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17 Jan 2025, 19:00

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  • Found in Translation

    General News climbing 29 days ago
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    Originally published in Guidebook XIII Across the Pacific, on the small island of Taiwan, climber Maurice Chen received an email from Dougald MacDonald, the Executive Editor of the American Alpine Club. It was July 2024, and the summer air hung as heavy as mist. Attached to the email was a large document: the full version of the 2024 Accidents in North American Climbing (ANAC). Chen called his two colleagues at the Taiwan Outdoor Climbers’ Coalition (TOCC), Matt Robertson and Ta Chi Wang. Together, they began their meticulous work—marking pages, circling terms, and discussing any accident relevant to Taiwanese climbing in obsessive detail. The task ahead would be long and tedious. Taiwan is an island shaped like a yam, floating between the South and East China Seas. It sits in the shadow of two superpowers, one threatening to occupy it and another half-heartedly protecting it. A young island by geological standards, it was formed by the collision of two tectonic plates. The island is 89 miles wide and 250 miles long, with its eastern half stitched to its western half by a spine of mountain ranges. Among these ranges are 151 peaks taller than 10,000 feet, with the tallest, Jade Mountain, standing just shy of 13,000 feet. Taiwan is a land of sea and sky. The island’s diverse climate shifts from coastal tide pools to alpine tundra and back to tide pools in less than a hundred miles. Thanks to these rich natural landscapes, the Taiwanese have always embraced outdoor activities such as hiking, mountaineering, diving, biking, surfing, and climbing. The first mountaineering clubs of Taiwan were formed as early as 1905. Chen and Robertson belonged to Taiwan’s third generation of climbers, Wang to the second. The first generation of Taiwanese climbers were born during the Japanese occupation, and were early-century mountaineers, tackling the many tall peaks with traditional expedition and siege-style strategies. Mountaineering and hiking gained mainstream attention when a list of a hundred notable mountains was published in 1972, aptly named “Taiwan’s Hundred Mountains.” The serious Taiwanese mountaineer aspired to climb all hundred. By the late 1970s, mountaineering boots were the go-to climbing shoe, but tales of the Stonemasters had floated across the Pacific. Wang remembers reading an issue of Climbing Magazine that his friends and brought back from the States, but without the internet, information passed slowly. The climbing scene lagged behind the Americans and Europeans by about half a decade. Gradually, Taiwanese climbers began distinguishing rock climbing from mountaineering. When Chen began climbing in the 1990s, free climbing—primarily trad climbing—was already widespread. By the time Robertson arrived in Taiwan in 2002, sport climbing had just begun to gain traction. In the mid-2010s, the indoor climbing scene boomed, and the number of gyms tripled. Due to the limited real estate in the maze-like Taiwanese cities, most of these facilities were bouldering gyms, which gave rise to the fourth generation of Taiwanese climbers, predominantly boulderers. Published annually since 1948, Accidents in North American Climbing documents the year’s most significant and teachable climbing accidents. Get it annually as an AAC member. Each membership is critical to the AAC’s work: advocating for climbing access and natural landscapes, offering essential knowledge to the climbing community, and supporting our members with our rescue benefit, discounts, grants and more.  Chen and Robertson met at Long Dong (meaning “Dragon’s Cave”), a seacliff climbing area on the northern end of the island. Climbers have compared Long Dong with the Shawangunks in New York or Clear Creek Canyon in Colorado, but Wang waves away those comparisons—it cannot be compared because the serenity of home is an incomparable experience. Seacliffs rise out of the Pacific and waves crash behind the belayer, requiring not only knowledge of the rocks but knowledge of the tides. The lines are short and stout, punchy, getting the grade in less than 50 feet in most places. This was before the first climbing gym in Taiwan had opened, and the pair collaborated to pu... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2025/2/4/guidebook-xiiivolunteer-spotlight
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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoljPXm0Tos
