A magazine. On the Internet. On Tumblr.
“But in the end, maybe that’s secondary. What’s going to determine whether climbing competition stays clean in the future isn’t going to be whether a handful of individuals decide to dope (because some almost certainly will) or even whether drug tests catch them (because if we’ve learned one thing from Armstrong, it’s that tests can be beaten, repeatedly). It will be the way that climbers as a community react, whether they give doping culture a chance to germinate or pull it out by the roots.”
“Regardless of what your crusty climbing partner says, using the bowline knot you learned in Boy Scouts to connect yourself to a rope is asking for trouble. Climbers who prefer to tie in with a double bowline instead of the standard figure-eight follow-through almost universally point to the ease of untying a bowline after a fall. Unfortunately, they usually miss the obvious corollary, that the bowline has a way of working itself loose if not backed up properly, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what you want in a knot your life depends on.”
How many editors does it take to change a light bulb? Wired uses Black Diamond crampons and ice axes to climb the drywall in their office.
(Source: Wired)
Look, mummy! It’s a Copper Age George Mallory! Scientists at Innsbruck University in Austria now believe that Europe’s oldest mummy, dubbed Oetzi the Iceman, died of a climbing fall — not an arrow wound, as originally thought. That would make the 5,300-year-old mummy, found in the Italian Alps, the world’s first known mountaineering fatality.
Read more at Outside
That hold just doesn’t do it for me anymore. Last night, 60 Minutes provided some insane footage of Alex Honnold free soloing the North face of Sentinel in Yosemite. But we were more than a little bit distracted by some of the weirdness of the program: Besides the breathless Lara Logan, eagerly anticipating every slip in Honnold’s wet shoes, and John Long, creamin’ in his jeans over the whole deal — the Viagra sponsorship. What was up with that? ”60 Minutes Overtime” — get it?! Overtime….
Read more about Alex Honnold’s, ahem, hair-raising exploits over at Outside
This dude got his thumb snared in his equipment, fell, and sliced it off. The thumb, sans climber, landed on a ledge by his partner, who picked it up and brought it with. Surgeons reattached it later at the hospital.
Insane rescue on Half Dome in Yosemite 09/26/2011
Clickthrough not for faint hearted.
*el cap, not half dome.
You must be 4 feet tall to climb this mountain: Stella Noble is skilled as a mountain climber and as a sport climber, embodying a trend in both worlds—younger climbers making big ascents. (See @adnroy’s The Science of Young Crushers and Bruce Barcott’s Into Teen Air.)
(Source: Daily Mail)
Free Solo Climbers You Should Know: Alex Honnold is one of the single most gifted climbers (sans rope) in the world. Watch as he conquers both Half Dome and El Capitan.
Another climbing legend? Dean Potter. This guy masters never-before-conquered climbs and jumps. Watch as he takes the first ever base jump off Forcellino lookout near Lecco, Italy.
