Disobey Gravity

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

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

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: Mina Leslie-Wujastyk climbs Gentleman's Project (V11) Joe's Valley, Utah

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

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

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: Mina Leslie-Wujastyk on the first female ascent of Mecca Extension, 8c, and giving an interview about it on UKC here.

Awesome mini-film from Outcrop Films:

Mina Leslie-Wujastyk working on and sending Careless Torque

This line is legendarily difficult, beautiful, and scarily high.

ETA: I thought we needed a new tag. *g*

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

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

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, have a Tweet: Twitter / MinaClimbing: Eek...I just did Careless Torque! :)

Translation: Mina Leslie-Wujastyk just did the first female ascent of the legendary gritstone highball Careless Torque.

ETA: Picture!

Hopefully it was caught on film; in the meantime, here's Ned Feehally on it a few years back.

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

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

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: Mina Leslie-Wujastyk on Mecca (8b+).

Life On Hold is finally out (download, with the DVD coming soon).

And yes, it lives up to the promise of the trailer.

I think it was niqaeli who described climbing as "ballet meets geology", and this is ballet/geology porn.

Two years of bouldering in the UK, focusing on the Peak district, Yorkshire and Northumberland scenes, and encompassing the new trend of doing short trad routes as super-highballs/solos over mats, often ground up.

And it's really, really gorgeous, shot in luscious high def with a grand eye for the details of rock and setting (and no, I don't think they used an orange filter on some shots -- the Burbage valley honestly does turn to gold like that when the sun hits the right angle). The film doesn't just have cutting-edge ascents, it communicates a sense of place and of the climbing as rooted in the landscape.

There's minimal interviewing; this is not a film that delves into complex individual motivations, it's about the scene and the places. Which is a disappointment if you'd like to know more in depth about some of the people involved, but basically it's a film that does what it says on the tin: climbing and time-lapse shots of the weather. The film does catch a scattering of telling little moments that give a sense of personality, whether it's Michele Caminati's chirp of "Nice!" regarding almost any problem, Chris Webb-Parsons forcing his broken foot into a climbing shoe, or Ned Feehally accidentally wandering into someone else's shot, realizing, flailing, and running for cover. And there's real emotional engagement as people struggle, falter or fall on desperately hard, committing problems.

My one big quibble is that women get under-represented in the film; with the female firepower available (Mina Leslie-Wujastyk, Katy Whittaker, Shauna Coxsey and Alex Puccio all feature in the film), they deserve to get more than one problem each. The cutting-edge of women's bouldering in the UK is being pushed very hard right now, with women doing some uber-powerful problems, and it'd be nice to get more attention being paid to that.

In conclusion: preeeeeeetty.