Latest News & Events Diary

THE METOLIUS COMPETITION: 25 years, 25 cams, 25 days

More details at this Competition article: METOLIUS COMP: 25 years, 25 cams, 25 days, where we will post the answers to the previous days questions and the winners.

NOTE: Only the Ultralight TCU's, Ultralight Power Cams, SuperCam (small and medium) and the MasterCam are available in the UK. If you have a model and size preference, please state it in your email, subject to availability.

Beyond Hope, based in Mossley, Greater Manchester are the UK distributors for Metolius, Evolv, prAna and Scapegoat. More information at www.prana-metolius.co.uk

Andy Parkin

You can watch a trailer of 'Andy Parkin: 'Life in adaptation" below:

There is an unprecedented number of climbing film premieres at this years Kendal Mountain Festivals ( 20th - 23rd November); of the 75 films being shown, over 20 are film premieres and have never been seen before by the public.

Buy tickets for Kendal Mountain Festivals here www.mountainfilm.co.uk

The producers of 'Andy Parkin: 'Life in adaptation" wish to thank Paramo and Media partners: UKClimbing.com and Climbing Magazine (USA), for their valuable support in making this film possible.

Jens Larssen of 8a.nu in a discussion at 8a.nu says that, "The E-grading system is just a joke in the upper scale." as he still has difficulty reconciling that the E reflects both physical difficulty - the difficulty of the moves and how sustained a route is - and the boldness, or risk of danger of a route. He continues:

"According to the E-tables an E8 can be between 7b+ and 8b+ and even so Alex (Honnold) puts the E8 6c End of The Affair as an 7b. E8 6c have been registered as both 8b and 7b+ in the data base." See discussion associated with the news item, "Why so few 8b+ trad sends" at 8a.nu

At his blog, James Pearson asks Alex Honnold what grade does he think, End Of The Affair is? "E6," Honnold replies. Pearson continues,

"I asked Alex to assume, from a historical perspective, that End Of The Affair is E8 (the grade it has been for the last 22 years) and then asked him what grade The Promise would be in relation to this? His answer was without hesitation – E10.

The crux of James' discussion is that he believes that some believe that E10 and the English tech grade of 7a is the limit of difficulty and that our grading system is not being treated as open-ended, and that because of this there has been "backwards condensing” of grades. As regards the E-grade system he says that:

"I don't think it is broken, but I do think it is being misused and if it is to regain any usefulness there need to be some fundamental refines, starting with the insanity that is the ever widening English tech grade!"

Read James' full discussion at: jamespearsonclimbing.blogspot.com

Open Air

The route took Ondra five days and nine attempts in total and he comments on his scorecard on 8a.nu that he feels it is his hardest ascent to date. The route was originally given F9a when first climbed by Huber but Ondra feels that with grade benchmarks having changed over the years, the route is more than worthy of the F9a+ tag. He says:

"When Alex Huber did it, Action Directe (was) considered as 8c+ , then 9a for this one was OK. Now when Action Directe is 9a, this should be 9a+."

On the same day Adam also on-sighted Long Island Ice-Tea and Überflieger, F8b and F8a+ respectively.

There have been various claims for the world's first 9a+ sport route, Orujo, Realization and the Rambla Extension, but if the grade sticks this could be the world's first.

Alex Huber recently spoke about about grades in an interview with Planet Mountain (UKC News - Nov 6),

"What I find curious is that still today most magazines, without hesitating, place Jumbo Love together with Akira and Chilam Balam. Had 9b been climbed in 1995, more than a decade ago therefore, then Chris Sharma's performance seems like a kindergarten!

The Rostrum

The question asked by many climbers was when would somebody make a BASE solo of a big wall, particularly in Yosemite, perhaps of The Nose or the Salathé Wall? They are certainly tall enough at 3,000 feet (over 900m). The answer from our BASE and Yosemite expert is that such big walls have slabs and a slabby apron and that it would be difficult for a BASE soloist to orient themselves and fly away from the wall - if they fell off a move.

However some Yosemite walls are steep enough, Rock and Ice reports:

"The soloist Dean Potter has made the first solo of the Alien Roof (5.12b .. E5 6b)) on the Rostrum in Yosemite.

For his solo of this very exposed, thin variation to the Rostrum, Potter wore a 5-pound BASE parachute rig. While BASE jumping in national parks is illegal, free soloing while wearing a parachute is not, and the technique affords a small modicum of safety in the event of a fall, assuming you can orient yourself properly mid-air, deploy your chute and fly away from the wall rather than into it. All of this, of course, before hitting the ground. Potter soloed to Alien via Rostrum North Face, an 800-foot, eight pitch 5.11c, considered one of the Valley's finest long crack lines."

Nuptse

Nuptse (7,864m), which lies just south of Everest, was first climbed in 1961 by a British-Nepali expedition under Joe Walmsley. It was a classic siege, following a tricky rightward-slanting central ridge on the South Face to a large snowfield, then a long leftward traverse along these snow slopes and over a difficult rock barrier to reach a couloir breaking through the upper rock walls to the summit arête. After establishing eight camps, the first summit party, Dennis Davis and Tashi Sherpa, reached the top on the 16th May. A day later Chris Bonington, Les Brown, Jim Swallow and Pemba Sherpa followed in their footsteps. To date, no other party has reached the main top from the south, and the original route is considered one of the first technical 'big walls' climbed in the Himalaya.

Read the full report by Lindsay Griffin on the BMC Website