24 HOURS OF CLIMBING

From the American Alpine Club E-news: 24 HOURS OF CLIMBING

A novel event in Arkansas last month challenged climbers to lead as many routes as they could in 24 hours. More than 60 two-person teams entered the 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch. The winning team—Clay Frisbie and Todd Johnson—each led 42 climbs up to 5.12a/b, with nothing easier than 5.10! Competitors in three difficulty categories could choose any of the 300-plus sandstone routes at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch; more points were awarded for harder routes and for trad leads. Only the leader got points for the route, and it had to be a clean, no-falls ascent to count. Sounds like fun! See www.24hoursofhorseshoe.com for photos and more information.

Bill, Stefan, and Dave Stewart (left to right) starting up the Front Porch in the last race of the SMSC Tour de Flatirons. 

Stefan (left), Dave Stewart, Bill (white shirt), and Mark Cartwright (red shirt) 

Mackey takes the Tour de Flatirons

Yesterday in the third race of the SMSC 2005 Tour de Flatirons Dave Mackey made it a clean sweep. Last year Dave had dominating performances in two of the five races, but he missed one, had navigational problems on another, and bad cramps on the third to miss out on the title. This year he left nothing to chance and no doubt who is the king of the Flatirons.

The race last night was as close as ever, though, as Dave faced a stiff challenge from not only the conditions, but 2004 Series winner and Slab FKT holder Jon Sargent. They finished just 23 seconds apart. Satan himself (Bill Wright) took advantage of the tired legs of Stefan and confusing climbing to just barely take 3rd place, three seconds ahead of Dave Stewart.

Full results and report are here: Slab Results

We had a record nine racers last night and we do it all again tonight! This was actually an early alternate race and the same race is on again today at 5:30 p.m. Bill and Tony are definitely going again. Hopefully we'll have about the same numbers.

I have obtained the exclusive video of this event and posted it here:

http://www.billwrightenterprises.com/videos/index.htm

I’ve heard that a mixture of short roping and minimal placements helped speed things along, as well as his anonymous partner was apparently quite familiar with the event. Derek and said partner passed two parties going to the summit. The route taken was Baker's Way to the North Ridge. He freed the entire route including the reachy, steep, difficult start and the crux slot on the Direct East Face route.

Rumor has it that the young speedster has now set his sites on the Third Flatiron record (under-10 record, so Stefan need not worry just yet).

Tour de Flatirons Series under way for 2005!

Dave Mackey takes the first two races, both of which saw record turnout!

The schedule with links to race reports and results is here:

http://www.wwwright.com/climbing/minions/2005RaceSchedule.htm

Bill

Hans climbs the Nose twice in 72 hours

Hans Florine climbed the Nose in a day on Monday, Sept. 19th and on Wednesday, Sept. 21st. They were his 59th and 60th ascents of the route, mostly in a day. He completed both ascents within 72 hours.

Burrell and Bakwin link three Northwest Volancoes

On June 9th and 10th Buzz Burrell and Peter Bakwin, both of Boulder, Colorado, linked Mt. Rainier (14,411'), Mt. Adams (12,276'), and Mt. Hood (11,239') in just over 28 hours, including driving time. They started at 2:42 a.m. on Rainier (9000 vertical feet), doing the roundtrip in 9.5 hours. They did the very direct and well-tracked Ingraham Direct route. Next was Adams (6700 vertical feet) and that went smoothly and easily in 6 hours, roundtrip. They finished just before dark and headed south to Mt. Hood (5300 vertical feet), which they started up at 12:35 a.m. on the 10th. They finished at 6:43 a.m. for a total time of 28m01m. This is 35 miles with 21,000 feet of gain. And lots of driving.

Peter posted a short report here at SummitPost.com.

New Hallucinogen Wall Record!

Inspired by the recent one-day ascent by Doak and Griebel, Ryan Nelson and Jared Ogden returned to the route they nearly freed last year and crushed the previous record of 23h39m. Doing the route in three blocks with Ogden taking the middle block of pitches 8 through 14, the pair topped out in 8h59m! They free climbed lots of the aid climbing that Doak did. This continues a trend prevalent in Yosemite Valley: climbers who have freed or nearly freed the route, also have the speed records on the routes. Some Yosemite examples of this are:

Washington Column: Matt Wilder - only one to free route
Lurking Fear: Yuji
Salathe: Herson
Zodiac: Hubers
Leaning Tower: Houlding

More information on Nelson and Ogden's ascent can be found here: Climbing magazine news.