vdiff spring 2016
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Front cover: The Wolf’s Head, Isili, Sardinia.Photo: Jamie Moss
Anyone who's spent time in the mountains will know the feeling. It builds from nowhere; a casual climb in the sun slowly eclipsed by a stormy cloud on the horizon. A sixth sense that says the rain is going to come, that you should get out of there.
A tilt in climbing's delicate balanceThere's nothing wrong. Under a blue sky, you rack up at the base of a soaring chimney, laughing with your best friend. The feeling starts to creep in. You ignore it and make the first few moves. It edges further into your consciousness, tendrils of doubt clutchingat the warmth of the sun
The Feeling
A hold breaks, tries to pitch you back to ground.
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on your back, your hands on sharp rock.
By Jayne Reid
You clip in to the belay. You could rap from here. One quick slide down the ropes and you could walk away, eat ice cream, sunbathe. But still the sun shines, the next pitch looks more solid. This is your last day of the trip.
Tomorrow you'llbe back at work
Thewarninggrows
From above, a golf ball sized chunk sails down, glancing off your helmet. A bigger one just misses you.
Still you climb
From below comes a laugh as your partner quickly follows. She gets to the belay, you try to process a sentence. Before the suggestion to descend comes out, the gear's already on her harness.
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Off balance, you recover, but the warning is there.
A cold grey cloud envelopes the sky, mocking the perfect forecast. Only another few pitches.
Flying upwards as fast as you can, grabbing the gear, eyeing up the next traverse through a balanced and teetering pile of jagged choss. Swinging leads as a few heavy rain drops splatter down, then stop again.
Only two pitches left; the hardest two. Above the ledge a wide chimney rises, its outer edge formed by a giant pinnacle that seems poised to detach at any moment. There's no choice, from here a descent would be torturous. Bridging up crumbling rock you creep through move after move, the rope soaring in an arc between your legs down to the ledge where your partner shivers. The chimney is too wide to protect, not wide enough to get in. Higher, trusting smears and crimps on tiny blocks balanced loosely in a giant stack.
They echo the precarious balance of your bridging
limbs
Pitches later, the sun hides away
You know she's thrilled at squeezing a route in before the flight home; you know that she doesn't get to climb much these days.
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Higher, forced into tricky face moves, then balancing back across the chimney. Finally a thread marks the halfway point of the pitch. Into the widening chimney, back and foot, every limb dislodging tiny stones, weakening the larger ones your weight balances on.
Out, onto the pinnacle. Two shiny bolts sit tantalizingly close, out of place in this limestone rubble, off route, yet seemingly not on any other route. Why are they there?
So close, one final crumbling ledge to edge around, the rope running over a broken overlap, knocking fist sized chunks off.
Clipping in, you breathe again, but the feeling still grasps you.
It holds your mind, twisting your
thoughts
You back up your tie in point, suddenly suspicious of the single carabiner holding you. Suspicious of the rock behind those bolts; suspicious of the balance of the massive pinnacle with your extra weight on it. Beneath your feet is just air, pitches and pitches of air to the jagged hillside below. The feeling holds you poised on its edge. You shiver as the cold wind finds its way through your summer clothing. You shake as the feeling wraps around you.
The rope comes tight. Your partner has fought their way up the final pitch, out of sight, out of hearing.
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Suddenly, you're up on the pinnacle's top, bridging back to the main face, blasting up the final easier moves. At the top, the belay is balanced. A balanced block, a balanced nut, a balanced partner attempting to take the pressure off it. The rain starts.
This time, the balance tipped the right way. The scales hovered over their centre point, levering back and forth, tipping on every hold you pull on. Perhaps a pull at a slightly different angle would have tipped them the other way. As you sprint down the descent and check in for your flight with minutes to spare, you laugh and joke about the day. But you haven't won. Whenever the feeling strikes, you can't win. You can only escape.
