Skip to content

Yufei Pan 🇨🇳 | Athlete of the Week

Videos

1/1

18 Jun 2025, 10:00

Suggested topics


  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    8 Views
    Typical Sunday used gear peruse. Filing through overpriced  ultralights. Old green rock empire robot. Outdated, unwanted, undervalued…   “Perfect.”   This cam had chemistry, To be there for someone in the  thinnest of situations, In the wildest of areas, Attached at the hip.   Now devoid of adventure, Grown apart, Told that it’s not the… https://climbingzine.com/ass-color-ass-cam-10-by-stefanos-apostle-a-poem/
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    25 Views
    Ethan Berman, Sebastian Pelletti and Maarten van Haeren have made the first ascent of one of the Karakoram's last major challenges The post Climbers Find Success on Huge Alpine Climb appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/news/climbers-find-success-on-huge-alpine-climb/
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    34 Views
    Spacewalking outside the Hubble Space Telescope, John Grunsfeld wasn’t that much closer to the stars than when he was back on the surface of Earth, but it certainly felt that way. The sensation of spacewalking, of constantly being in freefall, but orbiting Earth fast enough that it felt like weightlessness, was more of a thrill than terrifying. Looking out to the vaster universe, seeing the moon in its proximity, the giant body of the sun, stole his breath away. Grunsfeld was experiencing a sense of exploration that very few humans get to. It was deeply moving, a sensation he also got in the high glaciated ranges when he’d look around and be surrounded by crevasses and granite walls of rock and ice. Throughout his life, he couldn’t help but seek out the most inhospitable places on the planet, and even beyond. You might think that there is nothing similar between climbing and spacewalking. But when you ask John Grunsfeld, former astronaut and NASA Chief Scientist—and an AAC member since 1996—about the similarities, the connections are potent. The focus required of spacewalking and climbing is very much the same, Grunsfeld says. Just like you can’t perform at your best on the moves of a climb high above the ground without intense focus on the next move and the currents of balance in your body, so, too, suited up in the 300-pound spacesuit, with 4.3 pounds per square inch of oxygen, and 11 layers of protective cloth insulation, you still have to be careful not to bump the space shuttle, station, or telescope as you go about the work of repairing and updating such technology—the job of the mission in the first place. Outside the astronaut’s suit is a vacuum, and Grunsfeld is not shy about the stakes. “Humans survive seconds when vacuum-exposed,” he says. With such high risks, it’s a shame that the AAC rescue benefit doesn’t work in space. Not only is spacewalking, like climbing, inherently dangerous, it also requires intense focus, and it can be a lot like redpointing. Grunsfeld reflects that “it’s very highly scripted. Every task that you’re going to do is laid out long before we go to space. We practice extensively.” In Grunsfeld’s three missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, his spacewalks were a race against the clock—the battery life and limited oxygen that the suit supplied versus the many highly technical tasks he had to perform to update the Hubble instruments and repair various electronic systems. It’s about flow, focus, and execution—skills and a sequence of moves that he had practiced again and again on Earth before coming to space. Similarly, tether management is critical. Body positioning, and not getting tangled in the tether, is important in order to not break something—say, kick a radiator and cause a leak that destroys Hubble and his fellow astronauts inside. But to Grunsfeld, the risk is worth it. The Hubble Space Telescope is “the world’s most significant scientific instrument and worth billions of dollars. Thousands of people are counting on that work.” Indeed, perhaps a little more is at stake than a send or a summit. Growing up in Chicago, Grunsfeld’s mind first alighted on the world of science and adventure through the National Geographic magazines he devoured, and a school project that had an outsized effect. Grunsfeld’s peers were assigned to write a brief biography of people like George Washington and Babe Ruth. Rather than these more familiar figures, Grunsfeld was assigned to research the life of Enrico Fermi—a nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the Manhattan Project, the creator of the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor, and a lifelong mountaineer. Suddenly, science and the alpine seemed deeply intertwined. Grunsfeld started climbing as a teenager, top-roping in Devil’s Lake, back when the cutting edge of gear innovation meant climbing by wrapping the rope around your waist and tying it with a bowline. Attending a NOLS trip to the Wind River Range and further expanding on his rope and survivor skills truly cemented his love of climbing in wild spaces. Throughout the years, climbing was a steady beat in his life, a resource for joy. He would climb in Lumpy Ridge, the Sierra, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Tahquitz, Peru, Bolivia, and many other places with his wife, Carol, his daughter, and close friends like Tom Loeff, another AAC member. If climbing was a steady beat, his fascination with space and astrophysics would be a starburst. At first, his application to become a NASA astronaut was denied, but in 1992, Grunsfeld joined the NASA Astronaut Corps. It would shape the rest of his life’s work. Between 1... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2025/5/19/guidebook-xivmember-spotlight
