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Chipping (Rock Climbing)
Chipping is a rock climbing technique that uses a hammer and chisel to manufacture new or increased hand-holds on the natural rock to make a climbing route more feasible. It is a controversial technique due to both environmental issues, and a sense that it goes against the very challenge of free climbing. The practice was more common in the past, it is considered less acceptable in modern climbing. History The process of chipping has been around since the first ascents of famous routes such as "Outer Limits" in 1971 and "The Nose" of El Capitan in Yosemite in 1958 when chipping was acceptable. Route manufacturing continued on through the clean climbing revolution of the 1970s where climbers moved away from outdated climbing technology, such as pitons, that damage rock to removable protection, such as nuts that do not damage the rock. Pitons are pins that are hammered into the rock, whereas nuts are small pieces of metal that fit into cracks and are removable. Manufactu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rock Climbing
Rock climbing is a sport in which participants climb up, across, or down natural rock formations. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a usually pre-defined route without falling. Rock climbing is a physically and mentally demanding sport, one that often tests a climber's strength, endurance, agility and balance along with mental control. Knowledge of proper climbing techniques and the use of specialized climbing equipment is crucial for the safe completion of routes. Because of the wide range and variety of rock formations around the world, rock climbing has been separated into several different styles and sub-disciplines, such as scrambling, bouldering, sport climbing, and trad (traditional) climbing another activity involving the scaling of hills and similar formations, differentiated by the rock climber's sustained use of hands to support their body weight as well as to provide balance. Rock climbing competitions have the objectives of either ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Climbing Route
A climbing route is a path by which a climber reaches the top of a mountain, rock, or ice wall. Routes can vary dramatically in difficulty and grade; once committed to that ascent, it can sometimes be difficult to stop or return. Choice of route can be critically important. Guidebooks, if available, are helpful in providing detailed diagrams and photographs of routes. In the earliest days of hillwalking and mountaineering, climbers got to the top by whatever means got them there. Little information about how they did it is available. During the 19th century, as explorers of the Alps tried ever harder summits, it became clear that choosing an eastern face over a southwestern ridge could spell the difference between success or failure. One example was the first ascent of the Matterhorn, which had been repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted via the southern side. The strata there tended to slope down and away while the rocks of the northeastern ridge (the one closest to Ze ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Climbing
Free climbing is a form of rock climbing in which the climber may use climbing equipment such as ropes and other means of climbing protection, but only to protect against injury during falls and not to assist vertical or horizontal progress. The climber ascends or traverses by using physical ability to move over the rock via handholds, footholds, and body smears. The term ''free climbing'' is used in contrast to aid climbing, in which specific aid climbing equipment (such as mechanical ascenders) is used to assist the climber in ascent. The term ''free climbing'' originally meant "free from direct aid". Free climbing more specifically may include: * traditional climbing * sport climbing * bouldering * solo climbing (excluding solo aid climbing) Common misunderstandings of the term While clear in its contrast to aid climbing, the term ''free climbing'' is nonetheless prone to misunderstanding and misuse. The three most common errors are: * Confusing ''free climbing'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
El Capitan
El Capitan ( es, El Capitán; "the Captain" or "the Chief") is a vertical Rock formations in the United States, rock formation in Yosemite National Park, on the north side of Yosemite Valley, near its western end. The El Capitan Granite, granite monolith is about from base to summit along its tallest face and is a popular objective for rock climbers. Naming The formation was named "El Capitan" by the Mariposa Battalion when they explored the valley in 1851. ''El Capitán'' ("the captain", "the chief") was taken to be a loose Spanish translation of the local Native Americans in the United States, Native American name for the cliff, “Tutokanula” or "Rock Chief" (the exact spelling of Tutokanula varies in different accounts as it is a phonetic transcription of the Miwok, Miwok language). The "Rock Chief" etymology is based on the written account of Mariposa Battalion doctor Lafayette Bunnell in his 1892 book. Bunnell reports that Ahwahneechee Chief Tenaya explained to him, f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yosemite
Yosemite National Park ( ) is an American national park in California, surrounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an area of and sits in four County, countiescentered in Tuolumne County, California, Tuolumne and Mariposa County, California, Mariposa, extending north and east to Mono County, California, Mono and south to Madera County, California, Madera County. Designated a World Heritage Site in 1984, Yosemite is internationally recognized for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, Sequoiadendron giganteum, giant sequoia groves, lakes, mountains, meadows, glaciers, and Biodiversity, biological diversity. Almost 95 percent of the park is designated National Wilderness Preservation System, wilderness. Yosemite is one of the largest and least fragmented habitat blocks in the Sierra Nevada, and the park supports a diversity of plants and animals. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clean Climbing
