Online Bouldering Guide for Boone, North Carolina
October 31, 2008
Recently I had a brief Twitter discussion with @WasatchGirl who is currently on an extended climbing trip. She was in Boone and wondering if there was any printed guidebook available. From my last visit I didn’t think there was any, but I did remember a few resources online that I had bookmarked.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any of the sites I thought I had saved, so I did a bit of searching and discovered a site I hadn’t seen before called BooneBoulders.com.
They have an excellent summary of each of the main areas including Grandmother Mountain, Blowing Rock, Lost Cove, and the 221 Boulders.
Each area description provides a detailed summary, directions to the boulders, and has a list of the classic problems.
You’ll still need to beg the locals for specific problem locations and beta, but BooneBoulders.com is a great start for visitors.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Ice Climbing Season is Fast Approaching
October 29, 2008
When I lived in the Washington DC area, one of the (few) benefits was being able to get cheap flights on Southwest to New Hampshire. This allowed us to take trips for ice climbing in the White Mountains.
I attended the Mt. Washington Valley Ice Festival numerous times and had a blast. The ice climbing there was fantastic, with opportunities for superb multi-pitch routes, mixed climbs, and even top-roping.
When I moved to southwest Virginia to be closer to the New River Gorge, the one thing I missed was the availability of ice climbing in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Hampshire. It has now been years since I’ve climbed ice.
Now that I’m in Colorado I’m anxiously awaiting the upcoming ice season, though I think I’ll need to upgrade most of my gear (I hope my wife is not reading this!)
As a preview to the upcoming season, Splitter Choss has a post up on the status of some of the Colorado ice climbing areas including Crested Butte, Ouray, and Rocky Mountain National Park.
If you’re looking forward to ice climbing this year, there are several resources to update you on the winter climbing conditions. Mountain Project has conditions reports that can be tailored to areas you choose. NEice.com provides conditions via a user forum for most of the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Eastern Canada. For both US and international climbing area conditions, the American Alpine Institute blog provides a weekly post on updated conditions. For Colorado specific conditions, you can check iceclimbingcolorado.com’s current condition reports. Finally, Chauvin Guides provides a detailed look at conditions in New Hampshire with pictures and descriptions.
Popularity: 5% [?]
John Muir and the Yosemite Museum
October 24, 2008
Image via Wikipedia
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on John Muir, his first ascent of Cathedral Peak in 1869, and the recent exhibit in the Yosemite Museum called “Granite Frontiers: A Century of Yosemite Climbing.”
Muir was Yosemite’s first climbing bum — a rara avis then, but a species that is not at all endangered today. Witness the queue to get a tent site in the park’s Camp Four, where bedraggled climbers with duct tape holding their down jackets together mass early every morning hours before the ranger station opens. And those are the orderly ones, not the so-called dirtbags who sleep illegally in the bushes, ignoring the regulations and spending months at a time in the park pursuing their passion. It’s not uncommon, moreover, to find climbers lined up to scale popular routes such as Cathedral Peak, although most use a rope to protect themselves from falling off the summit — unlike Muir, who trusted all to his hands and feet and steady nerves.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Chris Sharma Slide Show at the New River Gorge
October 17, 2008
For those if you in the Southeast or Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S., there’s an upcoming event you won’t want to miss.
Chris Sharma is coming to the New River Gorge on Saturday, October 25th, 2008. He’ll be there for a slide show and the Dead Point Magazine Launch.
From the New River Mountain Guides:
Come down for the weekend and climb and have the opportunity to meet him in person and watch his amazing slideshow.
Chris’s life has allowed him countless experiences during his travels from one edge of the globe to the other and you can experience them with him as he recounts these moments LIVE! Moments such as sending Necessary Evil (14c) at 14 years old, his groundbreaking ascent of the Mandala, solidifying the first ascent of a 5.15 with Realization, the first ascent of Dreamcatcher and the monumental send Pontas Arch!
This is the first slideshow tour Chris has ever given in the dirty South, and it’s exclusively available only to Evolv and Sterling Rope dealers. Chris is going to be showcasing his Sharma Signature Series, his personal line of climbing shoes he developed with Evolv Footwear.
Show starts @ 8:00pm with the Dead Point Magazine party with a hip-hop
performance with Odub and a live DJ after the show.
More info on the Chris Sharma slide show can be found here.
Popularity: 8% [?]
New Release of ClimbingVibe
October 14, 2008
Since the release last month of ClimbingVibe, we’ve received a lot of traffic and numerous suggestions on how to make the site better for climbers.
Many of those improvements have been implemented and today we’re launching a new release that features the following:
- easier voting - logged in users can now vote on either the home page or on individual pages
- easier to see what you’ve voted on - each post is highlighted with up or down blue arrows if you’ve voted
- easier access to comments and permalinks
- most popular posts by number of votes received
- RSS feed for most popular posts
- updates to WYSIWYG editor for better posting
- various improvements to the design
- various minor bug fixes
If you haven’t visited ClimbingVibe yet, please try it out and vote on some of the best climbing articles on the web.
