Skip to content

What Type of Belay Device Do I Use?

Gear

1/1

7 Jun 2024, 13:17

Suggested topics


  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    9 Views
    March 2025 The American Alpine Club (AAC) and Mountain Hardwear are excited to announce the 2025 McNeill-Nott recipients. With the untimely death of Sue Nott and her climbing partner Karen McNeill on Sultana (Mt. Foraker) in 2006, the AAC partnered with Mountain Hardwear to establish the McNeill-Nott Award in their memory. This award seeks to preserve the spirit of these two talented and courageous climbers by giving grants to amateur female climbers exploring new routes or unclimbed peaks with small teams. Heather Smallpage will receive $2,000 to attempt big wall and alpine-style first ascents in a little-climbed region of Baffin Island: Arviqtujuq Kangiqtua (formerly Eglinton Fjord). Natalie Afonina, Shira Biner, Char Tomlinson, and Kaylan Worsnop will all join the expedition, which will be almost entirely human-powered. The expedition team will travel over 250 km by skiing, climbing, packrafting, and walking. The team hopes that this expedition will not only inspire people to see what is possible for female and nonbinary alpinism but also emphasize how increasingly essential and joyous these spaces are in this sport and will tell a story that includes voices that are often quieted or left out of the climbing media. Angela VanWiemeersch will receive $4,000 to attempt to establish a technical line in alpine style on a 5,000-meter peak in the Pamir Alai mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Allie Oaks will join VanWiemeersch on this expedition. Oaks and VanWiemeersch have been growing a long-distance partnership over the last four years and will be doing a training trip in the Canadian Rockies this April. This will be their first big expedition together.  Brooke Maushund will receive $1,000 to attempt to climb and ski unclimbed peaks on the Southern Patagonian Icefield (Hielo Continental) with a primarily female team. Since avalanche forecasting in the U.S. during austral summers, Maushund was driven to extend her winters in the Southern Hemisphere. After spending close to four months skiing in Patagonia last year, starting to learn terrain, snowpacks, and weather patterns, she is excited to continue learning through exploratory skiing in this dynamic, wild environment.  Applications for the McNeill-Nott Award are accepted each year from October 1 through November 30. Berkeley Anderson, Foundation and Grants Coordinator: [email protected] About Mountain Hardwear Mountain Hardwear, Inc., was founded in 1993 and is based in Richmond, CA. We exist to encourage and equip people to seek a wilder path in life. For 30 years, we’ve built essential equipment for climbers, mountaineers, and outdoor athletes and have supported expeditions on the world’s highest peaks. Relentless precision continues to inspire everything we do — our designers sweat every stitch and detail to continuously improve function, durability, and comfort. Mountain Hardwear is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Columbia Sportswear Company that distributes its products through specialty outdoor retailers in the United States and 34 countries worldwide. www.mountainhardwear.com https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2025/3/13/the-american-alpine-club-announces-2025-mcneill-nott-winners
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    9 Views
    Originally published in Guidebook XIII Dear AAC Members, Thank you for taking the time to dive into this second edition of the AAC’s quarterly Guidebook. A lot of things are changing at the AAC, and we are energized by the new opportunities that these changes afford. We are re-envisioning our measurable impact and excited to further support our members in a way only the AAC can. This Guidebook is just that—your guide to the work that you make possible through your membership. When you read these stories— from celebrating volunteers like Maurice Chen, who is bringing our much-beloved Accidents in North American Climbing to international audiences (which you can read about in “Found in Translation”), or the shattering finding of member Eric Gilbertson that Rainier’s summit is shrinking ( in “The Height of Mountains”), to all the world-class climbing you can find at our cozy lodging facility at the New River Gorge, as well as the profound impact our grants program has on our members (as seen in “Sea to Summit” and “Life: An Objective Hazard”)—you’re seeing the AAC’s mission at work: the advancement of knowledge, inspiration, and advocacy. While we’re excited to share these stories with you, there is also a lot going on behind the scenes that hasn’t made it into a full-fledged story yet. Many of these happenings you can find highlighted in our “AAC Updates” section that follows. As we kick off this new year, we are also excited about ongoing projects that will shape the future of the AAC, like developing a new website, which will make it easier for our members to take advantage of their benefits. Finally, I want to take a moment to celebrate the impressive advocacy success that the AAC helped make possible at the end of 2024. The unanimous passage of the EXPLORE Act is a historic moment for recreationists, and as law, it will significantly expand access to our nation’s public lands and protect climbing in our beloved Wilderness areas. In December, the National Park Service also announced that they are discontinuing their proposed fixed anchor guidance; the AAC thanks the NPS for sensing the need to reevaluate the proposed regulations and looks forward to collaborating with them in the future on fixed anchor guidance. Looking forward, we are equipped to adapt our tactics to future challenges in order to advocate for the needs of our members, and all climbers. At the AAC, we’re pulled together by our passion for climbing, and that passion is woven throughout these pages. Our expansive grants, affordable lodging, significant research findings, impactful advocacy work, and more are only possible because of your membership, donations, and commitment to climbing. Nina Williams AAC Board President Operations and Governance Lodging Advocacy Education https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2025/2/10/ewld060rs1z9w881oz4awfrbwbiqmj
