söndag 13 februari 2011

Bachar Yerian - one step forward and two steps back

Dave Schultz runout on Bachar Yerian, photo Greg Epperson


The notorious mental testpiece route Bachar Yerian (BY) was really pushing the envelope at its time of birth. Doing a route of that difficulty, ground up, placing the bolts on lead by hanging on skyhooks and tied off knobs was way ahead and beyond the standard of early eighties. It was a testpiece then and even today it stands tall, keeping most people off to be let alone even though it gets repeated a couple of times every year and probably still delivering a full on experience for a bold few.


BY is known for its super exposed fingery knob climbing high above gear and even Wolfgang Güllich failed on his try, ending up with a 20 meter whipper onto the belayer. In an attempt to make the style of climbing the BY even a notch better british young gun George Ullrich tries a clean ascent, skipping the lonesome 9 bolts on the total of 150 meters of climbing and four pitches.


Watch a segment here


But on second thought, is the attempt really as clean as it appears?


If George falls on the tied off knobs my guess is that he would possibly break the knobs off, as same with falling onto skyhooks. Either the rock breaks or the skyhook. I feel the later is accepted, the first is not. So what could be a better style would only be so if he succeeds with the attempt. Isn't that really a kind of inconsistent and/or utterly odd ethical approach?


Just because the gear is marginal and the attempt is serious doesn't make it right to possibly destroy the route's delicate sea of knobs. Climbing is like all sports inherently egoistic in the non philosophical sense; we do it because we just feel good, but that usually doesn't come with potential complications for other climbers. Should we accept that other peoples failure affect the very rock we all climb on and rather keep intact for others to climb? I don't think we should.


A style of climb is not better than the impact on the rock an eventual failure makes.


In this case a fall would probably lead to broken off pieces of rock due to skyhooks and tie offs. Seriousness doesn't imply a moral free-to-do-whatever card. So instead of praise we should consider an other approach where clean means Clean, in the sense that impact on the rock in a fall is taken in consideration. This makes a clean ascent even stricter, and more accurate in an environmental point of view.


This position on clean ascents means that there might be situations where bolts are the cleanest solution possible, except solo climbing. The mega classic Wheat Thin is Yosemite Valley didn't raise as much controversy when it was rap bolted. The reason was the bolts saved the thin layback flake from cams breaking it, protecting the climb for future ascents - a perfectly pragmatic and legit reason in my ears. In contrast the route could have been done "clean" with cams, but a fall would destroy the route.


This all adds up to the following conclusion: There are only two ways of doing BY in a clean style. Either use the bolts as protection or solo the route, or to be more exact don't use skyhooks and tie offs. Both these styles make little impact on the route, that hasn't been done yet (i.e. the bolts). The few originally placed bolts doesn't affect the rock when you get airborne on a massive 20+ meter screamer.


The whole bolt skipping headpointing idea gets even more arbitrary when Ullrich used the bolted belay anchors. What is his statement really when skipping most but not all bolts? George Ullrich should do Bachar Yerian either on the existing bolts or without hooks and slings, and instead of taking two steps back he could take one step forward, creating a dream for a future generation - an onsight in the cleanest of all styles.


Ullrich's attempt on BY can be seen in the movie "Call It What You Want", indeed a suitable name, however of other reasons than its ambition.


onsdag 2 februari 2011

Alltid känd – aldrig populär


En led är en led så fort den har klättrats och på något sätt äger varje led existensberättigande. Bestigningens stil kan alltid diskuteras och alltsomoftast utvecklas till en renare variant. Antingen renare för naturen/berget eller renare för samvetet och känslan.

Av en slump snubblar jag över en diskussion som nästan är uppe i 3000 kommentarer om en led i Yosemite som bultats efter relativt modern standard, och som just därför upprör en del av den konservativa grupp klättrare som vurmar för begreppet ground-up, och där bultar slås för hand på lead.

"The route (Growing Up) is not the first in Yosemite to be established top-down, but is provocative for its location: parallel to one of Yosemite's most notoriously-bold routes, Southern Belle. This 5.12 X horror went unrepeated for nineteen years, with one attempt resulting in a bad accident. Even the prodigious soloist, Dean Potter, who bagged the repeat with Leo Houlding in 2006, is reported to having been scared on it."

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Topo över Growing Up

Fascinerat letar jag efter mer info om leden och sökandet leder mig naturligt till berättelsen om Southern Belle. En berättelse om en led jag verkligen önskar att jag vågade uppleva men aldrig kommer att våga göra. En led som det tog 18 år innan den fick sin första repetition. En led som alltid kommer att vara känd men aldrig populär.

Tidningen Climbing, #110, 1988 om förstabestigningen:

En av förstabestigarna, Scott Cosgrove, skriver på Supertopo om förstabestigningen.

