All Climbing

Months ago, I wrote how I thought it would be beneficial for the entire climbing community to read more gear reviews on the web. I’ve started to see many more since then and it’s a great trend. In the spirit of encouraging even more gear reviews, I decided to compile some of the recent ones here. Splitter Choss reviews the new Petzl Reverso 3 belay device as well as the DMM Offset Nuts.

Friday night I attended the world premier of Pure in Boulder. After watching the trailer and speaking with the filmmaker, Chuck Fryberger, I was highly anticipating Pure. I still had some apprehension though. As more climbing films are released, I’m starting to get the feeling climbers are becoming jaded. How many more ways are there to approach climbing films?Well, I was quite wrong in that regard.

CNN Money has an interesting article on the business side of the climbing industry. It takes a look at Black Diamond and their founder, Peter Metcalf:Metcalf, who co-founded Black Diamond with a $744,000 investment and has grown it to reap an expected $90 million in sales this year, is readying for his biggest climb yet. He wants to double his revenues in the next five years.

As Twitter hits the mainstream, climbers are increasingly using the service to communicate and share. A few months ago, the Rock Climber Girl took the initiative to setup a wiki to keep a list of the growing number of climbers on Twitter.Unfortunately, manually maintaining a wiki was going to be too much work as Twitter’s growth continues. So I decided to take the idea a step further and create ThinkClimbing.

Today’s guest post is from Jenn Fields, who writes at http://www.jennfields.com.I wasnâ??t sure what Iâ??d get out of a weekend of ice climbing just with girls, because Iâ??ve always climbed with boys. Of course Iâ??d come away with sore shoulders, bigger calves and more mad girl-climbing skills, but what else would be on the table at a womenâ??s weekend?

Jon McCartie of Fraction Film just released his most recent bouldering film called Mirando.Footage in this 12 minute video includes Brian Hedrick on Mandala (V12), Daniel Woods on Secrets of the Beehive (V5R), Giovanni â??Gâ? Traversi on Haroun and the Sea of Stories (V12), Daniel Woods on Xavierâ??s Roof (V12), Ian Brown on Stained Glass (V10), and Flight of the Bumblebee (V7R).

This past Friday I had the opportunity to volunteer at the ABS Nationals. I’m not sure how they picked people for the various positions (pretty sure it was random), but I ended up being the judge for the first problem in the men’s open qualifiers.I mainly wanted to volunteer for two reasons. First, I wanted meet more local climbers. Second, I was interested in seeing some of the inner workings of a national climbing competition.

Carlo Traversi discusses the future of the climbing industry and the different types of pro climbers interacting with the companies and the community. At this point in time, VERY few climbing companies have any clue what they are doing beyond making a decent product that sells enough to keep them afloat. I believe that much of this is due to BAD marketing techniques and BLATANT misuse of key athletes on their climbing teams.

Since I’ve been unable to climb the past couple weeks while rehabbing my flexor tendonitis, I’ve been trying to use my camera more. Yesterday, while touring my visiting parents around Boulder, I caught some nice images of some climbers at the Monkey Traverse area of Flagstaff. The following shots are from a pull-off above the main bouldering areas. They show the highly trafficked Monkey Traverse and someone top-roping a climb on the face to the right and down the hill from Monkey.

While I volunteered one shift at the ABS Nationals this weekend at The Spot, I wasn’t able to attend the finals. Ryan of BoulderDiaries and the ClimbingNarc though both have posted updates.Men’s ResultsDaniel WoodsPaul RobinsonSean McCollWomen’s ResultsAlex JohnsonChauncenia CoxAlex PuccioThe entire finals results are posted on the ABS Nationals site here: Men’s (PDF) and Women’s (PDF).