (h/t Josh on twitter for the link).

Oz from Climbing Narcissist

Get the ClimbingNarc iOS app in the App Store to enjoy all this site's content on your iPhone or iPad

“You think it will be cool till it isn’t fun anymore”

Narc — Wed, 23 May 2012 13:14:51 +0000

The North Face catches up with their athlete Alex Honnold to find out a bit more about his and Tommy Caldwell’s big day in Yosemite, his plans to rope solo the same feat for his segment in the Reel Rock Tour and a casual mention of how he free soloed the West Face of El Cap. As to how the idea for the triple link-up came about:

You do one route and you have a lot of time left in the day and you think, “Oh maybe we should have done two.” And eventually you do two with time left over and you say, “maybe we could do three…” and we did three and we didn’t have any time left over so we said, “we’re over it.”

More detail and pictures from Kelly Cordes on the big day here as well.

“You think it will be cool till it isn’t fun anymore” from Climbing Narcissist

Get the ClimbingNarc iOS app in the App Store to enjoy all this site's content on your iPhone or iPad

Bad Girls Club (5.14d) Repeated By Jon Cardwell

Narc — Tue, 22 May 2012 22:03:25 +0000

According to his 8a scorecard, Jon Cardwell has repeated Bad Girls Club, a 5.14d in Rifle, CO first done last summer by Matty Hong.

Bad Girls Club (5.14d) Repeated By Jon Cardwell from Climbing Narcissist

Get the ClimbingNarc iOS app in the App Store to enjoy all this site's content on your iPhone or iPad

Regular Dude Climbs Just Do It (5.14c)

Narc — Tue, 22 May 2012 12:21:59 +0000

To borrow a phrase from the fine folks over at Rock & Ice, Ryan Palo is a pretty regular dude. He works for a living, he climbs, he gets injured, he recovers and he climbs some more. It’s just that when he climbs, he tends to climb 5.14. Not very regular dude of him. It was especially not very regular dude of him when over the weekend he became the first local and probably the first person with a “real” job to climb Just Do It (5.14c) on Smith Rock’s iconic Monkey Face.

Palo has a write-up on his blog about the effort it took to complete a route of this difficulty, and despite how it looks when 15-year-old French kids do it, climbing hard 5.14 isn’t always that much fun:

Some time ago I realized that striving to climb at your max actually isnt fun. In fact, it’s downright unpleasant. I can think of countless examples of friends beating themselves up on routes they can barely do. Where the period of frustration & setback eclipses the jubilation period. I was told these were the moments where we build character, stamina, willpower, etc. and that might be true. Im just not so sure it’s worth it.

DPM also caught up with Palo for this interview that is worth reading as well.

Regular Dude Climbs Just Do It (5.14c) from Climbing Narcissist

Get the ClimbingNarc iOS app in the App Store to enjoy all this site's content on your iPhone or iPad

What Did You Do This Weekend?

Narc — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:16:49 +0000

Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold spent Saturday romping up big walls in Yosemite. The pair free climbed Freerider on El Cap (6:45 climbing), the South Face of Mt. Watkins (2:40 climbing) and the Regular Northwest Face on Half Dome (5 climbing) in just over 21 hours. More at Climbing.com. So…how was your weekend??

What Did You Do This Weekend? from Climbing Narcissist

Get the ClimbingNarc iOS app in the App Store to enjoy all this site's content on your iPhone or iPad

Ethan Pringle On Jumbo Love

Narc — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:24:47 +0000

Ethan Pringle is back at Mt. Clark, home to that one route first done by that one guy:

Projecting a route like this requires all of your attention, and having to devote all of your attention to a route like this can get really tiring really fast. At some point, you just want to get it over with. Of course, afterward you feel a mix of relief and loss. Relief that you’re done and the epic is over, and loss that this magnificent line doesn’t require your presence anymore. But for me, I think I’ll have to take a nice long break from serious route projects for a little while after this. Like Randy Levitt said, “It’s like a limestone El Cap.” Obviously, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it does sort of convey the amount of work required to complete a project of this caliber.

Pringle is no stranger to Jumbo Love, having tried it even before its FA back in 2008. You can see some footage of those attempts here.

Ethan Pringle On Jumbo Love from Climbing Narcissist

Get the ClimbingNarc iOS app in the App Store to enjoy all this site's content on your iPhone or iPad

Video Friday – 5/18/2012

Narc — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:38:32 +0000

This weekend the IFSC Bouldering World Cup circuit visits Innsbruck, Austria. As usual you can follow the action live at IFSC.tv. Women’s qualifers begin later today at 9:00 AM EDT and the action resumes tomorrow morning at 6:30 AM EDT. Check out the IFSC.tv website for the full schedule.

Speaking of comps, the word on the street is that the next stop on the UBC Pro Tour will be announced next week. Get ready comp fans on the west coast…

Video Friday

A little something for everybody in this week’s Video Friday. I’d encourage you to take the time to watch each of these videos, they’re all well worth it.

Remember to check out all the videos on the Videos page and vote for your favorites throughout the week.

This week’s edition of Video Friday is brought to you unofficially buy Memorial Day sales¹ from both REI and Backcountry.com. Shop using the below links and you’ll be helping support the continued operation of this site.

It’s cliche, but can you believe it’s almost June? ↩

Video Friday – 5/18/2012 from Climbing Narcissist

Get the ClimbingNarc iOS app in the App Store to enjoy all this site's content on your iPhone or iPad

Mon Pote Assis (5.14a) By Heather Robinson

Narc — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:09:30 +0000

A little over a year after she did her first 5.13d, Heather Robinson fired her first 5.14a when she did Mon Pote Assis at Nevada’s Mt. Potosi. Commenting about the ascent on her 8a scorecard she had this to say:

Oh my goodness! This send was a dream come true. Thank you Chris for believing in me and the countless belays. Super power endurance route. First female ascent!

A very nicely done profile of Robinson, which includes footage of her on that 5.13d from last year, can be seen here. Footage of Steve Lapen climbing Mon Pote Assis can be seen here.

Mon Pote Assis (5.14a) By Heather Robinson from Climbing Narcissist

Get the ClimbingNarc iOS app in the App Store to enjoy all this site's content on your iPhone or iPad

When In Doubt Pack It Out

Narc — Wed, 16 May 2012 21:06:43 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I always try my best to climb close to an actual bathroom. In case you don’t, the Access Fund has a nice refresher on what to do when nature calls.

When In Doubt Pack It Out from Climbing Narcissist

Get the ClimbingNarc iOS app in the App Store to enjoy all this site's content on your iPhone or iPad