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    Babsi Zangerl’s flash ascent of Free Rider on El Capitan in November—the first flash of any El Cap big-wall free route—was a highlight of the year in climbing. In the new Cutting Edge podcast, the 36-year-old Austrian climber describes her preparation, fears, and the intense effort of her no-falls ascent of the 5.13a wall. Plus, Alex Honnold, Josh Wharton, and AAJ editor Dougald MacDonald add personal perspective and context on Babsi’s historic Free Rider ascent. Listen to the new episode here! Two of the most accomplished and adventurous climbers of the modern era are Mick Fowler, a retired tax inspector for Great Britain’s revenue department, and Victor Saunders, a U.K. architect turned Chamonix mountain guide. The two completed their first major new route in Pakistan together 37 years ago. This past autumn, Fowler, now age 68, and Saunders, 74, completed another big new route: the first ascent of a 6,258-meter peak, also in Pakistan. Read on to learn more about both climbs. In September 2024, Victor Saunders and I made the first ascent of Yawash Sar I (6,258m), a shapely peak at the head of the Koksil (a.k.a. Shop Dur) Glacier in the Ghujerab Mountains, very near the frontier with China. [In 2022, a British team made three attempts on the south face and southern ridges of Yawash Sar I, on the opposite side of the mountain. (See AAJ 2023.) No prior attempt from the Koksil Glacier, which drains to the northwest, has been reported.]  Victor and I met in Islamabad on August 26, flew to Gilgit, spent a night in Karimabad, and arrived at Koksil (ca 4,000m), 12 kilometers west of Khunjerab Pass on the Karakoram Highway, on the 28th. Bad weather delayed us for a day, but on the 30th, after one day of walking, we established a base camp at around 4,600 meters on the highest grassy meadows below the Koksil Glacier. The weather was unstable over the period from August 31 to September 9. However, we were able to make a reconnaissance of the approach to Yawash Sar and get good views of its north and northwest flanks. During this period, to aid acclimatization and get more views of Yawash Sar, we ascended Peak 5,636m, first climbed by a Polish-Italian team in 2011 (see AAJ 2012). On September 10, we left base camp to attempt our main objective. That day we walked up the main Koksil Glacier to camp at a point below the 5,426m West Yawash Col. On the 11th we climbed through an icefall to gain the previously unvisited glacier basin between Yawash Sar I and Peak 6,072m. The west-northwest face of Yawash Sar I has three groove/couloir lines. We climbed the central one. On September 12, we crossed the bergschrund and were pleased to find excellent conditions. Once established on the line, we climbed thin ice runnels to a bivouac at about 5,750m. There was a notable dearth of good bivouac sites, and we had to traverse about 35m out of the couloir to a point where we were able to fashion a ledge on a sharp rock crest. On the 13th, we climbed more thin ice streaks and mixed ground to meet the southwest ridge at about 6,050m. Here, we endured a very uncomfortable and windy sitting bivouac. On the 14th the weather deteriorated, and it began to snow. We traversed left across a rock wall (where we’d been concerned we might be stopped) and gained the summit slopes, which we followed to the top, arriving at around 11 a.m. We stayed about five minutes and then rappelled all the way to the bottom of the face, reaching the glacier at about midnight on the same day. On the 15th and 16th, we returned to base camp. The upper reaches of the Koksil Glacier had only been visited by one previous party, the Polish/Italian team noted above, and numerous possibilities for climbers remain. — Mick Fowler, U.K. If the Piolets d’Or had existed at the time (they didn’t debut until 1992), Mick Fowler and Victor Saunders’ ascent of the Golden Pillar of Spantik (7,027m) in 1987 surely would have earned them a golden ice axe. Their six-day climb of the 2,100m northwest face was a landmark of late-’80s alpinism, with bold climbing in unstable weather on a stunning formation, followed by a nerve-wracking descent on uncharte... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2024/12/17/the-line
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    At a grade of 5.15a, it's his hardest outdoor rock route to date The post Mejdi Schalck Climbs Famous Sharma Deep Water Solo appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/news/mejdi-schalck-climbs-famous-sharma-deep-water-solo/
  • Rusty Rope

    Videos climbing hownot2 14 Oct 2024, 22:00
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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3FZfGOIKws
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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_BS5jhQJEM
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    Navigating the challenges of climbing, e-biking, and recovery with the Coros Vertix 2S—what it excels at and where it doesn’t work for me (yet). The post Adventures with Coros: Climbing, E-Biking, and the Vertix 2S appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/news/adventures-with-coros-climbing-e-biking-and-the-vertix-2s/
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    SHOP https://climbingzine.com/5-6-tanks-are-here/