How to rappel with three people fast and sound

A really cool blog: Alpine Awakening by mountain guide Kurt Hicks recently featured a really good article on how to rapp quickly and securely with a party of three. It’s clever and definitely makes rapping faster and more secure when with a group of 3. Just make sure that the anchor points are strong enough to hold 2 climbers while they rapp simultaneously! Check out the post here.

Update: I got the idea for this post via onthesharpend.com

Tags: Climbing, rappeling, Rock Climbing

First Ascent of Fisht Western Face in the Caucasus

You’ve got to have respect for Russain mounaineers. In Europe and North-America, they get too little attention. I just read on the English pages of mountain.ru (great site, by the way, full of priceless information) that a team of five ascended the 560 m wall of Fisht’s Western Face straight on the fall line. The conditions were incredibly crappy for them, but the tough, Prussian-style schooling paid off: they were able to ascend despite the poor conditions – despite hardly even being able to reach BC in the snowy and ici days of the Caucasian February.

Check out the dispatches here and lament over what it must have been like to climb this baby in early March:

Tags: Caucasus, Climbing, mountaineering, Rock Climbing

Mont Blanc climbing tragedies – behind the numbers

Just started making plans making the trip this May to Chamonix and skiing/climbing some of the “mandatory stuff” with a fellow mountain guide. But, as you may have heard in the previous weeks, another bad accident hit – involving expert Italian mountain guides. Four of them. The fine article at climbing.about.com outlined some of the reasons for the vast number of tragedies on the mountain.

More »

Tags: avalanche, Climbing, mont blanc massif, mountaineering, objective danger

A crucial “how-to-climb” Pointer You Probably Haven’t Thought Of

What’s the thing that challenged you the most when you started [TAG-TEC]rock climbing[/TAG-TEC]? I bet it was finger strength – definitely. And possibly your initial fear of heights. Or so you thought.

What you may or may not have realized as you advanced in your skills is that [TAG-SELF]rock climbing[/TAG-SELF] is so much about BALANCE. It’s a balancing act. You were probably told very early on that it’s all about placing your bodyweight on your legs.

CLIMB WITH YOUR LEGS, darn it!

…shouted your coach, if you had one of those better coaches called “close friends”. But what is placing body weight on your legs and turning your feet for proper placement? It’s all balancing, baby! Sure, if you’ve gotten far enough in climbing, you may have realized this.

The thing is, when I started climbing, I never understood guys telling me that it’s all about balance and so, so much less about finger- and arm strength. But if you’re a newbie at this wonderful sport, pay close attention to the effect that every small move has on your balance. That is, the way it becomes more or less difficult to stay on the wall depending on the angle you place your feet or turn your shoulders or move your hips…

If you’re a beginner, balancing is probably more important than you think, and you can never get good enough at it.

If you want to improve in rock climbing, one thing that can help you is fine tuning your balance. Here are some good resources…

• indoorclimbing.com
  
• A book for sale, but you’ll find a cool excercise on this page – Rock Climbing: Mastering the Basic Skills
  
• or check out the book (most of it anyway) for free on Google Books
• some funny looking, but definitely helpful excercieses for balancing

Do this kind of stuff even if you”re into alpine climbing, mountaineering doing relatively easier stuff. It’ll help tremendously, believe me.

Eventually, this is where you want to get…

watch?v=H4ENUH1WlYo

Is this stuff helpful? If you’re a more experienced climber: how did you get good at balancing?

Tags: Climbing, mountaineering, Rock Climbing

Your “mandatory” Matterhorn climb

OK, of course, it’s not mandatory. But one thing’s for sure. If you’ve gotten your hands dirty with mountaineering and were under the impression that “OK, I want this stuff,” then sooner or later you’ll want to nail one of the most emblematic peaks on the Planet: the big, bad Matterhorn. Am I right?

Seriously. No matter if you’re a young titan or a 40-ish dude with a small beer-belly who started climbing a bit too late, you probably want this mountain – or have it already – on your list. (Or you ,may have scaled it already.)

Pretty high up on the Hörligrat

If you’re a Brit or a Euro, don’t think you’re the only one crazy about this peak. Check out the “toplist” on the most visited climbing social site on the web, summitpost.org. Here you’ll see that on the list of “most searched for mountains”, the Matterhorn comes in at no. 2 outside the American contintent (the most popular is Mt. Blanc). And it’s the sixth most popular peak all-in-all on Summitpost.

Thus ariseth the question: what do you need to climb the Matterhorn? More »

Tags: Climbing, Hörnligrat, matterhorn, mountain, mountain guide, mountaineering, Pollux