6 Not surprisingly, Weekes’ October 2008 FA of the Clear Creek Canyon, Colorado,
mega-lunge Zion attracted major attention. Internet looky-loos suggested the
8-foot-6-inch leap might be V16, as it had taken Weekes a heroic number of attempts
(one or two thousand, estimates Weekes, over 76 days in a 2.5-year period). The catch?
Weekes, up until send day, had been trying the stick with his right hand. As soon as he
switched to his left, he tagged the move within five to 10 tries.
7 On Boulder’s Flagstaff Mountain, a center of early bouldering development, the
archetypal leap is the V8/9 Double Clutch, a body-length-plus launch (6 feet, 5
inches) from a horizontal rail to a lip bucket on the Beer Barrel. In 1972, Bob Williams
made its first, roped ascent. (The landing is essentially a 15-foot rocky dropoff.) Says
Williams, “John Gill and I were looking for a boulder problem that required a double
dyno, and I thought Double Clutch fit the bill: Dyno into a ‘standing’ position on the large
flake, and then launch [off the right foot] toward the top.” Boulderite Paul Glover made
a hair-raising unroped ascent in 2002 for the film Front Range Freaks. He recalls having
“one big pad, one small one, and one spotter who would have snuffed it if I landed on
him.” While practicing roped, Glover missed the dyno four or five times, and then, he
says, “caught it, pulled the rope, and did it better than I had with the rope.”
8 The English dyno ace Johnny Dawes (the “Leaping Boy”) once proposed a
three-tiered system for classifying dynos: The “first-generation dyno” is your
standard dyno; the “second-generation dyno” involves translating dynamic motion
forward—as in going again off an intermediate; and a “third-generation dyno” involves
harnessing momentum to see you through two such sets of too-poor-to-grasp-statically grippers.
9 Dynos can also help you navigate
past sequences—or even jump to
another formation. In the former genre,
a prime example is John Sherman’s
Indian Rock, California, leap C+ (V6), a
7-foot-5-inch launch to a one-handed
baseball-knob catch on the Overhang.
(Sherman used a rope—this was before
pads—though the dyno, which starts
about five feet up, can be bouldered.)
In the latter genre, there’s Czech tower
jumping and various other gap-spanners
throughout the world—like the 5.9 R leap
Superfly, from the Paisano Pinnacle at
Suicide Rock, California, onto a neighboring
5.6 friction slab. In 1973, the late
Tobin Sorenson added a 360-degree
twist, sticking the landing.
10 If big dynos at the sport crags
feel scary, imagine hucking your
meat high up on El Capitan. For Leo
Houlding and Jason Pickle’s October
2010 climb The Prophet (5.13d R; 13
pitches), Houlding unlocked the 5.13c R
ninth pitch with the eight-foot, sidewaysand-
down “Devil’s Dyno,” which, he wrote,
required “absolute commitment and a
good deal of self-belief.”