  • 1 Votes
    1 Posts
    30 Views
    Before there were 8a.nu leaderboards and Mountain Project ticklists, before there were beta videos and newspaper articles for every cutting-edge ascent, there was a word-of-mouth understanding of who was setting the standard of the day. Pushing the standard of climbing at the Gunks has proven to be key in the history of climbing in the United States, and any connoisseur of climbing history will know the names of Fritz Wiessner, Hans Kraus, Jim McCarthy, John Stannard, Steve Wunsch, and John Bragg—all AAC members by the way. But what often gets overlooked in the whispers of rowdy Vulgarian parties, naked climbing antics, and strict leader qualifications that swirl around Gunks history are the distinct contributions of women to Gunks climbing. A central figure in this story is the unique character Bonnie Prudden. First, we must set the scene. Prudden was most active climbing in the Gunks in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when climbing on rock was done in sneakers with a hemp rope. Rather than boldness, a strict no-falls attitude pre-vailed, and good judgment was prized over achieving the next cutting-edge grade. Pitons and aid climbing were status quo, and without a priority on pushing the limits of the sport, the time period was considered non-competitive. While Wiessner, Kraus, Prudden, and others were climbing 5.7s (even occasionally 5.8), most climbers stuck to routes rated 5.2–5.4. Climbing in the Gunks started with Fritz Wiessner, who went on a developing tear starting in 1935. He and Hans Kraus would be the leading developers of the area until the late 1950s, collectively establishing 56 of the 58 multi-pitch climbs put up in that period. In 30 of those first ascents, Prudden played a role, and she wasn’t just tagging along. With competition on the back burner, the significance of leading was murky. Some of the climbers at the time proclaimed that there wasn’t a big difference between leading and following. However, the great tension and division that would characterize the Gunks’ history— between the Appalachian Mountain Club climbers (Appies) and the rebel Vulgarians that opposed their rules—came down to the question of regulating leading. The Appies, the dominant climbing force in the Gunks until the Vulgarians and other rabble-rousers splintered the scene in the 1960s, created a lead qualification system, determining who could lead at any given level. Alternatively, some climbers were designated as “unlimited leaders,” who didn’t need approval to lead specific routes. Although they were painted as control freaks by the Vulgarians, the truth behind why the Appie crowd was so invested in regulating leading (and minimizing the risk inherent in climbing) was because they were keenly aware of the generosity of the Smileys, the landowners who looked the other way as climbers galavanted around on the excellent stone of the Trapps and Sky Top. Bonnie Prudden was lucky enough to rise above all of the drama. As a close friend and frequent climbing partner of Hans Kraus’s (who was obviously an “unlimited leader,” being one of the first, and much-exalted, developers of the area), Prudden had frequent access to new, difficult climbs. In interviews with researcher Laura Waterman, Prudden relayed that in the early years, while climbing with her then husband, Dick Hirschland, she always led because of their significant weight difference. Later she took the lead simply because of her skill, tutored by Kraus and Wiessner. Prudden took her first leader fall on the 5.6 Madame G (Madame Grunnebaum’s Wulst) and recalls catching a fall from Kraus only four times. At the time, 5.7 and 5.8 was the very top of the scale, and Prudden was keeping up—and sometimes showing off. The story of the first ascent of Bonnie’s Roof, now free climbed at 5.9, is often held up as proof of Prudden’s talent, and rightfully so. But the gaps in the story and the fuzziness of Prudden’s memory of it might reveal more than the accomplishment itself. On that day in 1952, Prudden thought the intimidating roof “looked like the bottom of a boat jutting out from the cliff,” as she wrote in an article about the climb in Alpinist 14, published in 2005. Overhanging climbing was still a frontier to explore, but Kraus was a man on the hunt for exposure, rather than difficulty. It just so happened that the massive overlapping tiers of Bonnie’s Roof would provide both. Prudd... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2025/5/14/guidebook-xivrewind-the-climb
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    43 Views
    The club is raising money to help reach their financial goal. "This sustainable, permanent hut will provide a safe haven for climbers, hikers, and explorers while minimizing human impact on this fragile alpine environment..." The post Alpine Club of Canada is Building a Mount Robson Hut appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/profiles/alpine-club-of-canada-is-building-a-mount-robson-hut/
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    123 Views
    The V15 climber was encouraged by Will Bosi to give the difficult sport climb a try The post Jana Švecová is Projecting Excalibur 5.15c appeared first on Gripped Magazine. https://gripped.com/news/jana-svecova-is-projecting-excalibur-5-15c/
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    130 Views
    https://blog.weighmyrack.com/what-is-a-climbing-rope/
  • 0 Votes
    1 Posts
    60 Views
    https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?n=771691