Speed Climbing News

New & Time-officiated Mt. Hood Speed Record

Huber speed in 2007, record?

I WON! I won the "Male non-local Yosemite Division" at the 25th annual Pocatello Pump. A bit of trivia that most folks don't know is that the PP was called the "Southern Idaho Speed Climbing Championships" in 1981 to 1984. Pressure from the newspaper to shorten, (speed up), the name made them change it to PP. I competed in the PP in 1990, and took 2nd place to the infamous Dave Bell - founder of Pusher Holds. It was nice to come back and take home the coveted PP winners mug. I will be smiling every time I drink from the mug.

This is NOT just another climbing competition, of which I've been to some 150. I highly recommend going to this event to anyone looking for a great climbing community weekend of fun and getting in a ton of climbing. I feel compelled to give a brief description of the format so you can decide yourself to attend next years 26th event...

A couple people have written me and suggested that the Huber brothers will not get the record on The Nose because they are short fixing while Yuji and I were simul-climbing most of the route. The premise that simul-climbing is faster.

I say it's a wash. When you are SECURELY anchored in the short fixing method you can really push for speed with far less worries of fallingly. And while SMOOTHLY and SAFELY simul-climbing you do not have to stop and undo anchors, nor switch from jugging to belaying.

I've experienced climbing The Nose with leading and belaying virtually every pitch in "normal" style, in under 7 hours with numerous partners. I've seen the Huber Brothers get 1/3rd the way up the wall in 50 minutes,- that would yield an overall time of 2 hours and 30 minutes. They also HAVE completed the route in 3 hours and 14 minutes while "stopping" to work out the last pitch or two of the route.- They stopped because they saw they didn't have the record in hand, - I suspect on that attempt they could have easily gone under 3 hours.

I just got an email from Ryan Ghelfi, a 17 year-old from Redding, California, who runs Half Dome for time every summer. He did the round trip from Happy Isles in 2:48 this summer and hopes to break the record next summer. Of course, it gets exponentially harder to shave off minutes as you close in on a record, and the one for Half Dome is pretty stout now (2:38 by Hari Mix). As far as I know this is the second fastest ever. Buzz Burrell ran it in 2:49 back in 2004, which was the fastest time ever, finally beating Mark Spencer's 1982 time of just under 2:52. Then Hari Mix lowered it to 2:38 in June, 2005.

I went by the Garmin booth.

this is cool: http://trail.motionbased.com/

You can upload your hike, run, adventure to the site from your Garmin GPS unit and then see it 3D.

Way cool. You can manipulate the thing to see your event from every angle and see rate of travel, heart rate, etc at any point along the way. all stuff not new, but all integrated very well and displayed better than anywhere before.

Check it out.

Hans

Hans's wife just climbed the Cal 14ers in under ten days.

see: jacquelineflorine.com for a link to her blog and pictures.

Looks like they're going for the record

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Climb fast!