response to DPM

"The climbers of today have no emotion or are afraid to show it. The crowds are getting cheated when it comes to having a great show." Carrion, page 28, "The Lost Color of Climbing", Dead Point Magazine's newest issue

"I get a sense of formality at some comps and that's not something I ever see at crags." Pete Ward

"Reflecting upon the PCA's success, it's obvious that an exciting, comprehensible, competitive circuit is necessary for the evolution of the sport." Abbey Smith, contributing writer


This page, which holds Smith's entreaty to climbers to forgo the colder professional formalities manifesting today's competitions, wasn't printed in the DPM with the rest of the article, and the rest is a collection of PCA background and highlights. To give the writers and editor credit, the PCA series was definitely more fun, and more wild, but the printed magazine is missing the conclusion cut from the print.

AS entreats rock climbing competitors to take the wildness up a notch. Go crazy, the last generation says. How often does the next generation get the chance to hear that? I wish the message hadn't been sliced out for marketing purposes to lure readers online, because the competitors it's aimed at don't have time to dig through flash animation and sites to find what they think is just more reminiscing of an old climbing.

Nazgul, V10

Tahoe: there is a fairy-tale climbing area 20 minutes west of the lake.
The 8a.nu route logbook will confirm this place exists.

Truckee: is, coincidentally, the same town Mr Bretterson and I twiddled thumbs in after his van died of a broken hea-...part on the drive home from California's bouldering mecca, Bishop, where the van had already died twice (making Mr Bretterson's wallet look alarmingly more anorexic than before, and vein on his right temple throb in a very interesting way).

Because of this I recognized the summer homes and cottages, huddled single-story buildings that squatted between trees as we drove through the main town. We found the county court house, and spent five hours listening to minor infractions of the driving kind, and left very last, at long last, near 11am. Then Ilia (a psycho and lovely companion) and I, undeterred from a hard day of climbing, drove the winding 20 minutes to

Donner Summit: where we took part in another form of punitive action involving a small blue prana chalkbag and two small mad pads.

The day in Donner Summit was slathered liberally with speechlessness as we were thrust into disbelief, then slowly digested by the picturesque and diverse scenery. In the line of sight of long-sought lines on rocks, left just right, in spots where the light plopped down on their lichen-blackened faces, we snacked the grub and snuck some grabbing on the boulders west of a town called Truckee.

There, in the beautiful and unbelievable Saddle Boulders, Ilia sent Midnight Train. Only a little while before had we heard the train itself... And I sent a V10 Ilia had pointed out in the guide just that morning - had savored its name, liking the sound of it: "Nazgul."

Small hop to three half-pad tiny crimp; slightly tinier tiny crimp; larger tiny crimp; dyno to jug.

The scenery that engulfed us was, in my companion's words: "Like someone took Yosemite, and shrunk it." On the first boulder we dropped our junk, I took out a pen and promptly sat down to record things.

[To be Cont'd]

I'm sitting on a small comfy couch, in a small comfy cafe, eating a small and comfy broccoli soup and thinking about the small- and comfy-smelling cheese I'll be picking out at the small and comfy farmers market unfolding outside as I type, and all these small and comfy things are making me feel very small, and very comfortable, so here are photos from the camera lens of Rich Crowder, a great photographer who I found on Dead Point Mag's page on the Teva Games.




Photographer: Rich Crowder
RichCrowder.com
His Blog

tutu explained

On another note, the weather was not the only outrageous anomaly that excited Tevan spectators:

There was a tutu worn in the World Cup!

Behind my acts of unexplained nonsense are pure motives - (I think.) - motives that undergo massive poking and prodding until, on a particularly unpredictable Saturday night, shivering outside Vendetta's, an inquisitive Canadian corners me to serve me the question: "Why did you do it?" I answered, without thinking:

"The urge to wear a tutu was sudden and inexplicable."

Really, though. Wearing a tutu was a great idea. It made photographers smile, the crowd laugh, and the uptight unwind - just a little - to see someone set aside competitive formalities and risk silliness. It added a good handful of grins to the intense chex-mix of anxiety and fear that, though unwanted, still always will litter the minds of athletes when they push their bodies to finish problems that may or may not break them. (There was a Russian competitor who fell from the top of the final men's problem and landed on his neck and back, upside-down, after a heinous superman fall from the last hold.)

There are more pictures, and I'll post them in a few days. (There's even one that was entered in the Teva Games Photo Contest!)


Photographer: Bruce Mitchell

ClimbingPix.com

teva fo'eva

There is no competitive sport more laid back than climbing. Except for surfing. In the same way, there is no competitive sport competition more laid back than the Teva Games with the exception of Competitive Metal Detecting, which was, I heard from an IFSC judge, one of three sports in line before climbing for...get this: the Summer Olympic Games.

Luckily, the same man who rode bull-riding into the same list is currently pushing to see climbing on the table at the IOC meetings; maybe we'll see climbing in the Games in 2016 or 2020?

Anyway, back to the Teva Games. I'm going to talk about the clouds.

This year, the glorious return of the IFSC World Cup was compounded by the also gloriously awful weather Vail is so known for cooking up specially for this event. Last year the youth division was drowned in inches of rain while the event staff threw pieces of blue tarp over the wall, where young and tough competitors smuggled themselves up puddle-filled problems with scarves of warmth inside their jackets. The affair was an unintelligible gourmet meal of strange ingredients: clashing stages of precipitation, where great rain clouds met cool winds met hail, and all - the miserable, happy, cold, huddled and cuddling, the climbing - were all intermittently showered, by ice and ice water, whose suddenness would break the monotone of the intense chill...the same chill that abruptly disappeared the next day and left every bewildered man, woman, child and bald dog (sorry, no bald dogs...but there were furry ones) with stingy sunburns and crude tan lines.

This year the sky was simply bipolar, or manic, or both: the fast wind currents swiftly swept clouds of all kinds across the sky, bringing to the Games a sense of unpredictability. As the sun shone, it would be suddenly drizzling, then harsh hail would bombard the people, and spectators would run to find ponchos or dive into their warm hotel beds until the concert that night. Then as rudely and miraculously as it came, it went. The strong sunlight would flicker behind the crawling white monsters than kept us cold much the time, but never left for long, and was in fact warming our faces when at the same time hail bounced off our foreheads. Timmy O'Neil (who slipped a stream of crazy commentary into the mic for three long days, with a few bathroom breaks) was on the mic. And he tilted his head back once, as if to catch the combination of hail and sunlight on his tongue, shortly after the sky had chosen to turn bipolar again and just snow.