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Piolet D'Or Candidates Selected
12/08/06 - Five climbing teams have been nominated for the 16th annual Piolet d'Or, the golden ice axe presented to the “best” mountaineering ascent of the year. 12/08/06 - Frenchmen Stéphane Benoist and Frédéric Gottardi have added another extremely difficult ice climb to the North Face of 20,269-foot Kwangde in Nepal. 12/05/06 - Eric Brand left us on September 30. He went into the home he shared with his wife Carol in Silver City, New Mexico, lay down on the couch, and never woke up. 12/04/06 - One day after the original La Rambla (5.15a) saw its second ascent, Chris Sharma redpointed the endurance-fest in Siurana, Spain, for its third ascent. 12/04/06 - Patxi Usobiaga is at it again, this time with the first ascent of Begi Puntuan in the limestone crag of Etxauri, near Pampalona, Spain. 12/01/06 - Jerry Moffatt's The Ace (V13) saw its fifth ascent by sleeper climber Andrew Earl on Novermber 29. 12/01/06 - Spain’s Edu Marin has nabbed the second ascent of the original La Rambla (5.15a), right under the noses of several of the world’s best sport climbers, who also have been trying the route. 11/29/06 - Barcelona climber Ramón Julián sent eight routes 5.13d or harder in a five day stretch this month, beginning on November 23. 11/28/06 - Sean McColl of Canada and American Emily Harrington, the two most successful North Americans on the international comp scene this year, added the continental sport-climbing championship to their laurels last weekend. 11/27/06 - Despite “the hardest effort any of us have given in the mountains,” the Anglo-American team of Jim Lowther, Mark Richey, and Mark Wilford came up just short in an attempt on unclimbed Nenang (22,539 feet) in far eastern Tibet. 11/27/06 - A Czech-Austrian team put up Short Cut (5.13a, 16 pitches) on the big granite walls of southern Madagascar and repeated two other hard free climbs. 11/21/06 - Canadian crack-master Jean-Pierre “Peewee” Ouellet drove more than 2,000 miles to Utah from his home in Québec for a two-week vacation, and he still had enough time to bag Indian Creek’s hardest routes. 11/20/06 - On November 18, after a year's-worth of effort, 40-year-old Ben Moon completed his hardest boulder problem, Voyager with a sit-down start (SDS), in Burbage West in the United Kingdom. 11/20/06 - Slovenian Maja Vidmar thrilled the local crowd with a victory in the final lead-climbing World Cup of 2006 in Kranj, Slovenia. 11/16/06 - On November 11, Paul Robinson made a quick ascent of the granite testpiece Circadian Rhythm (V13/14), in Poudre Canyon, near Rustic, Colorado. 11/16/06 - A total of 10 climbers are missing on two Nepalese peaks, and searches are under way. On Tuesday, an avalanche wiped out Camp 3 at around 20,600 feet on 22,349-foot Ama Dablam, sweeping away six climbers from two teams. 11/15/06 - An American-Canadian team explored the Genyen Massif of China’s Western Sichuan Province in October, and came away with the first ascents of two striking peaks. 11/13/06 - A team of North Face climbers established a long 5.12 route in Morocco’s Taghia Cirque and also built a new roof for a school in the remote village below the limestone cliffs. 11/13/06 - On November 11, thirteen-year-old Adam Ondra (from the Czech Republic) has likely made the third ascent of Martin Krpan (5.14d) in Misja Pec, Slovenia, a "quite logical" link-up of four routes. 11/10/06 - Leo Houlding and Dean Potter have free-climbed the notorious Southern Belle (V 5.12d) on the South Face of Half Dome in Yosemite Valley. 11/08/06 - One of the world’s great climbing festivals brought pro athletes from around the globe along with hundreds of other climbers to Greece, as the Petzl RocTrip descended on the island of Kalymnos in late October. 11/03/06 - Despite finishing only fourth in the final bouldering World Cup of the year, Russia’s Olga Bibik had enough points after the Moscow comp to win the overall World Cup title for 2006. 11/04/06 - Daniel Woods made an impressive week-long, whirlwind visit to the Virgin River Gorge where he made an onsight ascent of Hell Comes to Frogtown (5.13d) on October 22, as well as ticking the VRG testpiece Necessary Evil (5.14c) in six attempts over four days, on October 28. 11/02/06 - Marko Prezelj and Boris Lorencic capped an extremely successful Slovenian expedition to the Tibet-Bhutan frontier by climbing the spectacular Northwest Pillar of Chomo Lhari (ca. 24,000 feet). 10/31/06 - On October 26, Andreas Bindhammer made the second ascent of Abyss (5.14d) in Déversé (Gorges du Loup; Nice, France). |
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