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Pushing The Limits of Releasable Systems

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14 Aug 2024, 14:05

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    In this episode, we’re sitting down with AAC member David Corvi to talk about his Live Your Dream grant experience—a beautiful day that turned into a 24 hour epic on Mt. Whitney in September of 2024. Getting off route, climbing through pockets of ice and show, and getting lost on the descent were only some of what the team experienced that day. Because there is another layer of complexity to this story, a mental load that added a unique weight to that experience. David’s trip to Whitney was also in memory of his stillborn son, Charlie. In the episode, David shares about his family’s experience with infant and child loss, how climbing and other forms of outdoor adventures have helped him process his grief and continue to parent Charlie even though he is gone, and likewise he reflects on how physical challenges, like half marathons and the Whitney trip, are a way to honor the life Charlie won’t ever get to experience. Dive into this episode to hear about your classic alpine day gone wrong, and just one way that grief and loss can be processed in the mountains. Apply to the Live Your Dream Grant (Opening March 1st, 2025) Charles Martin Corvi Fund Website How to Buy the Book: “Dear Charlie...Letters to My Son: A Father's Journey of Loss, Grief, and Remembrance” Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzalez Healthy Birthday (Stillbirth Prevention Advocates) Star Legacy Foundation Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2025/2/27/connect-remembering-charlie-through-an-epic-on-mt-whitney
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    We just came across an unexpected find in the Zine storage: a small box of Volume 13s. Now posted up for sale. Score one if you can! RARE ZINE The Climbing Zine Volume 13 https://climbingzine.com/rare-zine-volume-13-just-posted-up-for-sale/
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    By Hannah Provost If you had to tell the story of the evolution of climbing within the history of one route, your most compelling choices might be The Nose of El Capitan or The Naked Edge in Eldorado Canyon. In this way, The Naked Edge is a time capsule containing within its memory: the much dreamed-of first ascent finally climbed by Layton Kor, Bob Culp, and Rick Horn; a period defining free ascent by Jim Erickson and Duncan Furgeson in the early 1970s; and one of the few battle- grounds for speed records in the United States. In 1962, Kor and Bob Culp were diverted attempting to aid the steep final edge, and today, climbers have speed climbed the route, bridge to bridge, in a little over 22 minutes. What is it about this climb that has allowed it to be the sketchbook for climbing legends to draw out the evolution of our sport? Anecdotes and artifacts from the American Alpine Club Library and archives provided the answer. Perhaps it was all aesthetics—the compelling imagery of a climb that could divide dark- ness and light. Or maybe it was the fact that The Edge tends to rebuff many of its suitors. But whether The Naked Edge was dishing out a good humbling, or whether, as Jim Erickson famously argued, his free ascent style “humbled the climb” instead, The Naked Edge might live so prominently in our collective climbing memory because it encapsulates one of the great questions of each climbing endeavor. Who holds the power here? The climb or the climber? At first, the route held all the cards. Layton Kor, known for his hulking height and wild, almost demonic, drive, could usually weaponize his determination and fearlessness to get through any hard climbing he might envision for himself. Yet when Layton Kor and Bob Culp attempted to aid the route in 1962, having each been turned away in 1961 on separate occasions, they still had to deviate from the original vision and finished the climb via a dihedral slightly to the left of the stunning final overhang. It wasn’t until Kor came back with Rick Horn in 1964 that The Edge, as we climb it today, was first done in its entirety. Jim Erickson, a young gun with a knowing grin, hadn’t always been a hotshot. However, by the early 1970s, he had gotten into the habit of proving a point—freeing the old obscure aid lines in Eldo put up by Robbins, Kor, Dalke, and Ament the decade before. After several failed attempts to free The Naked Edge, repeatedly retreating from the first pitch finger crack due to a strict avoidance of hangdog- ging and rehearsing, freeing The Naked Edge was his foremost ambition. By 1971, The Naked Edge had been ascended 30 or so times using direct aid. Erickson was envisioning a new phase of the route’s life. Yet his first moderately successful attempt, with prolific free climber Steve Wunsch, was yet another humbling. As he wrote for Climb!: The History of Rock Climbing in Colorado, the fourth pitch was daunting to the point of existential: “Steve dubs it impossible. I give it a disheartened try, but it is late so down we come, pondering the ultimate metaphysical questions: ‘Is there life after birth? Sex after death?’” When Erickson and Duncan Ferguson returned a week later, things went a little more smoothly. Though The Naked Edge was the last major climb that the two would ascend using pitons, it wasn’t the use of pitons that haunted Erickson and sent him off on his staunch commitment to only onsight free -climbing. Rather, when Erickson reflects on the effort and technique of pitoncraft, and the incredible added effort of free climbing on pitons, he seems almost to be creating something, tinkering. Describing nailing the crux of the first thin pitch in an interview for the Legacy Series, a project of the AAC to preserve the history of climbing, Erickson painted a picture of immense toil: “You’re in this strenuous fingertip layback, with shoes that didn’t smear very well...You had to first of all figure out which piton you were going to place, you had to set it in the crack, you were doing all of this with one hand while you were hanging on. Then you had to tap the piton once to make sure you didn’t lose it... because if you missed it and dropped it you’re back to square one, so you had to tap the pin, finally hit it in, test it to see if it was good, then you’d clip a single free carabiner, and a second free carabiner into it, and then you would clip your rope in, all while you were hanging on with one hand in a bad finger lock.” In the 1960s and 1970s, once a route was freed, it was not ... https://americanalpineclub.org/news/guidebook-xiirewind-the-climb
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    Laura Pineau has made the second female ascent of Greenspit, the famous Orco crack climb established by Didier Berthod. https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?n=775457
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    Pull-ups are the most commonly practiced training exercise for climbing, yet how much do we really know about them? https://www.climbing.com/skills/pull-ups-for-beginners/
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    https://www.climbing.com/gear/labor-day-climbing-shoe-deals-2024/
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    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/
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    https://www.ifsc-climbing.org/news/olympic-qualifier-series-commence-in-shanghai-with-boulder-lead-qualifications