first off: congrats to daniel !!! these are some impressive ascents up in the Silvapark. Slightly overhanging walls on small crimps, ( incuts) is defintely your style. Your personal grade for „Memento" just shows this, in my opinion. Let`s play this game say: „Memento" is 8b. So i have to rethink my grades for example „Golden Gate" It can`t be same league as „Memento". I did this many years before, and cannot be compared. All confirmed 8a`s must go down too and are maybe 7c than. ( shining, x-ray, zwidawurzn, rising sun....usw) compared to memento.

i tried to grade my problems in comparision to other problems i did in those daysJ if we consider memento as 8b, i have to change my personal grades for quite a long list of problems in the past decade. It starts with the meanwhile classic „la proue" ( ticino) , which is still an 8b problem. It took me some tries on one of my best bouldering days ever. Also veccio leone , steppenwolf, pura vida .....should be 8a. i also didn`t find so hard moves „New base line", entlinge, from the dirt, kings of sonlerto which are 8a+ now. Anam cara was a personal highlight after a long break because of finger problems. It felt way harder than anything else i did before. So 8b+ is a good number for this pittbull, but i think we cant compare this with „from the dirt grows the flowers". I always knew, that i can do „from the dirt", because the single moves felt never hard to me, compared to „anam cara".

@ Christian Mengel

it was just a mistake on my website. „kings of sonlerto" should have been ticked as 8b+ the knee less ascent is a bit harder, than the original way, and since some strong climbers tried the king, i left it as 8b+ . BUT also here: None of the moves can be compared with memento. So it must be easier than memento, whoich makes it an 8a+. I could extend this thoughts now to magic wood, where i opened most of the harder lines from early 2002-2004. .....but i think it`s getting boring.

To come to an end:

With our personal grades, we finally lost the original meaning of the grading system. Which is good in a way, because it makes no sense in bouldering any more and people realize that there are other aspects in bouldering too.

I cleaned probably 600 boulders in magic wood, ticino, silvapark and all over the world, now I see people passing by the greatest lines….following their guide books, and only discuss if the grade is right or not? It wasn’t the grade why my friends and i brushed all these boulders. Is the grade and the time it took to repeat a problem really the only interesting thing in BOULDERING ???????

The vision of Christopher Columbus
by Bernd Zangerl

Unfortunately, not many Climbers are infected with the Columbus gene anymore. What counts nowadays are the right numbers in the guidebook or if the “+” behind the 8A has it`s authorization. Everything has to be compared, everything must be measured. Some are collecting cars, money, victories….material things,  others are collecting boulder problems and get their points on the scorecards. This “hunting and collecting” mentality is just a mirror image of our society. But this happens to every sport.

Climbing and bouldering are mainstream now, with all it’s “outgrowths”. At the end this is just one side of the sport, and is there not a little challenge in every family? I was a bit disappointed the beginning of all this. I cleaned probably 600 boulders in magic wood, ticino, silvapark and all over the world, and then I see people passing by the greatest lines….following their guide books, and only discuss if the grade is right or not?  It wasn’t the grade why my friends and i brushed all these boulders. Is the grade and the time it took to repeat a problem really the only interesting thing in BOULDERING ??????? I don’t think so…….

NORTHERN BEATS:

This is a for all people out there, which are still effected with the Columbus geneJ Together with my friends Justin Hawkins, Torstein Eide, Belinda Weiss and new “Newcomer” Therese Johansen we have been looking for new “inspiration” along the beautiful coastline of Norway. It was an adventurous Boat Trip, starting in Trondheim. We found perfect granit & magic lines on these Islands out there. Of course, you also see “Norways Classic Boulderproblems”  and some of the hardest testpieces. This is the first bouldering movie, from the brilliant JOSH KNOX. Coming from the scater and snowboarscene ( he also filmed with Shaun White ) …..he shows this sport from a different perspective.

www.northernbeatsthemovie.com

By Jamie Emerson from his RMNP and Mt Evans new topo

On a beautiful spring day in 2011, Dave Graham and I hopped in his car and drove into an obscure canyon south of Estes Park on the hunt for new rock. Dave was intrumental in the development of RMNP and did the first ascent of many of the hardest problems there. We had a chance to talk about his involvment in this development, how he thinks it has changed over the years and what it meant for him to discover such an amazing place at the age of 18.