You have no idea if you're on belay, or if the rope has run out; there's no way to tell except untying yourself from the bolts, making the first moves. Those first moves far harder than any guidebook grade would imply, on flaking, brittle rock.
There's no choice again, you have to move, knowing that there's a good chance you could be simul-climbing. The feeling sinks its icy fingers into you, holding you poised on that crumbling edge.
The rope moves. Another breaks. The rope moves again, tighter this time.
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One hold breaks, another creaks
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A World of MarvelsBy Maria Parkes
Stars disappear one by one, dissolving into incomplete constellations until Venus, like a solitary diamond, twinkles alone on the soft eastern flares.
Mount Tasman, New Zealand
In the mixture of starlight and cloud-reflected sunlight in which the mountain world is illuminated, each single object stands forth in it's
own transient brilliance.
Lilac clouds sail like a fleet of ships across the pale blue dawn. Each cloud, planed flat on the wind, proudly displays a base of fiery gold. Snow covered ground glimmers with a brightening lavender light, reflecting the sky.
Marconi Pass, Patagonia
And then it comes. A fierce red-orange orb. The rays heat our smiling faces as we watch the sky expand into daylight over the mountains.
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Mount Aspiring, New Zealand
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If the sunrise has any significance, it lies in the power to startle the senses, to compel us into a reawakened awareness of the wonderful.
Alpamayo, Peru. Photo: Tony Yeary
A radiant image out of nature, like a rainbow or a sunrise, has the curious ability to remind us that a different world exists out there; deeper and more meaningful than the little world of chaos we surround ourselves in. We are able to see, as a child sees, a world of marvels.
Alpamayo, Peru. Photo: Tony Yeary
The Monkeys Are SendingArtwork by Mash Alexander
Enclosed on both sides by immense grey and gold granite walls, Yosemite Valley is a silent witness to the evolution of life over the last one hundred million years. Imposing, verging on brash, these granite expanses boast huge sweeping roofs and dihedrals. Many smaller – more climbable – cracks and fissures weave from ground to summit, crafted with precision by a prehistoric glacier. The magnificent power of these great bounding walls is strong enough to freeze our gaze, to steal our voices.
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Pounding waterfalls cascade in great leaps between them and plunge into deep aquamarine pools. Some of the higher waterfalls seem to pour down from the sky. The Californian sun massages our skin, occasionally punctuated by the wind's cool, pine-scented breath. Underneath it all, we dwarf into nothing.
Alas, the beauty is somewhat distorted. Stretched through the valley floor, alongside the formerly pristine Merced River, is Highway 140, an east-west clogged artery of traffic, pollution and rubbish, all of it owned by the government in their sweating scramble for profit and domination.
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This scramble is futile, however, since the real power will always be held by the guardian of the land; El Capitan. It resembles an ancient, mysterious sea, frozen into a stone monolith and turned vertical to tower above a warm, soft-voiced, spring-green meadow dotted with Wild Iris and smelling of Oak. It is more than five hundred times taller and three thousand times wider than the average human; so splendidly immense that all the sweating for profit seems trivial in it's presence.
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If you look closely up there, on those huge expanses of golden granite, you'll see tiny pinpricks of red, green or blue, signs of life in the vertical deserts. Living on the brink of reality, these eccentric creatures are known as the monkeys.
And the monkeys are sending.
Order prints of Mash Alexander's awesome artwork here
A successful ascent of Mt. Jefferson from the north was made early in August 1906 by L. J. Hicks and S. S. Mohler.
Cut off from the base of the mountain on the east and west by battlemented rock-walls between 1200 and 1500 feet in depth, its outlook is imposing; the eye travels over a vast stretch of virgin mountain-wilds, vistas of jagged bastioned cliffs, misty caverns and flashing torrents, breaking into grand down-sweeping curves of primeval forest and the gentler undulations of faraway cloud crested hills.
As the country on the north side of Mt. Jefferson is practically an unexplored wilderness, this mountain park has lost none of its primeval beauty.