As always, please let us know what aspects of the site can be improved.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Hans Florine and Yuji Hiriyama Set New Speed Record on The Nose
October 13, 2008
Hans Florine and Yuji Hiriyama broke their own speed record on The Nose, El Capitan in Yosemite by 6 minutes recording a new time of 2:37:05 on Sunday, October 12.
The Nose, which celebrates its 50 anniversary this year, is one of the world’s most famous rock climbs and was first ascended over a five week period by Warren Harding, Wayne Merry and George Whitmore. The first free ascent was carried out by none other than Lynn Hill in 1993 in what is hailed as one of the most significant free climbing achievements ever. The route had to wait a further 12 years for its first repeat, at the hands of the extremely talented American Tommy Caldwell.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Hardest Boulder Problems in America
October 9, 2008
B3Bouldering has created a new resource where the hardest boulder problems in America will be tracked. He’s encouraging anyone that has additional info to contact him or leave a comment.
Popularity: 10% [?]
How to make a prusik knot
October 8, 2008
The prusik hitch may be pretty basic for many readers, but there are certain essential knots that every climber should know.
The American Alpine Institute has posted a great video illustrating the prusik knot.
Alpinists keep a variety of technical tools in their back-pockets. One of the most important tools is the prusik hitch. The prusik hitch is most commonly used for crevasse rescue systems on a glacier, for rock rescue systems, and for climbing fixed lines.
In addition to their stated uses, I would add that my two most common uses have been to back up a rappel and to ascend a rope after a sketchy (and usually ill-advised) rappel.
Trust me, make sure you learn it!
Popularity: 11% [?]
Trailer for the upcoming Echo Wall climbing film
October 7, 2008
Echo Wall is an upcoming climbing film by Dave MacLeod focusing on cutting edge trad climbing on the north face of Ben Nevis in Scotland.
The following is a trailer of the film due late October 2008:
Popularity: 9% [?]
Bouldering Colorado Slideshow with Bob Horan
October 3, 2008
Neptune Mountaineering in Boulder hosted a slideshow last night presented by Bob Horan, author of the new and highly controversial guidebook Bouldering Colorado.
Honestly, I was hoping some of the book’s most vocal detractors would show up for an open debate (hopefully more entertaining than the VP debate happening simultaneously), but there was a relatively small turnout of about 20 people and no visible outrage.
The slideshow was nicely prepared and ran about 1.5 hours consisting of photos (mostly of Bob) with some occasional video footage. Many Colorado bouldering areas were covered with an obvious heavy focus on Front Range bouldering. Included were a few areas in the slideshow that Bob said were actually not in the book (Rabbit Mountain near Lyons was one I asked about).
After the show I spoke with Bob and specifically asked him his thoughts on the issues brought up by some respected Colorado boulders like Peter Beal and Jamie Emerson. As a new resident to the area, I had no agenda other than to get some response from Bob in person as opposed to his not exactly tactful response on his Falcon blog.
He was very accommodating and made the following comments regarding the issues:
- The original draft of the manuscript was double what was actually printed for the final book.
- The manuscript was done about two years ago.
- He said that the only ones complaining were the few elite climbers that had the opportunity to comment, but never spoke to him or provided input. (This is highly debatable though as it’s unclear whether these climbers were actually aware of the project.)
- Bob said that there will always be mistakes and issues with any guidebook.
- He also stated that the vast majority of climbers will benefit from the book.
While I disagree with how this entire situation was handled, Bob appeared to be genuinely concerned about writing a high quality guidebook. He made it clear to me that he was open to correcting any mistakes for future editions, but it’s still unclear why this wasn’t done more prior to publication as opposed to after it.
In a nutshell, I think this is what bothers most critics of the book and offers a learning lesson for other guidebook authors. As much as possible, guidebook publishers and authors need to provide an open forum to discuss a new work especially one with previously unpublished areas and those with questionable access. This would go a long way to getting the support of the local climbing community which in turn is the best free marketing you can get.
While Bob mentions this was done, there’s no excuse to not distribute this information well in advance to climbing site and prominent bloggers. I know if contacted, many of us would have been happy to publish information regarding the book years ago. Reading Bob’s most recent post on the subject, I really start to wonder how much blame lies on Falcon as well. Bob discusses how interacting with blogs and Internet media is new to him. But it is most definitely not out of the question to think that Falcon understands how publishing and marketing via Internet channels works.
To me, that is the biggest surprise of this whole issue. Regardless of the possible errors and judgement calls on including certain areas, at the ending of the day they are marketing a book. And a book we can only assume that they’d like to make a profit. Word of mouth and reviews (both print and Internet) will most definitely influence the sales of a guidebook when there are alternative options. With respect to bouldering in Colorado, this is most definitely the case.
As for the book itself, I have only skimmmed it and once I obtain a copy will write a full review after having time to thoroughly examine it. The one striking feature I will mention, and likely reason for the high cost, is the number of full color pictures of problems throughout the book. No one will argue the quality production value of Bouldering Colorado.
I know this issue has been discussed elsewhere, but I invite comments on this especially ones that help us all look to the future of how a situation like this can be avoided.
Popularity: 11% [?]
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