The film was directed by Pepe Danquart and will become available on DVDs this month. I better start dusting off my German.

Alex and Thomas Huber broke the 5-year-old speed record on the fabled line on El Capitan - The Nose. They were faster than Yuji Hirayama and Hans Florine by mere 20 seconds (!) and the new record ascent time was set to 2:48:35. They were plagued by Thomas dropping one aider on the Great Roof pitch who had to finish the route with the remaining aider in an atypical awkward style.

However, the Hubers still had more shots left. Four days later, on October 8th, the brothers were on The Nose again, to firm up the record and quiet all whiners. This time everything went fine until the Harding bolt ladder. Alex missed putting his foot into an aider and was left hanging on the sling by one arm only with an 80-foot slack running from his harness all the way to the belay. Yikes! When they finally touched the El Cap tree on the top, the clock showed - 2:45:45! Breaking their own record, they brought their 3-year-long efforts on the Nose to a wonderful finale. Well done.

Read more about their first and second record-breaking ascent.

Source: supertopo.com

After spending two wonderful weeks in Europe (not only by scaling rocks) I am back on Long Island, a place specially designed to be boring. Sorting through the unread news in my feed reader has been a challenge. A lot of things happened in the climbing world while I stayed overseas, here are few highlights that caught my attention:

• Alexander Huber, once called by Reinhold Messner the best of all rock climbers, redpointed a 40 meter roof on Cima Ovest, one of the famous Tre Cime di Lavaredo towers in the Dolomites, Alps. The new line Pan Aroma 8c zigzags through an original aid route climbed in 1968. Huber and his friends drilled 11 new bolts, but the route is anything but a ladder of shiny pieces of metal. A 60-meter long 8b+ pitch with only 7 (!) bolts speaks for everything.
• A young Czech phenomenon Adam Ondra was touring France and Switzerland and amazing the onlookers by on-sighting “Hot Chili beans Volcano” 8b+, and redpointing “Abysse”, 9a (in 3 attempts) on the Gorges du Loup crag. A day later he turned up in Switzerland’s Voralpsee and sent “Speed” 8c+. To top everything up, he pinkpointed a multipitch Alpine testpiece called Silbergeier, 8b+ (first ascended by Beat Kammerlander in 1993) in a recordly fast 8-hour push.
• Rich Mayfield and Mark Stevenson climbed 60 British Classics in 36 days during one of the rainiest summers in the U.K!

Source: Planetmountain.com, Climbing.com. Photo by Michael Meisl.

In few hours, I am leaving for the long-expected and planned climbing trip to Paklenica, Croatia. Me, my sister and Lidač are going to challenge the 350 meters high north-western face of Anića Kuk. Our list includes:

• Mosoraški, 5c - the classic of classics on the big wall.
• Zgrešeni, 5b - a popular piece on the Debeli Kuk.
• Domžalski, 6a - the majority of climbing pictures of Paklenica are taken from this one.
• and plenty of other shorter routes in the Klanci sector.

After 2 seasons on the Gunks’ quartzite and its straightforward climbing on horizontal holds, this limestone canyon will put a question on the longevity of the acquired technique on the terrain where creativity means the difference between falling and cruising a route up.

Pictures from this adventure will follow.

Ray Ellington’s guidebook to the Red River Gorge will soon see its second edition. The updated book should appear on September 28, 2007. It is available for pre-order.

Those who had the pleasure to use the old book know that it’s a comprehensive and well composed piece with beautiful pictures and highly amusing route descriptions. There is an online guidebook too, but I think the hard copy is well worthy the money.

The Red River Gorge in eastern Kentucky is one of the best rock-climbing areas in the world. Its solid well-featured sandstone makes for steep, spectacular climbing, with an almost equal mix of sport and traditionally protected pitches. This revised and updated second edition describes over 1600 climbs, including over 300 previously undocumented pitches in Muir Valley and the Pendergrass-Murray Recreational Preserve.