"The whole climb was an idea of Walt's, (Walt Shipley) he - in a mad bender - soloed the South Face Harding route, and in the process saw the line that would become Southern Belle.(…)

Walt and Dave both thought the line would go free, but Walt felt he lacked the free climbing skills to pull off the hard sections. Dave decided to fly to Boulder, Colorado and asked me to join him the following spring to free the thing, an offer I could not even consider turning down. (…)

Dave and I loved the idea of adventure and the beauty of the South Face-alone- above our own glory was really behind the idea of free climbing it; the magic dome truly seemed to be the greatest thing we could do with all the skills we had manage to muster. (…)

The climbing to this point had been fairly safe and the quality- out of this world, we where adrift on a massive featured face. Dave manage to red point the crux slab and the 12a death-slab crack above. I lead the next pitch through some dam scary sections, (…)

It is like being in a golden desert surrounded by beautiful golden earth worms disturbing the surface in their sub-terrianing wanderings. Joining the smiling Iron Monkey at the belay, he said how hard do you think it was. "11b," I said, although I knew it was way harder. (…)

I spent the day laying on my back looking up at the summit, the birds and the blazing hot sun and thought to myself, this could be my last day on the planet. (…)

Dave assured me the following pitch, the one Hank would get off route on and break his leg was the most scary of his life. Walt had told the story of how Dave on that pitch, looking at a death fall from 12a moves, was calling out,"watch me, I could come off here." Walt said that he could only laugh, because the only thing he could do was watch him die. (…)

At first light we busted up our tattered lines, and drop them, committing to the summit. Traversing out a long dike I got to a blown out section with no bolt, f*#kers! I thought to myself as I balanced to the next section of dike. I threw in some bad gear and punch it up 40 feet of glass 5.11 to a big ledge with a bolt. The first in a 130 feet! A few easy moves, another ledge and another bolt and the wall steepen above me. Bouldering up twenty feet, now looking at a very bad fall... back down onto the serpent like dikes, mantling on a small ledge to my horror no bolt greeted me.

I was in a trance and committed to the 12a/b moves above, unsure of the next move, I felt like I was in another world, no thoughts, no fear, just pure survival, having been willing to fall and die I had no second thoughts, with a final slap I reached what I thought would be a good hold and wasn't(…)"

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Topo över Southern Belle HÄR

1994 försöker Hank Caylor från Boulder repetera Southern Belle och misslyckas kapitalt.

"Alan Lester and I are in the prime of life. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Scott Cosgrove said that this was the most state of the art thing he'd ever done. If he did it, that means that if want to be "state of the art", I gotta do it. 12DX no problem(…)

We had a deal, I do all the freaky runout face pitches and Alan gets the cracks, that's his thing. Alan floats the 1st 5.9 pitch, cruises the shorty 5.12 2nd pitch and then HIKED the12C 3rd pitch with 2 #2cams. He just left one halfway up and milked the second for 60feet. I just pooed myself.

The 4th pitch is the "crux", 12DX, I work the 5 bolts and do what we considered an, A0? followed by a 100foot 12a runout. The scariest climbing moment of my life(in the 90's), almost so far. I tried to put in nests of RPs and just left them hanging cuz' they were crap! Who's foolin' who? (…)

Here's where I screwed up. The topo only sez' where the one bolt is and 1 bolt is hard to see. I missed, not hard to do on Half Dome. (…)

I just could not find the bolt. There was a garbage drawing Coz gave over but dangit. 14 bolts on the back half of Half Dome does not register in the heat of battle. So yeah I fell(you wanted to hear it and there it is). Crap I thought, where is the bolt. I already climbed 40 feet longer than Coz's(I love him) crappy topo said. And there the bolt was, 30' to the right of where I was climbing. I had already done way too many moves to downclimb.(…)

(…)this is where I thought you separate the "men from the boys". The Cali boys from the Boulder boys! If you've ever been that far off route, yet so close.What a mind f*#k. A BASE rig wouldn't help you.(…)

The 3rd worst moment of my climbing life was on the Belle. I had climbed to far to the left to ever get to the 1 bolt. 40' of 5.11 that I just could not downclimb. I yelled my ass off to Alan, get me the bolt kit!

Seriously people, I was wearing a baseball cap. I leaned in a little to far and the brim of the ballcap clicked on the rock and chucked me off. Alan needed 150' feet of rope, we didn't, have to send up a bolt kit. I started sketching as much as you can halfway up Half Dome. Mentally, I had a meltdown. Seriously, Alan was 100' below me separated by a #2 TCU and a tiny Lowe Ball Nut. If those two pieces blow, ugly factor 2 straight onto Alan. (…)"

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Jag är otroligt tacksam för att denna led finns trots att den tydligt definierar vart min gräns går för vad jag vågar försöka klättra. Jag är hänförd och fascinerad av Southern Belle. Kanske inte så mycket till leden i sig utan snarare till företeelsen av att allting inte är till för oss alla. Southern Belle måste få existera, om inte för att klättras så för att skapa drömmar och mardrömmar.