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CLIMBING SPEED RECORD BROKEN ON EL CAP
Alicia Carr
16 October 2007
Outside! Blog
Bavarian brothers Alexander and Thomas Huber raced up the Nose of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in 2 hours, 45 minutes, and 45 seconds last Monday setting a new speed-climbing record.
“The Nose is the most famous route in the world and El Capitan is the most important rock face in climbing,” Alexander Huber said in a press release.
The brothers, 38 and 40, respectively, actually notched the speed record for this route four days prior to their October 8th finish beating Hans Florine and Yuji Hirayama’s time of 2:48:50, by a mere 20 seconds. Inspired to try again, the brothers finished three minutes before Florine and Hirayama’s time on their second go round.

GET A GRIP! AMERICA’S 10 BEST ROCK CLIMBS
Stephen Regenold
msnbc.com
11 September 2007
Hanging by her fingertips, feet splayed on slick stone, Lynn Hill reached high to feel the small holds above her head. Her calves were tight. Forearms arched. A rope trailed from her harness, arcing out over thousands of feet of air below.
It was 1994, and Hill, a legend in her sport, was maxed out high on El Capitan in California’s Yosemite Valley, where a sheer 3,000-foot route known as The Nose is widely considered the archetype of all rock climbs on the planet.
Hill clung nearly upside down, gravity’s tug taking firm hold on a difficult section dubbed The Great Roof. “It was touch and go there,” she said of the overhanging pitch, which juts out from El Capitan’s precipitous face. “The holds were very small and insecure.”
After a 23-hour push, Hill completed her climb of The Nose that day, becoming the first person—male or female—ever to free climb the route.
Climbers like Hill—now 46 years old and a resident of Boulder, Colo.—live for harrowing moments on vertical stone, fingers wrenched in a crack, feet oozing off polished walls, mind and body pushed to the limit. Indeed, in the outdoors few activities rival the sheer adventure quotient of a great rock route.

For this story we polled Hill and ten additional stars of the vertical world to create a list of the 10 best rock climbs in the U.S.
Take the Casual Route, a climb in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, recommended by pro climber Will Gadd of Canmore, Alberta. This 1,000-foot-long rock climb—which took spot No. 3 on our list—follows a series of vertical cracks up 14,259-foot Longs Peak. “It’s remote and beautiful, just a stunning line up an impossible-looking face with a fantastic position the whole way,” Gadd said.
Like Longs Peak, the Elephant’s Perch formation in Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest is a remote alpine face laced with climbs. Peter Metcalf, CEO and co-founder of the climbing gear company Black Diamond Equipment Ltd., recommends taking a mix of two expert-level routes—the Becky Route and Fine Line—to the top. “The rock is some of best mountain granite in the country,” he said.
Not all climbs on the list are in the mountains. Duane Raleigh, the editor and publisher of Rock & Ice magazine in Carbondale, Colo., picked a granite face in Oklahoma: Amazon Woman, as the route is called, takes a stark line up Quartz Mountain, an outcrop on the rolling Great Plains in the western part of the state. “The cliff rises 200 feet straight out of a farmer’s wheat field,” said Raleigh.
Sport climbs, which are short, gymnastic-oriented routes, were picked by climbers like Alli Rainey and Sonnie Trotter, young sponsored athletes respectively from Ten Sleep, Wyo., and Canmore, Alberta.
Trotter’s favorite route, an expert’s-only crack called East Face of Monkey Face, heads skyward through 140 feet of overhanging terrain.
Its rating—5.13d R—qualifies it not only as extremely difficult, but also extremely dangerous. “I took a monster 60-foot fall during my attempts,” said Trotter, whose rope caught him several feet above the ground, escaping unharmed.
Other climbers surveyed—including Jack Tackle, a guide from Victor, Idaho; Timmy O’Neill, a pro climber from Boulder, Colo.; expedition climber Jared Ogden of Durango, Colo.; pro climber Kevin Thaw of Joshua Tree, Calif.; and climbing legend Michael Kennedy of Carbondale, Colo.—picked routes in Oregon, California, Colorado, and Idaho.
The routes, which range from classic beginner climbs to experts-only epics, represent some of the best vertical lines this country has to offer.

