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 2005 Golden Piton Awards
This year Climbing is rolling the invitation out to you — our loyal readers — to select the 2005 “Climber of the year” Golden Piton award. Look for the winners in issue #247 on newsstands 3/21/06.  Bewitched
I looked directly left toward the belay. The rope made a long, sad droop before it hit a piece of protection. “I think you’re at the first R part,” said, Kennan. Off to the right, I could see what looked like a crack, but it was another seven or eight feet out. The rock in between appeared blank. The holds under my hands and feet were classic Sandia granite, rounded and gritty, and I sensed that I had limited time before nerves and gravity got to me.  Going Greek on the Island of Kalymnos
The street is dark and quiet except for the laughter of a group of climbers stumbling back from a bar and the far-off whine of a scooter. I hear the surf on the gravel beach of the Greek island of Kalymnos, a small, rocky outcropping in the Dodecanese near the coast of Turkey, and my thoughts are of steep moves on climbs whose names end in “-os.” Omiros, Kerveros, Eros — the routes are tipped-back concoctions of pockets and tufas and stalactites, and my forearms remember them as a butt remembers a spanking.  Big Limestone in the Canadian Rockies
Imagine this: Sharp rock ripping flesh. War cries echoing off the walls. Blunt tools glancing off bone. Not a game — not like climbing. Howling warriors from two proud tribes racing at each other across the same shallow river that now swirls around my legs. I look down at my numb feet and try to imagine red clouds billowing in the water and between my toes. I quickly jump out of the river, not sure if the shivers running up my legs are from the cold or from ghosts in the water.  NJC - The Catwalk
Los Angeles is a town rich in traffic jams, smog, crime, and reality TV programs. The myths prevail: Yes, there are more BMWs than people; Yes, a child’s first word is usually either “Botox” or “implant;” Yes, everyone’s writing a screen play; No, we didn’t dam Hetch Hetchy (that was San Francisco). Living in Hell-A certainly imposes its challenges, but it has its moments too. Just 100 miles east of town, tucked in the San Bernardino Mountains’ rain shadow, exists a desert oasis of sorts where jagged, textured, volcanic rock abounds.  The Dihedral Wall
“I don’t know if I have this in me anymore.” For the length of my professional climbing career, I shunned these words. I have always taken the theory that I cannot back down even an inch or I will never reach my true potential. But here I was, 1800 feet up El Cap, feeling like I might finally be at the end of my rope. My arms were seizing every time I lifted them above my head. Blood was seeping from holes in my fingers, knees, elbows, shins, and forehead. I had been abusing my body on this climb for over two months and I was tired. Deeply tired, in both body and mind.  Band of Brothers
Four climbers stepped off the Alaska Railroad at Curry, about twenty miles north of Talkeetna, on April 17, 1954. Shouldering huge packs, the foursome crossed the frozen Susitna River, snowshoed up a tall hill, and paused to admire the view from the top. Fifty miles away, Denali sat nearly 20,000 feet above them, shimmering over frozen riverbeds and snow-covered tundra. The unclimbed, five-mile-long rampart of the South Buttress angled toward the summit. In 1954, Denali had been climbed fewer than ten times, and its south and east flanks remained completely virgin.  Crag of the Future
No matter if it’s for a hot date, for a meeting, for your girlfriend’s period, or, in my case, in the season — “late” is never good. Laboring halfway up a barren Colorado hillside in convulsive 100-degree July heat, I beg for mercy — and for shade. I follow closely behind Tommy Caldwell, his wife Beth, and Adam Stack, and imagine this hike in the cool temps of winter. There will be no mercy, however, not on this hike nor on the crag that awaits.  L’autre Côté de Fred Rouhling
Cheat! Liar! Over the years, many climbers have become objects of derision because the claims they made did not pass muster. Once the negative publicity gets rolling, it seems there’s no stopping it. In the sport-climbing world, perhaps no man has received as much bad press as Fred Rouhling, a Frenchman who made the news in the mid-1990s. In 1995, his infamy hit international proportions when he claimed the 9b grade for one of his routes, Rouhling’s other hard routes were almost as controversial.  Wind Madness — Cerro Torre’s Epic Hall of Fame
Immense planetary forces pushed up the Andes, tearing and rending the earth’s crust. The tectonic plates crushed together, buckling and crumpling, the South American landmass crashing over the floor of the Pacific. Molten lava boiled into the fissures from deep under the surface, erupting in a 7000-mile-long string of volcanoes. But in a few places at the southern end of the continent — in Patagonia — the magma didn’t quite reach the surface. Underground, surrounded by beds of less resistant rock, it cooled into hard, perfect granite.  The Beautiful People
Jason Kehl’s face is freshly shaven save for two triangular tufts of twisted hair, teased to grow outward from the middle of his jawbone, forming a Tut-like “beard of divinity.” Every twenty minutes, Timmy O’Neil tells Jason that he missed a spot while shaving. Passersby laugh at O’Neil’s banter and Kehl’s soft-spoken retorts. I’m in the ring with heavyweight rock stars at the second-annual Petzl Roc Trip at an after-hours party.  Saint Who?
