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Welcome to Crackistan
8/31/07 - British couple John and Anne Arran had a very successful expedition to the Nangma Valley in Pakistan, making almost entirely free ascents of two very hard and continuous big-wall routes. 8/31/07 - A Canadian expedition, foiled by poor conditions on its primary objective, managed a probable new route on Peak 5,750m. 8/30/07 - Two of Colorado’s hardest boulder problems have each gotten a third ascent. Paul Robinson made the third ascent of Jade (V15) in Rocky Mountain National Park, after six days of work on the line. 8/28/07 - American climbers landed four podium positions at the World Youth Championships in Ecuador, more than holding their own with superstars like Charlotte Durif of France and Adam Ondra of the Czech Republic. 8/27/07 - Scotland’s Dave MacLeod has completed “the most dangerous lead I’ve ever done,” a new route at Hell’s Lum crag in the Cairngorm mountains. 8/24/07 - A small Belgian-Polish team completed three free or mostly free routes on huge walls in the Charakusa Valley of Pakistan, near the base of massive K7 and K7 West. 8/23/07 - Canadian Sonnie Trotter has redpointed The Path (5.14 R) at the Back of the Lake area in Lake Louise, Alberta. 8/22/07 - Canadian Matt Maddaloni has completed likely the biggest link-up yet in the Bugaboos of British Columbia: five multipitch routes to five different summits, all free and all solo. 8/21/07 - A Russian expedition has completed the 8,500-foot-high West Face of K2 after more than 10 weeks of effort. 8/17/07 - Is it newsworthy to climb 60 routes graded 5.10 and easier? If the routes are the 60 climbs in the classic British book Hard Rock and they’re climbed in just five weeks during one of the rainiest U.K summers in memory, it’s a remarkable achievement. 8/14/07 - Peter Absolon, 47, was killed by rock fall in the Wind River Range on August 11, apparently the victim of a rock thrown from above by a hiker. 8/13/07 - Paul Cordy and Matt Maddaloni have completed an extended version of the “Triple Crown” of long, hard free climbing at Squamish, British Columbia. 8/13/07 - Californian Dave Turner and Micah Retz have climbed a new route on the North Face of Taulliraju, the 5,830-meter “ice flower” of the Cordillera Blanca in Peru. 8/10/07 - Alexander Huber has redpointed an enormous 5.14 overhang, once called the “biggest roof on earth,” starting five pitches up the 1,500-foot north face of Cima Ovest in the Dolomites’ famous Tre Cime. 8/08/07 - Sylvain “Sly” Masse has redpointed La Zébrée, the 5.14a crack climb at Mont King in Québec. 8/08/07 - Tyler Landman has made the second ascent of Jade (V15), a boulder problem in Rocky Mountain National Park that had bouted the best for years before it was completed earlier this year by Daniel Woods. 8/07/07 - Adam Ondra, the 14-year-old Czech phenom best known for his 5.14d redpoints, has repeated the legendary Alpine testpiece Silbergeier (5.14a, 6 pitches) and free-climbed Zub za Zub (5.14a, 5 pitches) on the limestone walls of the Rätikon in Switzerland. 8/04/07 - Scotland’s Dave MacLeod has completed a legendary unfinished project in Glen Nevis, near the base of the highest peak in Great Britain. 8/03/07 - A highly experienced American team bagged the first ascent of a huge spire in Pakistan but came up short on their main objective: the North Ridge of Latok I. 8/02/07 - A Russian team has squeezed another line on Shipton Spire’s Southeast Face in Pakistan—a 1,300-meter granite wall that, remarkably, is getting almost as crowded as El Capitan’s Southeast Face. 7/31/07 - Dave Graham has redpointed Realization (5.15a) at Ceüse, France, completing the landmark route’s fourth ascent. Graham had been attempting the route periodically ever since he belayed Chris Sharma on the first ascent in 2001, and had spent several weeks at the cliff this summer hoping to finish it off. 7/27/07 - High flyers from America and Germany broke the world dyno record twice in just over a week at contests in Europe. 7/27/07 - Slovenian Pavle Kozjek and partner Grega Kresal have made the first ascent of the East Face of 5,410-meter Puscantrupa Este—and probably the second ascent of the peak—in Peru’s Cordillera Huayhuash. 7/25/07 - Two Russian teams have completed big-wall routes on the enormous Northwest Face of Great Trango Tower in Pakistan. A four-man team climbed a new line on the right side of the 2,000-meter wall in six days, free climbing about three-quarters of the route. 7/25/07 - Daniele Bernasconi and Karl Unterkircher summited 8,035-meter Gasherbrum II on July 20, completing a new route up a prominent 3,000-meter spur on the peak’s unclimbed North Face. |
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