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 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. 2004 Golden Piton Awards - Bouldering
What do you look for in the “boulder problem of the year”? Nothing could be more dubious than mere ratings: The top grades are adrift on a sea of genetics and sponsorship contracts. 2004 Golden Piton Awards - Big-Wall Free Climbing
European big-rock highlights this year included Josune Bereziartu and Rikardo Otegi’s first free ascent of the totally obscure Yeah Man, a 300-meter route in the Gastlosen Range of Switzerland; Pietro dal Pra’s FFA of Via del Cathedral (8a+/5.13c), on the El-Cap-scale Marmolada in the Dolomites — a route with no bolts (but free climbed using some very long, pre-placed slings on fixed pins on the crux pitch). 2004 Golden Piton Awards - Sport Climbing
Our golden piton goes to Beth Rodden for her october first ascent of the Optimist at Smith Rock. 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. |
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