“I’ve known of people who’ve been driving the Arizona Strip at night,” an elderly Navajo man confides in a hushed tremolo. “Suddenly, they see an animal with terrible, beady eyes running alongside their car — a Skinwalker! Sometimes it’ll follow alongside for miles, just staring; other times it lunges.” I stare at my new acquaintance, not sure what to say. Behind us, massive walls of terra cotta sandstone capped with black lava crouch beneath an azure sky.  Black Mountain Boulders
My first trip to Black Mountain was in the summer before my junior year in high school, 1994. We piled into my best friend’s brown ‘79 Ford Courier — its hood freshly pimped out with a custom flame paint job applied only days earlier with masking tape and a few cans of Rustoleum — and made the hour-long drive from Lake Elsinore, blasting the Butt Trumpets and NOFX and infused with a zeal that most people grow out of. We blew past Idyllwild, home of the legendary crags of Suicide and Tahquitz, and bounced up the long dirt road to Black Mountain.  In the footsteps of Fanny: Women in the Karakoram
The high altitude sun was blazing when I first saw the 14,000-foot basecamp my partners and I would inhabit for the next five weeks. Three- to four-thousand-foot spires - Uli Biaho, Hainabrakk, the Cat's Ears, and Shipton Spire - pierced the sky. These granite towers channeled the Trango Glacier downvalley and into the raging gray waters of the Braldu River. I trudged over talus toward camp, arriving at a scene that was likely no different from one Karakoram explorers saw 100 years ago, when pioneering female mountaineer Fanny Bullock Workman first visited.  Giving Birth to Reason
Urine flows down my thighs, soaking my synthetic underwear and sleeping bag. My mind slowly sinks into the quicksand of delirium. I can do nothing to stop it. There is no other explanation: She must be from hell. Relentless snow threatens to bury my sanctuary shell. Her serpent-like voice rises above the howling wind. “What is your mother’s name?” she asks, her obsidian eyes turning blood red. She has appeared next to me in my stagnant shelter 2000 feet up a wall in East Greenland. I never knew her, let alone talked to her. She was just a girl I saw over the years, from elementary school to high school. I’d never thought of her, then or since.  Traversing the Bridger Jacks
It’s ten o’clock on an early September morning and I’m at home in Durango, minding my own business. The phone rings. It’s Noah Bigwood. Noah lives in Moab, Utah, where he operates the guide service Moab Desert Adventures. He is the most proficient desert climber I know (though he studiously avoids offwidth cracks), so this call could mean trouble. “I have an idea, and I need a partner,” says Noah. “I want to climb ten desert towers in a day.  The Way of the Weekend Warrior
Japan offers endless opportunities for foreigners, or gaijin, to make unwitting fools of themselves. Although tourists usually get sufficient slack in the manners department, Topher, for one, seems determined to get it right. Clad in a yukata, a long bathrobe-like floppy-sleeved garment worn as aprés-hot-springs apparel, my photographer is trying hard not to do any unintentional dragnet fishing in his dinner soup with said sleeves while under the mounting influence of hot sake. The drinks seem to be reactivating some of my language neurons that haven’t been fired since I moved from Japan sixteen years ago. We seek out visionary mountaineering efforts, improbable boulder problems, sport routes that "just say no" to the easy temptations. In short, we reward ascents that stand for something, in all mediums. 2004 Golden Piton Awards - Speed Climbing
At Climbing, we have received so many reports on the countless new El Cap speed records — Flash! 15:59 on Son of Fart, 18:24 on New Yawn— that to be honest, we’re over it. 2004 Golden Piton Awards - Service
When Sean Patrick was told she had four to six weeks to live due to ovarian cancer, her climbing friends distracted her by helping plan a little climbing-based project called HERA — Health, Empowerment, Research, and Advocacy. |
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