About 500 feet above the level expanse the rocks become peaked,
Excerpt from Mazama: A Record of Mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest, Vol.3, No.1
A 1906 Ascent of Mount Jefferson
very sharp and steep, overhanging a rock-slide to the head of a glacier. Crumbling rock, breaking off at a touch, seemed ready to hurl a man to instant death in the abyss below.
But Mr. Mohler, who is a very daring and fearless climber, after a little investigation, found a place to the right where by swinging himself around an apparently impassable point he could reach some shelves of rock where the two men could travel with comparative safety.
Mr. Hicks believes that by means of the rope a person could be swung around this point without special danger.
They continued their way over loose rock to the top of the ridge, which is the summit of the mountain except for the sharp pinnacle that crowns it.
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Mount Jefferson seen above a sea of early morning clouds from Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood, 47 miles distant.Photo: Ed Cooper
This rock-spire, which rises about 400 feet (according to Mr. Hicks' estimate) above the main body of the mountain, can be climbed only on the north and west sides. On this north side it is steep, but offers plenty of footholds and handholds all the way. Its top is barely large enough to accommodate two or three people at one time.
They remained on the summit only a few minutes, but before leaving they planted securely in the rocks a flagstaff twelve feet long with their names and the date engraved at its base.
On the return to Oregon City, Mr. Hicks and Mr. Mohler took the crest-line trail. After about forty-two miles of easy travelling the country became rougher and they had a hard struggle finding a way across the Salmon River which they found a raging torrent.
Toward evening of the day, just after crossing the Salmon, they ran against a black bear. Mr. Hicks gave it chase and it climbed a tree, growling down at Mr. Hicks from a distance of fifty feet above him. He shot it through the head and it dropped dead at his feet.
But just at this moment an awful crash was heard in the brush and the mother of the cub came on to the attack, pounding like an elephant. But the stream that separated them was very deep and turbulent. "Here's your bear up the tree!" shouted Mr. Mohler. Sure enough, up the same tree was a bear, — three bears in as many minutes, and only two men to deal with them.
So Mr. Hicks shot at the treed bear just as it turned its head to look at him. The bear dropped.
As it lay on the ground it was turning its head from side to side, merely stunned by the fall, as it had been shot through the nose. Rising to its full height, it made a lunge for Mr. Mohler, who happened to be on higher ground; the only thing he could do was to give the bear an ugly kick under the chin. This made both go toppling over backward.
By this time a dog belonging to the party became an excited and important participator in the fracas. The bear rose with a savage grunt, but was attacked and finally treed by the dog, whereupon it was quickly shot and killed by Mr. Hicks, who thus had two bears by way of trophy for five minutes' work.
They had already killed three deer, had enjoyed fresh fish for dinner every day, had ascended one of the regions most difficult mountains by a new route, and were in prime physical condition from their two-hundred-mile walk, so that they felt well repaid for their twenty-three days' outing.
It is now possible to drive to within a few miles of the summit. Modern ascents take around 10 hours, the summit pinnacle is often crowded and a permit must be obtained to enter the area.
There’s something magical about arriving in a new place after dark and awaking to discover your whereabouts. Bright daylight greeted my befuddled brain as I stirred in the morning. Through a part-opened door I caught my first sight of Morocco's Taghia Gorge.
Taghia By Dominic Oughton
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A clear blue sky illuminated the village; a few dozen squarish, flat-roofed stone houses set in a verdant oasis of small cultivated fields. Flinging the door open, the full cirque of Taghia came into view; a wonderland of huge scorched-orange limestone walls and pyramidal towers pierced by deep canyons. A plethora of outstanding multi-pitch routes weaved improbable lines up the highly featured rock walls, some exceeding 700 metres in length. Beyond them, further into the High Atlas Mountains, endless canyons, pinnacles and spires gave a hint of a lifetime of exploration to come.