TOURS AT YOSEMITE GO HIGH-TECH
Mike Morris
The Union Democrat
28 September 2007
With its magnificent beauty and towering granite cliffs, Yosemite Valley could be thought of as a remote hideaway from the modern-day world.
Think again.
In this technological age, teenagers riding bicycles cruise the valley listening to their iPods, tourists cluster around deer to take pictures with cell phone cameras and laptop computers are plugged in at the Ahwahnee Hotel. Not to mention that almost every person who has climbed Half Dome is bragging to someone on the other end of a cell phone about how beautiful the view is.
But instead of shying away from this inundation of technology, Yosemite National Park seems to be embracing it.
The park has started a new program where tourists can take digital audio-video walking tours with a handheld screen and earphones. And park rangers are brainstorming other ideas, like placing iPod-downloadable information on Yosemite’s Web site and putting videos about wildlife and geology on YouTube, the popular video-sharing Internet site.
The goal is simple: Reach out to different kinds of people and attract them to the park, where visitation has been on the decline for the past 10 years.
“A lot of parks are toying with technology, ways of plugging in with the techno-savvy community,” said park ranger Vickie Mates. “It’s completely driven by outreach. It’s completely driven by reaching different audiences.”
Yosemite joined the high-tech movement late this summer, when it launched virtual self-guided walking tours of the Lower Yosemite Falls Loop Trail.

In this modernized approach to sightseeing, tourists rent a handheld electronic device called an Explorer unit that guides them on a 1.6-mile paved trail from the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center to the base of Lower Yosemite Falls.
Visitors can walk at their own pace and control what they listen to and what they see on the screen.
There are more than 40 subjects to choose from, including Yosemite’s early pioneers, historic milestones, native wildlife, scenic landmarks and seasonal changes. A variety of trivia questions and interactive games, like a treasure hunt geared towards kids, are also offered.
The tours were developed by a San Jose-based company called Big Escapes, along with Yosemite National Park and the Yosemite Association, a nonprofit group that supports the park.
Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said the virtual tours have sparked some “fascinating” philosophical questions.
“Are parks relevant if we make them relevant?” he asked. “Is this appropriate for us to do? Shouldn’t we be listening to the birds?”
Indeed, the tours aren’t meant to be a substitute for experiencing nature firsthand, Mates said, adding that the park continues to host its ranger-guided walks and campfire programs.
“We’re hoping this can be a hook,” she said.
“Maybe someone doesn’t know bird sounds, but if they hear them on headphones they might be inspired to go and hear the real thing. We want to whet the appetite and get people interested to go and have that experience.”
Results from a Public Policy Institute of California poll, released a week ago, showed only about half of California’s 2.8 million teens between the ages of 13 to 17 hiked, camped or otherwise experienced nature this summer.
Mates, 32, said the Explorer units are geared toward people of all ages, not just computer-loving teens.
“My grandma even e-mails,” she said. “There’s just some people who really love gadgets.”
Mates, one of the program’s narrators, is joined on the Explorer unit by fellow ranger Bob Roney and a Muppet-like character known as Ranger Bill.
“You can mute him if he gets annoying,” warns Mates.
Ranger Bill aside, the park has received positive feedback on the program and a new walking tour currently under development is slated for this winter. That tour will take visitors to the Yosemite Cemetery, where Native Americans and European pioneers are buried.
Mates is excited about the Explorer’s possibilities, which include international visitors being able to listen to the tour in their native tongues. The tour is now only available in English, but could expand to other languages as well as other areas of the park.
Another benefit of the program, Mates said, is that during a time like this — when Yosemite Falls is dried up — people taking the tour can view the falls booming like they do in the springtime.
“Even if it’s artificial, it’s a way to enhance the park experience,” she said.
Through video footage, visitors can also learn about past natural disasters like wildfires, rock slides and the destructive flood of 1997 — events that can’t be relived.
With the Explorer program under way, Mates said park staff has even started talking about the possibility of posting videos on YouTube.
“Everyone is going to YouTube now,” she said. “Why not post ranger programs on there?”