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 2004 Golden Piton Awards - Traditional Cragging
For traditional cragging — short, gear-protected rock climbing —2004 was a good year. Cracks were popular. Jeff Beaulieu of Quebec finally found the dry conditions he needed to send his backyard obsession, the beautiful overhanging crack of La Zébrée (after watching video footage, our panel of specialist sub-men guesses 5.13b/c for the grade), though he didn’t place the gear on lead. 2004 Golden Piton Awards - Solo
House climbed in pure alpine style on a nearly 7000-meter peak that had been climbed only once before, in 1984, by a Japanese team that placed thousands of feet of fixed rope and 450 bolts or pins. 2004 Golden Piton Awards - Alpine Rock
Looking down between his legs at 7000 feet of vertical relief, Josh Wharton could hardly believe the predicament into which he’d climbed himself. His last protection was an equalized birdbeak and knifeblade 30 feet below. 2004 Golden Piton Awards - Alpine Ice
Our award for best full-conditions alpine climb of 2004 goes to Ben Gilmore and Kevin Mahoney for Arctic Rage on the east face of the Mooses Tooth in the Ruth Gorge. 2003 Golden Piton Awards - Lifetime Achievement
While a list of revered, veteran North American climbers is long, the roll of those who’ve reached true iconic status is short. Near the top of that brief list is Fred Beckey. 2003 Golden Piton Awards - Service
Metcalf, and the OIA membership that supported him, changed the face of negotiations involving primitive recreation on public lands, showing that leaving wild lands wild is green in more ways than one. 2003 Golden Piton Awards - All Around
The essence of an all-arounder is the ability to cover ground, quickly, efficiently, and with aplomb, regardless of difficulty. Often this can mean rock, mixed, alpine, altitude, but we think the most impressive all-arounder of 2003 was a rock specialist, Yuji Hirayama. 2003 Golden Piton Awards - Bouldering
The Golden Piton for bouldering in 2003 goes to Jason Kehl, for his unroped, crash-padded, highball ascent of Dave Graham’s two-bolt Rumney 5.14d (or V13?), The Fly. 2003 Golden Piton Awards - Traditional rock
Our vote for best effort of the year goes to Dean Potter and Steph Davis, for Epitaph, a 450-foot route on the Tombstone, near Moab, Utah. 2003 Golden Piton Awards - High-Altitude Mountaineering
Balancing style, stature, and purity of line, our vote for high-altitude climb of the season goes to the alpine-style ascent of the north buttress of Nuptse (7861 meters) by the Benegas twins Willie and Damien. 2003 Golden Piton Awards - Competition Climbing
Unbelievable is the word most people use to describe Sandrine Levet’s dual victories in both the bouldering and route events at December’s World Cup. The unprecedented feat is akin to a runner winning both the 100-meter sprint and the mile. 2003 Golden Piton Awards - Sport Mixed
Ines Papert of Germany set a new standard for women’s mixed climbing in 2003 when she repeated Mission Impossible (M11), near Courmayeur, Italy, a route that just two years earlier was thought to be the hardest in the world. 2003 Golden Piton Awards - Sport Climbing
The one 5.15a from 2003 that meets all criteria is the extension to La Rambla (8c+, 5.14c) at Siurana, Spain. It has loomed over aspirants at Siurana, one of Europe’s mega-crags, since Alex Huber climbed it in 1994. 2003 Golden Piton Awards - Big Wall Free Climbing
Despite exploration, runouts, and the wide spectrum of big, high-standard free climbing, the climb of the year was surely completed right here in the States, on El Capitan; Zodiac, the wall's most famous and emblematic nail-up, went free at 5.13d. Golden Piton Alpine Climbing
The Rockies, Alaska, the Caucasus, Patagonia — alpinists continue to comb the globe finding new lines to suffer for. |
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