Climbing September - October 2017

CLIMBER Gabrielle Nobrega ROUTE Tsampa Birra (5.12a) LOCATION Plakias, Crete, Greece Dreamy beachside limestone on a continuous 600-footlong wall stacked with routes makes Plakias, a small town on the isle of Crete, a destination sport area. Tsampa Birra follows 15 bolts of jamming, liebacking, and discontinuous cracks, offering holiday climbers a chance to hone their crack skills and enjoy the technical, vertical terrain. When the photographer Jim Thornburg saw this rainbow pop, he ran up a nearby 5.9 (he’d left a rope on the route), self-belaying as quickly as possible to get into position. “I was happy I got up in time for the most intense moments of both the rainbow and the climb,” he says. Most climbers stay at studios a short walk from both the crag and the warm, clear waters…

I BEGAN CLIMBING 30 years ago at age 15, and consider myself fortunate to have had women teachers and mentors from the get-go. Adair Peterson, an instructor with the New Mexico Mountain Club, taught me how to arrest a falling climber. And out at Albuquerque’s sharp, granitic U-Mound Boulders, Kathy Kocon and Jessica Gladstone, two steel-fingered locals from town, showed me and my fellow teenage miscreant friends how to climb gracefully and send the hardest problems. These women helped teach me what it meant to be a climber. In the late 1980s, women and kids were outliers in a sport populated by adult men, which is probably why we gravitated toward each other. Things have changed, however—more women and young people climb than ever, thanks in no small part to the…

PRONOUNS MATTER In response to “Treat an Injured Ankle” [climbing.com/ankle]: It’s offensive that throughout this article, the injured climber is referred to as a “he” or “him.” I’m a woman looking to this article because I hurt my ankle bouldering. It would be reassuring to know that Climbing.com acknowledges that I too can sacrifice for the sport. —Jessey Fauria, via Climbing.com ED. Thanks for the feedback, Jessey. As a rule, with general pronoun usage we try to alternate genders throughout the magazine or even within an article. This is a good reminder for us to be more aware. CH-CH-CH CHANGES I’ve been climbing since 2001, and I used to buy Climbing religiously, in part because of feature stories that outlined destinations in the US that I could afford to travel to. I’ll never be able…

Alena Holbert climbs Genesis (5.12a) on the polished limestone of Rifle, Colorado. —KEITH NORTH Full-time engineer, Hueco guide, and crusher Richelle Hepler focuses on the sharp crimps of Free Willy (V10), Hueco Tanks, Texas. —ROSS ANDREA Avery Hoffman, 12, became addicted to granite after her first trip to Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. —AMY HOFFMAN Tammy Watson cruising on Buttermilks jugs before a road trip across the American West. —MILES WEAVER Kestrel Pikiewicz, age 9, leads the Squamish classic Climb of the Century (5.11b/c) on preplaced gear. —GARETH SUNDEM Guadalupe “Lupita” Viero crushing the first pitch of Lostfingers (5.10c), Frey, Patagonia, Argentina. —FEDE LUCERO PAU A climber of less than a year, Kassandra De Rudder climbed well on the steep Feet of Fire (5.11c) in La Mojarra, Colombia. —JONATHAN WILLIAMS Miriam Borgstrom, age 13, sending The Dirty Rail (V7) in Red Rock…

IN AUTUMN 2016 IN BERLIN, Germany, Allison Ong grabbed bullet holes and stepped into shot blasts. Ong, a climber and landscape architecture grad student at the University of Washington, is one of many to climb on Humboldthain Flakturm, aka the Bunker. In fact, climbers have been using this WWII anti-aircraft tower since the 1960s. After visiting the Bunker and Der Kegal, a Berlin climbing gym within a rehabilitated WWII train-repair factory, Ong noticed how local climbing communities had formed around these sites. This past spring, she spent 10 weeks compiling a 25-page research paper with nine examples of urban climbing structures throughout Europe and the United States, showing the benefits of transforming existing urban structures— from WWII bunkers, to old water towers, to bridges—into climbing spaces. (For more, visitclimbing.com/abandoned.) What was…

Chalk Talk ctclimbingpodcast.com Started in 2014 by John Blomquist, a routesetter at Basecamp Climbing Gym in Reno, Nevada, with nine years of experience working in the climbing world, this interview-based podcast features conversations with athletes, coaches, routesetters, gym owners, and climbing companies that shed light on current goings-on and the state of the industry. He’s also done two “World Cup Roundups” with professional setter Jackie Hueftle in which they analyze the latest IFSC Bouldering World Cup events. CHECK OUT: Episode 63, Jason Kehl: Cryptochild to Climbing Wall Creation Bad Beta Podcast badbetapodcast.com Toronto climbers and van dwellers Matthew Sapiecha, Anna Pirko, Steve Andrew, and regular guest Alisha Nachman mix the humorous with the controversial and have an open discussion about current events in the climbing world, things witnessed at the crag, and climbing trivia. As of…