Екипът на Вертикален свят Ви пожелава едно приятно и пълноценно прекарване с първият български информационен портал за катерене и алпинизъм, онлайн от 1 декември 2001 година.
Mike Anderson and Rob Pizem have added yet another desperate free climb in Zion National Park. Shake That Bear (5.12d R) ascends the steep face of Mt. Kinesava just to the left of King Corner; seven of the route’s 11 pitches are 5.12. The two weekend warriors endured five or six 10-hour drives to Zion from Colorado’s Front Range to establish the climb, including one trip when snow prevented them from even getting on the route. They would do the nearly two-hour approach hike in the dark, so they could have a full winter day to work on the line.
Jonathan Thesenga and Brittany Griffith, Climbing Magazine
Four Americans climbed a new route on the 900-meter south face of Jebel Misht, the enormous limestone wall in Oman, at the eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Climbing in separate pairs, Brittany Griffith and Zoe Hart, and John Dickey and Jonathan Thesenga, led Cracker Pterodactyl 5000 (VI 5.10+) ground-up, following corners, ramps, and cracks up the heavily featured wall. They climbed onsight and used no bolts or pitons, the preferred style for the large majority of routes on the desert face. The route may share some ground with Paradies der Fakir (Oberhauser-Jochler, 2003), but it appears to be mostly independent.
Dean Potter has completed a 40-foot sandstone roof problem near his Moab, Utah, home that he called “definitely the hardest roof crack that I know of.” Potter said Zen Garden is a 29-move power-endurance test along an undulating finger and hand crack, ending with an insecure mantel. The problem, off Moab’s Potash Road, also has a highball feel: “Though only about 20 feet high, it tops out right above a tree and feels quite scary,” Potter said. As to difficulty, Potter said, “I don’t grade anything I climb other than with adjectives,” but he said the route is “a giant step up from the Crack House,” the 80-foot roof crack near Moab that he first climbed a decade ago. Crack House is generally given 5.13a.
A Russian climber has BASE jumped from the upper tower of Cerro Torre, making the first known flight from Patagonia’s iconic spire. Valery Rozov leaped from a point “a little bit lower [than] the traverse on the route Compressor,” according to a report on Mountain.ru. “It seems to me that it is the only point possible to make the jump.” The Compressor Route’s 90-meter bolt traverse begins at about the 12th pitch of approximately 28 pitches on the upper route, which starts after an approach of several thousand vertical feet.
Once again a phenomenally strong young European climber has climbed a hard 5.14: This time it’s Geoffray de Flaugergues from France, who redpointed La Novena Puerta (8c+/5.14c) at Santa Linya, Spain, during his February school vacation. De Flaugergues is just shy of his 13th birthday and stands only 4 feet 11 inches tall, forcing him to make three dynos to reach holds during his redpoint of La Novena Puerta. De Flaugergues made 10 attempts on the route in all.
Italian Christian Core has completed the long version of a boulder problem called Gioia at Varazze, Italy, and given it 8C (V15). Core worked for four months on problem, which has 14 hard moves and bad feet, and said it was his hardest ever. Core originally sent the line at V12 from a standing start in the middle of the cave, but then decided to work on the full traverse. Core, 33, was the world bouldering champion in 2003. He has climbed many desperate problems in Europe, including Dreamtime and New Base Line (both given V14/15) in Switzerland, and his own Kimera (V15) in Italy.
The north face of Mt. Temple, looming above Laggan's Bakery in Lake Louise, has been called the Eiger of the Rockies. Ian Welsted, fresh from an ascent of the actual Eiger, did not disagree. Even more attractive for weekend warriors like Eamonn Walsh and me, Temple, like its more famous cousin, has a great climbing-to-approaching ratio: three hours of skiing puts one at the base of nearly a vertical mile of nordwand. From March 8-10 this year the three of us camped our way up the Greenwood-Jones (IV/V 5.9 in summer, 1300m) on Temple's north face. Mostly we were just out to have an adventure, though the fact that the Greenwood-Jones was the last major line on the north face without a winter ascent added motivation.
Less than a month after Simon Anthamatten and Roger Schali broke the team (seilschaft) record on the Eiger Nordwand (see the February 5, 2008 NewsWire), Daniel Arnold and Stephan Ruoss of Switzerland have done it again. Besting Anthamatten and Schali by forty minutes, their ascent from the bottom of the Heckmair Route (ED2, 1800m, 1938) to the top of the Eiger (3970m) took 6 hours, 10 minutes.
From March 2-3, Americans Jesse Huey and Toby Grohne established a new route near the Southwest Ridge of Aguja St. Exupery (2558m) in the Fitz Roy Range of Patagonia, Argentina. The pair had spotted the line, which "links two of the most striking, splitter crack systems on the [west] face," from the Niponino camp on a rest day in the earlier part of February. An imposing, mandatory traverse of the black dyke that bands the lower part of the face inspired much debate about whether the features would link up, but in early February, Huey hooked up with Mike Pennings for a recon climb to the dyke. "We found a lot of climbable features that, amazingly, made the dyke traverse look easy," recalled Huey. "It gave us hope that the route would go."
Once again a phenomenally strong young European climber has climbed a hard 5.14: This time it’s Geoffray de Flaugergues from France, who redpointed La Novena Puerta (8c+/5.14c) at Santa Linya, Spain, during his February school vacation. De Flaugergues is just shy of his 13th birthday and stands only 4 feet 11 inches tall, forcing him to make three dynos to reach holds during his redpoint of La Novena Puerta. De Flaugergues made 10 attempts on the route in all. ...
