Climbing With A Bowling Ball

39 weeks pregnant and still climbing. Sorta hard to balance with a bowling ball on your belly.

Carrie Cooper: 39 Weeks from Prana Living on Vimeo.

“Most Delectable Boulder Problems In The Twin Cities”

The bouldering competition at the MN Climbing Co-Op took place Sept 24th. Results here. In the video below, you will recognize some faces – Like Levi, Trinh, and Wei.

Comp at the Co-op from Ben Mueller on Vimeo.

It’s A Small World

The 20 winners of the Nikon Small World photomicrography competition. Sometimes, seeing the big picture isn’t as pretty as the little picture.

These are grains of sand at 4x magnification. More images here.

 

 

 

 

 

“..a blade of grass at 200X using confocal stack reconstruction, autofluorescence.”

Report From Reno’s New Climbing Wall

Alex Johnson was in Reno at the grand opening of the tallest climbing wall in the world. Her full report is here.

“The first pitch starts on the second floor balcony. It's seventy feet long. In addition to beginning thirty feet of the deck, which in this case is Main Street, you already hit 100 feet in height when you pull over the ledge to begin the second pitch, which is an additional 94 feet, totaling 194 feet in height. Because the wall is out on the side of a building, there's no padded floor beneath you. It's also quite unlike rock climbing, where you can see trees, bushes or at least dirt. When you look down between your feet you see pavement. It was honestly quite a scary experience, and felt extremely exposed.”

Happy Climbers

After a successful 3 day climb of the “Aurora” (16 pitches, A4) route on El Cap, happy climbers humpin’ their gear back to the car. More details.

Get Exercise While You Write Poetry

Here’s a machine pulled by a bike that writes Chinese poetry n the sidewalks. Wonder if this will come to the US? More info here.

水书法器 Water Calligraphy Device - BJDW Clip from Nicholas Hanna on Vimeo.

Everest Live Cam

The Everest live cam is on from 6AM to 6PM Himalayan time. Is this cool or is does it ruin the experience? Don’t know.

Casual Belaying

A new video of Daila Ojeda climbing in Spain, shows her boyfriend Chris Sharma with the most casual belay technique I’ve ever seen. Watch at 1:30 and 1:38.

 

Daila Ojeda - climb ‘A muerte’ on Sterling Rope from sterling rope on Vimeo.

"I know what it's like to be a salmon now”

Boy, is nowhere safe? This couple in Pennsylvania was injured when a bear came into their home and attacked them. I like this quote:

“’I know what it's like to be a salmon now’, he joked after the couple came home from a hospital Monday afternoon in bandages and medical scrubs.”

Ice

 
Just a visual reminder of the coming season and how much fun it is. The toys are fun too.

Filming Alex

This video shows how the “60 Minutes” TV crew set up to film Alex Honnold free soloing El Cap. I can only imagine how distracting it would be to have all these people hanging around while he is climbing. I also wonder if other climbers of El Cap were inconvenienced by this film crew taking up space on the routes.

Drink More Soda

These folks are using 2 liter soda bottles to bring the equivalent of a 55 watt light bulb to dark rooms. More on this project here.

Offwidths

Two British climbers tear up the offwidths in Vedauwoo. Story here.

 

Here’re the cams they used:

Climb Then Drink

The new 164’ outdoor climbing wall in downtown Reno opened up yesterday. Looks like fun. Maybe the best part of it is you can get a drink right at the base of the climb. And you don’t have to hike thru wilderness to get to the climb. Article about the grand opening here.

Please Stay Indoors

I know you’re hearing a constant drumbeat about “nature deficit.” Mostly that’s by companies who want to sell you stuff to use outside. But I am encouraging you to be green and not buy more stuff that you’re going to use outdoors. I am asking you to please stay indoors. 

I’m bringing this up because I went mountain biking today. And I was stunned to see so many bikers out using my trail. They even had a clinic for women mountain bikers. (Come on, mountain biking is too dangerous for women. It’s hard and you’re going to get hurt. Stay home. Bake some brownies or something.) And a clinic? Here’s my clinic:

• Get a bike
• Sit on it
• Push the pedals to go
• Move the handle bars to turn
• Pull the brakes to stop
• Get off the bike and walk if you can’t do the above or if your skirt flies up and you can’t see where you’re going. (Actually my skirt flew up today a few more times than I would have liked. And I can’t see over  my skirt when the trail goes 3 feet into the air on a 4 inch wide boardwalk. So that’s why I walked around it. Had nothing to do with fear.)

They did have some awfully nice snacks-  plus Sangria - for the women’s clinic at the park. I tried to fool the organizers by wearing that skirt I had. But, they didn’t fall for it. Must’ve been because the color of my water bottle didn’t match my shoes. (And water bottles, don’t even get me started! It’s an hour – maybe -  on the trail. You can go an hour without a drink of water, can’t you? And then I won’t have to pick up your water bottle that bounced off your bike when, for about 5 feet, you went faster than a turtle. And you don’t really need an energy drink for an hour’s worth of exercise, do you? And if you have to eat a sugary, caffeinated treat, can you pull off to the side? Come on, folks, suck it up.)

It’s just better to stay home, people and stay indoors. Maybe go out and rake your lawn. Or, walk up the street and buy a latte.

If you do feel the need to get exercise and you think you might have some sort of nature deficit, try this:

It’s a Wii game and when you watch it on your 1,000 inch HDTV, it’ll be better than actually being outside. You won’t get skin cancer, wind burn, bug bites, yellow fever, malaria, etc. And you won’t clog the trail for me.