Came upon this amusing instructional video of how to tie climbing rope to your back:

I love packing my rope this way, however, there is a couple of things to point out:

• Packing the rope with both rope ends in one hand (a.k.a. double Butterfly Coil), is faster but tangles the rope easily. Flaking the rope out has to be done cleverly. Put the rope on the ground so that both ends are on the top. Best to flake it twice - first time to undo the coils, second time to separate the two strands of rope.
• The rope should be put as high on the back as possible. I usually have the coils touching the back of my neck when I wrap it by the loose ends around my body. This sets the rope firmly on my back and prevents it from flapping low around my knees behind me.
• This “rucksack” set-up is possible with a single Butterfly Coil too. Start coiling from one end of the rope and proceed to the other. It is a slower, but tangleless method.

This place is destined to be the future of my current blog at ropedup.blogspot.com.

Update: Riši has come at last. My old blog will no longer be updated.

Lynn Hill talks about training for climbing on her blog. She covers the usual stuff like practising power, endurance and mental endurance (!).

Sure it is nice to be strong and powerful, but brawn can take you only so far. It is the climbing technique, delicate footwork and efficient body positioning, what separates talented from campus board slaves.

This is quite often the basic difference between female and male rock climbers: where guys strenuously crank up through the crux puffing and sweating, girls come up with an elegant, logical sequence, cruising the route with minimal effort and cat-like gracefulness. In the same time they complain they can’t do more than 2 chin-ups and they don’t know how to do powerful dynos.

Is Lynn going to reveal to us where to get the superior technique for which she is renowned?

On our way to the Sleepy Hollow area we almost got hit by a massive branch falling off a rotten tree above the carriage road. Me and Ben made a super fast flee-for-your-life dash forward, while Lidač calmly watched the falling wood landing few feet behind her.

Finding Casa Emilio was equally difficult as for the first time and our advance was marked by the classic “I am sure it was this way…”. Sending that we cruised up Betty and Belly Roll, one of the most enjoyable routes in its grade in the Gunks. Ben was the only one avoiding the delightful belly crawl up the sloped chimney, after learning from me getting stuck in it nearly for good. Bring big cams for this climb, you are not going to need them, but they make passing the chimney so much more amusing (for the onlookers).

Rescue mission was how we started the next day. Mike’s rope was left hanging on Strictly from Nowhere when all attempts to pull it down from the bolted anchors on the first pitch failed. As it turned out, a neat overhand-on-bight knot formed by some magic while they were pulling the rope after rappeling. We successfully retrieved the rope and enjoyed the morning sun on the rest of the route.

This day was marked also by Metod’s comeback after a long climbing vacation. Trying to impress him, we took him on No Glow, 5.9. He actually lead the first pitch, and followed the second without any problems, so at the end it was us (me and Ľuboš) who were giving a tip of the hat to his climbing prowess. On the way back, we managed to send Retribution, a short popular 5.10b pitch with a semi-reachy-semi-pumpy crux. Yupeee.

Locking off your belay device is handy when you need to free your hands while belaying or rappelling. The common way of doing it is by tying a mule knot. It has an advantage of untying quickly by simply pulling the rope when you wish to continue rappelling/belaying. Depending on what kind of belay device you use, it is tied in different ways.

Mule Knot on Munter Hitch

The easiest things first. Tying off Munter hitch is simple because you block it by pulling upwards - in the same direction in which Mule knot is tied. Therefore, it is easier to control the rope while you are tying it, there is plenty of friction which brakes the rope.

For extra safety, back up the mule knot by an overhand knot tied above it (see the picture).

Mule Knot on ATC

Making a mule knot to lock off ATC is harder because you need to pull down with your brake hand and at the same time tie the mule knot ABOVE the belay device. The trick is to feed the braking tail through the belay carabiner first. That ensures that the rope is properly braked by ATC for a hassle-free tying of the mule knot.

Mule Knot on Figure-Eight

Figure-8 is no longer used by the climbing majority, although it is quite a versatile piece of equipment. Locking it off is slightly easier then locking off ATC: usually there is enough friction generated by the device, so you don’t need to keep your braking hand down. Simply tie the mule knot above it, just like with the Munter hitch.
(If you have problems with holding the rope braked and tying the knot at the same time, feed the rope through the belay biner as we did above for ATC).

Extra trick: Figure-8 can be locked off much faster by flipping the loose end of the rope over the device as seen in the picture on the right. Be careful however, if you do a lot of jumping or big swings, this can come undone.

Disclaimer

Warning! The information provided on this page may be incomplete, inaccurate or outright incorrect. Use your own judgment when using the information provided here. Please, read the full disclaimer.