Jamie: What does Chaos Canyon mean to you?

Dave: Well, what shapes the opportunities for bouldering in Colorado? Why do things happen here when they happen? We talk about why the development of the Park was integral to American bouldering in a sense that it showed people that just because Chris Sharma didn’t think it was impressive, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be a haven for people who are interested in proving their climbing, and dedicating themselves to something they loved. Essentially what Chaos Canyon was, for a small group of people, it was a very inspiring thing. And that’s all it took for that one group of people to come together, and for Chaos Canyon to be perceived as the hip, cool thing to do.
Now, ironically, the way things concrete themselves in climbing is that multiple generations appreciate something, right? We’re still in the position where we just went to Castle Rocks and City of Rocks, in Idaho, where people have been climbing for 20 years and looking for boulders.
We’re so far misplaced in our perception of what is new. It’s just re-approaching the same things that we see over and over again. That’s a crucial statement right there. It’s really one of the big benchmarks of climbing, that’s existential. The observation of something over the course of generations. Each different group of climbers, and each different school of climbers will approach things in a different way.
It’s interesting, because I came out from Maine, and got together with some people from Colorado and observed something, and then defined that it was good. This became accepted, and people got to work, on their own levels. Me getting to work, being from New England and having experience only in developing because that’s all there really was, other than traditional climbing. When we came to the Park I mean all Luke (Parady) and I did was put up new boulder problems, because there weren’t any boulder problems there. We didn’t know the grades, we didn’t really care. At that point in our experience, when we were 18 years old, in the Park for the first time, we were like “Wow! We can find all kinds of new problems and put them up! Let’s do it!”

Jamie: Early on you visited the mecca of American bouldering, Hueco Tanks, in Texas. How did that first trip to Hueco formulate your opinion of the park?

Dave: I likened it to a Hueco of gniess. A Rumney-style bouldering area. Like Rumney rock, but polished, and the size of a Hueco Mountain. Like a mountain up inside a canyon. Imagination-land. It was top notch!

Jamie: At that time, being 18 and having been only to Hueco and New England, did you think it would become such an iconic area for American bouldering?

Dave: We didn’t come from a place of trying to repeat things. There was nothing established so we thought let’s put some things up. At first we thought “Is this cool?” “Do you think people will think this is cool?”
I grew up with ocean, wooded hills and snow. For me to come to Chaos Canyon for the first time, it was my first time at altitude, it was my first time in the Rocky Mountains, it was my first time in the West. It was AMAZING! It was this extremely beautiful, outrageously cool thing that I had never seen before. It was beyond cool. It was climbing at its best because it was this extreme destination with an extreme amount of rock.

Jamie: In terms of the hiking, the poor landings, the altitude and the weather, it is striking, because no one had ever done anything like this before.

Dave: No one had ever been like “This is SICK.” and I was like “I am pretty sure this is SICK,” and I don’t think anybody is going to be able to tell me it’s not. And that is when I fell in love with developing rock climbing because looking around Chaos Canyon I found more projects than I could do in a lifetime and I still probably won’t do all the ones I found in the first season.

Jamie: Most of the first year revolved around climbing in Lower Chaos. Did you hike into Upper Chaos that first season?

Dave: Yeah a little bit. I didn’t find Jade that year, but I made it to that second level, and I was blown away. The next season, when I came back to develop Upper Chaos I was trying to tell people at that point about the potential. I was immediately met with that same thing I’ve always been met with, which is people telling me that it is not that cool. That they don’t want to go.

Jamie: When I moved to Colorado, I moved here because of the Park. I went there in 2001 for the first time and I thought it was amazing. I think I probably saw what you saw, this incredible place in the mountains with sick boulders and I thought this was a perfect expression of rock climbing. The scenery is incredible...

