Climbing October/November 2018

Climbing Magazine covers a sport so all-encompassing we tend to forget that we haven’t always been climbers. Hell, it’s right there in the name: Climbing. But the truth is, we weren’t always climbers. Today’s 5.13 gym kids had to learn to walk before they started tugging on crimps, and at some point even Adam Ondra was playing with trucks in a sandbox. Before we got into climbing, we were all something else, and even after we get into climbing we still lead a life off the rocks. One common denominator I’ve noticed in climbers’ lives is passion—they’ve always channeled that energy into some kind of pursuit. There’s Keenan Takahashi, the über-strong boulderer who was a talented street skater. (I skated too; I sucked. I boulder too; I suck.) Or the top…

INBOX HELMET HAIR Just wanted to compliment you guys on the sweet photo issue (No. 362). All the free-flowing hair really shows how lame it is to wear one of those stupid helmets! Those pics wouldn’t be nearly as badass if they had helmets on!!! Thanks for the inspiration. I’m tossing mine today. Better yet, I’m going to give it to some gumby so I can make fun of him for being a wimp! ORNERYBUDDHA, VIA EMAIL ¿MUCHO MACHISMO? In response to “Get with the Program” (Skills, No. 361), I was liking this until I got to HTFU, which is just nonsense macho bullshit and isn’t very useful. Not everyone is afraid, for starters—some people have a lower arousal threshold, others higher. Things like fall training and visualization are useful, but being told to “harden…

• ALONE AT THE TOP On January 15, 2015, Minnesotan Lonnie Dupre summitted Denali, becoming the first climber to do so solo in January. Dupre’s gripping book recounts his swan song as he aged into his 50s, capping off a life of cold adventures (first person to circumnavigate Greenland, summer expedition to the North Pole). $18, mnhs.org • 1,001 CLIMBING TIPS Andy Kirkpatrick condenses his years of mountaineering and big-wall experience into easy-to-digest tips. The book’s eight categories cover big-wall techniques, ice and mixed climbing, mountain travel, training, and miscellany like photography and sponsorship. With jovial humor, as well as photos from his many adventures, the book reads like a mentor passing on sage advice at the village pub. £25, v-publishing.co.uk • FALL OF HEAVEN Reinhold Messner tells the story of Edward Whymper and his…

Queen Maud Land Over 17 days in December 2017, Alex Honnold, Jimmy Chin, Savannah Cummins, Anna Pfaff (pictured), Conrad Anker, and Cedar Wright visited Antarctica, exploring the granite of the Drygalski Mountains in Queen Maud Land. Chin and Anker big-walled on Ulvetanna, the highest peak in the Wolf’s Jaw Range. Honnold and Wright went on a simul-climbing and soloing blitz, summitting 13 lines, including the first ascent of the Dark Tower, a 5.10d X on the East Pillar of Stetind with a final pitch of loose face climbing that Honnold called “one of the scariest things I’ve led.” And Cummins and Pfaff climbed Holtanna (8,694 feet) and other mountains in the austere landscape. All told, the team summitted 15 routes via 12 new lines, exploring the barren walls and summits poking…

I’m gonna say it: Climbers are privileged. Going to the gym, getting out on weekends, traveling to wild, new places—it all requires free time and disposable income, two things most people on this planet don’t have. Of course, plenty of climbers are strapped for cash or have other problems, but ultimately climbing is a leisure activity. We don’t need it to survive. The epitome of our sport’s recreational nature is travel. There’s a seemingly endless amount of rock, and we climbers have an unquenchable thirst. While backyard crags keep us occupied and fit, exploration is what really drives us. So we travel, experiencing new routes, food, landscapes, cultures, and languages. Ideally, it all adds up to make us better, more open-minded citizens of the world. But the world is a troubled…

“As soon as the summer comes, you’re restricted to navigable rivers, and that’s not where the rocks are,” explains Stan Justice, who wrote the first climbing guide for Interior Alaska, Fairbanks Area Rock Climbing Guide, in 1994. In the 663,300 square miles of the Last Frontier, there are only 1,080 miles of highway, meaning the approaches are long. And, of course, the season is short—in summer when it’s warm enough to rock climb in the Interior, the frozen ground providing access to the cliffs also thaws into subarctic boreal marshes swarmed by Alaska’s state bird, the mosquito. To climb here, you really have to want it. Still, the guidebook has been updated six times, and its latest iteration (co-authored with Frank Olive) details more than 300 sport, trad, and toprope…