disobey_gravity | Friday glee fangirls the Stone Monkey

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disobey_gravity

The Friday post of glee is where you get to tell us about your climbing-related happiness this week.

N.B. Please feel free to post your glee on any day of the week; the Friday glee is just to get the ball rolling.

To enhance this week's glee, we are kicking it old school: Al Harris and Henry Barber on the classic sea cliff route, A Dream of White Horses. And Barber and Pete Livesey on Liberator.

In other news, Johnny Dawes is still more hardcore than you. He's been semi-retired from doing hard stuff for a while, but now seems to be making a comeback with a vengeance. Here's a fine photo of him blowing away everyone at the Castle.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

rydra_wong

I flashed a V4!

From:

niqaeli

Congrats!!

From:

emperor

Cool :-)

From:

niqaeli

...okay, I'm going to own up to being shallow, but I'm just sort of staring at that photo happily from a completely non-climber perspective. *stare*

From:

rydra_wong

I commend to your attention:

Stone Monkey trailer (The Dawes 20 years ago, and one of the great climbing films)
The Dawes demonstrating one-handed and no-handed climbing

From:

rydra_wong

Climbing offers many opportunities to observe persons of one's preferred gender(s) displaying style, intellect, strength and physical grace.

If the persons are male and boulderers, sometimes they remove their shirts in a completely gratuitous manner. Total fanservice, I swear.

From:

emperor

Dave MacCleod has completed The Long Hope (direct finish), the mega-route-of-doom on Hoy. How much does he rock?. With pictures.

A former work colleague is back in town next week, and we're going climbing (with my boss). Said colleague is much, much, much better than me (he has first ascents of E7 routes to his name), so I'm a bit intimidated, but I hope to learn some stuff!

From:

rydra_wong

Dave MacLeod rocks like a rocking thing, and is also more hardcore than us. *g*

And that's exciting about the colleague! FWIW, I've found that the super-super-hard climbers are sometimes the most supportive of other people's learning.

From:

wpadmirer

Cool links! Thanks!

My glee of this week is that I worked six new routes at the rock gym, and I finished four of them. Two I'm going to have to work, and I really need more aggressive shoes for one of them.

Hopefully the shoes I've got coming will be in this coming week!

From:

rydra_wong

Ooh, what shoes are you planning to get?

Yes, I am a (climbing) shoe geek, I freely admit it.

From:

wpadmirer

La Sportiva Tarantulas. I've been told they're perfect for me by the people at my gym who watch me climb all the time. So I'm going to try them. It'll be my first shoe with an aggressive toe. I've been in basic Evolv beginner shoes since I started climbing about two years ago.

From:

rydra_wong

Nifty! I haven't tried those, but La Sportiva make some lovely shoes.

And the gist of the online reviews seems to be "comfy, but with a bit of an aggressive toe". Which is a nice combination if you can get it.

If the Tarantula doesn't suit you, another La Sportiva shoe that a lot of people love is the Katana -- it's a bit asymmetrical and a bit downturned, but not so much that it doesn't work as an all-round shoe.

From:

wpadmirer

I've looked at the Katana, but I have trouble with shoes that have a downturn. I've got bone spurs on the bottoms of both big toe joints. Downturned shoes really aggravate the hell out of those. (sigh) So I'm hoping that I can get by with an aggressive toe!