Clean climbing is rock climbing techniques and equipment which climbers use in order to avoid damage to the rock. These techniques date at least in part from the 1920s and earlier in England, but the term itself may have emerged in about 1970 during the widespread and rapid adoption in the United States and Canada of nuts (also called chocks), and the very similar but often larger hexes, in preference to pitons, which damage rock and are more difficult and time-consuming to install. Pitons were thus eliminated in North America as a primary means of climbing protection in a period of less than three years. Due to major improvements in equipment and technique, the term ''clean climbing'' has come to occupy a far less central, and somewhat different, position in discussions of climbing technology, compared with that of the brief and formative period when it emerged four decades ago. Rock preservation Drilled and hammered equipment such as bolts, pitons, copperheads and others sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piton
A piton (; also called ''pin'' or ''peg'') in climbing is a metal spike (usually steel) that is driven into a crack or seam in the climbing surface using a climbing hammer, and which acts as an anchor for protecting the climber against the consequences of falling or to assist progress in aid climbing. Pitons are equipped with an eye hole or a ring to which a carabiner is attached; the carabiner can then be directly or indirectly connected to a climbing rope. Pitons were the original form of protection and are still used where there is no alternative. Repeated hammering and extraction of pitons damage the rock, and climbers who subscribe to the clean climbing ethic avoid their use as much as possible. With the popularization of clean climbing in the 1970s, pitons were largely replaced by faster and easier-to-use clean protection, such as nuts and camming devices. Pitons are still found in place (as "fixed" pitons) on some established free climbing routes, as fixed bela ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Climbing Protection
Climbing protection is any of a variety of devices employed to reduce risk and protect others while climbing rock and ice. It includes such items as nylon webbing and metal nuts, cams, bolts, and pitons. Different forms of climbing draw on varying forms of protection and the systems that are created from its elements. Types of climbing There are a number of ways to "protect" a climb, varying according to the type of climbing: Lead climbing A lead climber places protection (temporary or permanent anchors) in the rock, snow, or ice establishing a climbing route. The rope is clipped through carabiners (often joined by a short length of webbing into a pair known as a quickdraw) which are in turn connected to the protection. The belayer pays out rope during the ascent, and manually arrests the climber's fall by locking the rope, typically with some form of belay device. Aid climbing Aid climbing involves standing on or pulling oneself up via devices attached to fixed or pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nut (climbing)
In rock climbing, a nut (or ''chock'' or ''chockstone'') is a metal wedge threaded on a wire that climbers use for protection by wedging it into a crack in the rock. Quickdraws are clipped to the nut wire by the ascending climber and the rope threads through the quickdraw. Nuts come in a variety of sizes and styles, and several different brands are made by competing manufacturers. Most nuts are made of aluminum. Larger nuts may be threaded on Dyneema cord instead of wire, but this has become unusual. The very smallest nuts are known as ''micronuts'' and may be made of brass or other metal, and typically have their wires soldered into them, instead of looped through drilled holes. They are mostly used in aid climbing, and their value as protection, arresting a climber's fall, is marginal because of both their low breaking strength and their tiny surface area (the HB 0 measures about 4 x 7 x 2.5 mm) in contact with the rock, though this can be offset if several are placed at a ti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred Rouhling
Fred Rouhling (born 24 January 1970) is a French rock climber and boulderer, noted for creating and repeating some of the earliest grade sport climbing routes in the world, including ''Hugh'' in 1993, the first-ever French sport route. Rouhling is also known for the controversy from his proposed grading of for his 1995 route ', which would have made it the world's first-ever 9b-graded sport route; 25 years later, it was graded at . Early life Rouhling grew up in the small French farming town of Le Panissaud. His neighboring village of Vilhonneur has a limestone quarry (which supplied materials for the Statue of Liberty). Twenty minutes away is the larger town of Angoulême, where limestone crags overhang many of the roads, with the best-known being Les Eaux Claires ("The Clear Waters"), with 15 to 20-metre overhanging extreme routes that require strong fingers to manage the small pockets used to ascend them; and contains nationally-regarded extreme routes such as ''La Crépin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riggins, Idaho
Riggins is a city in the western United States in Idaho County, Idaho. Nestled deep in a canyon at the confluence of the Salmon and Little Salmon rivers in west central Idaho, it is approximately north of Boise, and south-southeast of Lewiston. The elevation is above sea level, and its population was 419 at the 2010 census. U.S. Route 95, the only highway for the state connecting the Panhandle to the south, runs through Riggins as Main Street. Along this route, Riggins is the most northwestern town in the Mountain time zone; Pacific time begins just north of the city, across the Salmon River. History Riggins was named for Richard L. Riggins, local businessman and postmaster, and for his father, Fred Riggins, who carried the mail to the area for years. A sawmill was formerly operated in Riggins, until an explosion and fire in 1982. Geography Riggins is located at (45.422125, -116.315848). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dave Graham (climber)
David Ethan Graham (born November 10, 1981) is an American professional rock climber. Professing to enjoy bouldering the most, he is one of the elite sport climbers and boulderers of his generation. Graham repeats classic routes or boulder problems as well as performing cutting-edge first ascents. He is known for climbing, in 2005 an boulder problem (''The Story Of Two Worlds'', Cresciano, Switzerland). He is also known for his stance against grade inflation and for his strong anti-chipping ethic. He writes an ongoing blog for the website of Climbing Magazine. Biography Born in Maine, Graham was introduced to climbing in 1997 by one of his skiing teammates. Within a year, he climbed a route, ''The Present''. Quickly, he became one of the strongest climbers in the United States, before moving to Europe in 2005. In 2005, he climbed an boulder problem (''The Story Of Two Worlds'', Cresciano, Switzerland), and his first route (''Coup de Grace'', Val Bavona, Switzerland). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