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OffsetHave you ever been in the situation
of finding a shallow and obscure slot,and failing with frustrationto place a nut or camalot?
We mean the type of constrictionwhere a nut just won't stay,
a tri-cam doesn't have the frictionand a cam only goes in half way.
Shuffling through your rackyou find the perfect thing to jam
into this weird flared crackis your small offset cam.
It fits snug like a glove,giving protection you can trust.
It's something you'll learn to love.The offset cam is a must.
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Metolius manufacture two types of these devices; the Offset Master Cam and the Ultralight Offset TCU. With only 3 lobes, the TCU is narrower and has the remarkable ability to wriggle it's way into shallow slots where wider cams are left with lobes hanging out, looking like a badly-pierced ear.
However, the wider and extremely stable Master Cam is our personal favourite in deep vertical cracks. The sleek semi-rigid stem, durable stem sheath and wide thumb loop mean you can quickly slide those beauties in when you're quivering with forearm-pump desperation, instantly taming that trouser-filling runout to a safe and secure cruise.
Totem now have a range of these ingenious contraptions. Based on the design of the original Aliens, the offset Totem Basic has a super flexible stem and soft aluminum lobes. It also sports a funky double stem sheath, giving improved abrasion resistance. After slotting one of these little guys into a weird horizontal or diagonal flare, you can tiger-pounce-dyno with confidence, safe in the knowledge that those soft lobes will bite into the rock if you whip. The Totem basic is, basically, our favourite all-round offset cam.
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Originally designed by CCH, Aliens revolutionized the world of flared piton scars, replacing the need for hammering hefty chunks of iron with a much quicker and friendlier way of protecting climbs. Now made by Fixe, the new Aliens boast narrow heads and super flexible stems, which means they excel in horizontal and diagonal placements.
Back in the old days, Aliens weren't strength rated, being designed for aid-use only. VDiff's editor learnt this lesson the hard way when he took an enormous whipper onto an ancient yellow Alien. Under the force, the cam broke in half, leaving it's head in the rock. He continued falling, ripping four more pieces out (he's ….
terrible at placing gear) and was eventually saved by some miracle which he still doesn't understand.
The new Fixe offset Aliens are full strength and perfectly safe to use. Look for the engraved kN rating; if there isn't one, don't fall.
Spending all your money on cams often results in the irony that you can't afford to go on a climbing trip to use them. Buying used cams is a gamble and stealing is just not cool. VDiff recommends rummaging through bargain bins, making friends with the sales assistant in your local climbing store, or searching the web for discounts.
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Climber's Profile: Scott 'Plaid' Peterson
I started rock climbing in November 2004 when my gym trainer invited me. I was recently divorced, super fat and bummed out. My ex-wife had started losing weight, so I set out on a quest to get fitter than her.
My trainer took me on a multi-pitch route, in the snow and ice of the Oregon winter. On the second pitch, while I was engrossed on the rock puzzle at my hands and feet, he told me to look back over my shoulder. I pulled my gaze away from the climb and got a shock of exposure that rocked my world. It didn't scare me. It lit a fire in my soul. I was ecstatic.
From that moment on, rock climbing was full-on addictive and downright sexy. Well, except that I've crapped my pants a couple of times. Not a full scale dump, but enough to smell bad and lose popularity with women.
And there was the time when, halfway up El Capitan's Zodiac, I
accidentally took a huge swig of piss out of what I thought was my water bottle. It looked almost identical to my orange sports drink. Since I was soloing the route, I could have kept that secret to myself.
When I'm not pushing wheelbarrows full of climbing gear to the crag (it's easier than carrying a bag – try it!), I like to dress entirely in my finest plaid clothing, imagining myself to be a Scottish superhero, while collecting agate and jasper from the beach at home in Oregon so I can make them into jewelry.
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'Plaid' on a leisurely 25-day ascent of El Capitan's Tempest. Photo: Pete Zabrok.
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