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    13 Views
    From healthy food to getting outside, here are some ways to stay stoked during the final month of winter The post 10 Tips to Climb Through the February Blues appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/profiles/10-tips-to-climb-through-the-february-blues/
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    15 Views
    Every year, ice climbers flock to the Ouray Ice Festival to test their skills on the human made ice flows in the park. A select few test their skills on the ice climbing competition wall. Routes are created that include ice, rock, and plywood in the Scottish Gullies section of the ice park.  The American Alpine Club sat down with USA ice climbing competitor Keenan Griscom. Griscom was rocking a North Face leopard-print 1996 retro Nuptse puffer and Y2K gray wrap-around sunglasses, as chill as the ice around us. We chatted about growing up competing in ice climbing competitions, his new link up Tommy's X (5.14b) in Clear Creek Canyon's Nomad’s Cave, and his experimental competition headspace. The experiment succeeded clearly, since Griscom took home the gold in the Ouray men's lead finals the next day. AAC: You were the youngest American to win the Ouray Elite Mixed Climbing Competition at age 16. When did you start climbing? How did you get into competitive ice climbing? Keenan Griscom: My dad actually started me ice climbing when I was four or five here in Ouray. So I've had tools for a long time. And then through Marcus Garcia, [I] found the competition scene and got hooked. I was doing rock comps, and the community in the ice climbing comps was just, so, so good and supportive and friendly, so, as someone who's already into competing, starting the ice comps is just like, oh, this is it. This is a cool spot to be in. AAC: What was it like competing at such a young age? KG: I don't know, I've been competing since I was nine. It was somewhat second nature. I've always wanted to give it [my] all in the comps. And Ouray was really special because when I started, there weren't any age categories. It was just the open format, and anyone could sign up. So if you were in, you're competing with everyone. My first two seasons, I didn't place particularly well. But it was so cool to be competing with people like Will Gadd and Ryan Vachon and all these epic mixed-climbers and alpinists who I looked up to. AAC: What drew you to continue doing competition ice climbing while you fell away from competition bouldering and rock climbing? KG: I stopped competing in rock comps mainly because the scene isn't as welcoming. There's a lot more toxic competitive nature there, and a lot of people get really worked up and will take other people down to get a better result. There's not really any of that in the ice climbing crew. Ice climbing comps are really fun. I'm going to stick with that. But I've been rock climbing outside nonstop. AAC: On that note, I noticed you put up an alternative finish to Tommy's Hard Route (5.13d)—Tommy's X (5.14b). What is the relationship between route development and ice climbing? How do those two things relate, if at all for you? KG: They don't relate a ton since I haven't really done much development for ice or mixed. I've gotten a lot of help from mentors like Marcus, who I met through ice climbing, to teach me development ethics. That route, specifically, it's in a cave near my house, and there's a lot of link ups. I didn't put in any new bolts [for Tommy's X] it was just a new line that hadn't been done yet. AAC: And what inspired you to do that? KG: Tommy's Hard Route (5.13d) is an old school natural line in a cave that's almost all manufactured. There is this really, really big dead point crux that I always thought was super, super interesting. Then it's over. You do this really gnarly dead point, and it's jugs to the chains. Which is nice, but more sustained climbing is more my style. There's this other route called Predator X (5.13a/b) that comes in from the left and finishes basically directly above that dead point. And one day, I was wondering if I could link those up, and then it'd be like a perfectly straight line of bolts through the wall. Yeah, it ended up being a really interesting crux sequence after the initial crux. AAC: That's awesome. You also boulder, can you tell me a little bit more about that? KG: Yeah, I grew up almost exclusively sport climbing, and then started to do ... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2025/1/30/fvxv7num1r05699fupr3gyohwfk4f5
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    20 Views
    For the first time in history, climbing in the Wilderness is legally protected https://www.climbing.com/news/congress-passes-protect-americas-rock-climbing-act/
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    17 Views
    No place soaks up sun like the Johnny Cat enclave at the Cat Wall, Indian Creek. The maroon cliffs are striped with perfect cleaved fissures, like vertical gateways into a hidden world. The desert heat can be oppressive, but in late autumn, the low golden rays cast long shadows over the walls. by Luke Mehall… https://climbingzine.com/creeksgiving-luke-mehall/
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    27 Views
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoOKjtUh4w
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    24 Views
    Matt Helliker makes the first ascent of Race E9 7a at Priest Cove, Kernow in Cornwall. https://www.climber.co.uk/news/matt-helliker-makes-first-ascent-of-race-e9-7a/