Dave: You have to hike to it, it’s located in a great place, it’s aesthetic, its motivating, their are people here that are cool. These names are important: Herm Fiessner, Theo Merrin, Brian Capps, and Nick Sagar, led by Brian, because he was the one who I stayed with. Brian really introduced me to this place, and I must thank him. It is important to recognize that I would never have seen the Park with out Brian Capps. I was so fortunate that he was so open with me as a young strong climber. Not being all competitive, but showing me things. So I was lucky that people were generous with me and shared things with me. Much like Lincoln Lake, how you (Jamie) were so open about that. And it saddens me now, in this day and age that people leave the work of developing new boulders to just a select few. That they won’t even share the experience to go look at things, to take their time to go hike around. The real spirit behind the Park was shared among all these individuals to develop something amazing that existed, that was there, in nature, and to take full advantage of what we had been given. Not in a religous way, but if God’s country existed, this is it, and we don’t have to appreciate God to be in God’s country. We were in one of the most beautiful places you could possibly be in, doing something special that was temporary, and we were all aware of what it would be someday because we weren’t naive and oblivious to human culture and society. We knew how Boulder functioned. With the grades, we were very open. It could be this, it could be that. We don’t know. We were very open about projects. We were very open about every single type of rock climb. We weren’t criticising people’s efforts. It was a very positive experience. And that, right there is something very archaic in the Boulder climbing scene. So there were all these thing that went into making it very special. And it was because of people’s attitudes and their willingness to go out and do things together, that they wouldn’t normally do.

Jamie: You’ve been coming to the Park since 2000, and it’s hard for me not to notice some of the changes we’ve both seen. Certainly in the physical nature of the area, but also in peoples attitudes about what the Park means. Let’s talk about some of the changes you’ve seen in the last 11 years.

Dave: One big change is the ambitions of the people going there today don’t seem so hinged on the comaraderie. It seems that their goals aren’t to experience some form of comaraderie and to have an adventure with their friends. I feel like the goals have been much more influenced by the gym climbing scene. There was an age where it started to become more important to go up to the Park to send and if you weren’t going up to the Park to send then you weren’t doing anything. I feel like it was really important to recognize the era when you just went up and tried projects and you just worked on things. It wasn’t very productive, but at the same time there wasn’t anybody judging you. There was a shift when the climbing scene in Boulder become so full of climbers that there started to be this neighborhood watch. Like who’s doing what and when and how. It seemed much more critical than constructive. In the beginning, I feel like the things that were the most important to the climbers changed. The values that they judged their day on changed. It was more like “Did you send two 8Bs today?” It seemed like if you didn’t send two 8B’s then you had a reason to be bummed. Back in the day there was never a reason to be bummed walking out of the Park because it was such a beautiful place, we were just like “Wow, this is such a gorgeous place” and there was no where to report it anyway, and nobody even really wrote an article about it. We didn’t get press on the Park because it wasn’t cool, and it seemed to go unnoticed. Same with Ticino, in Switzerland.

Jamie: How do you feel visiting the Park now?

Dave:I get very frustrated that no one is interested in looking for new boulders. People just want to repeat stuff. I just want to try all of the new projects and everyone is just like “I just want to repeat this thing man” and then I get kinda bummed. There are so many amazing things to go do and it is so motivating. If I go with the right people then it’s just like the old days!

RAMÓN JULIÁN PUIGBLANQUÉ

All about his second World Championship title & the La Sportiva Competition Award

Interview and pictures: Ignacio Sandoval Burón // Translation: Ignacio Sandoval Burón & Karisse Marie Fa

ARCO BOULDERING WORLD CHAMPIONS 2011

Photos by Ignacio Sandoval Burón

	Sasha Digiulian on problem #2.
	Same climber, same problem.
	Akiyo Noguchi toping out problem #2.
	Juliane Wurm on problem #2.
	The winner, Anna Stöhr, trying to get relaxed just before entering the arena for problem #3.
	Sasha Digiulian doing the same.
	Anna Stöhr fighting the #3.
	Olga Bibik on problem #3.
	Making the lactate go down or imagining herself having wings...
	Sasha on problem #3.
	Anna Stöhr knowing herself World Champion after toping out the last problem.
	Yana Cheresneva trying to find the balance before the big jump to the hold on the top left corner.
	Juliane Wurm.
	The female podium.
	First male competitor to enter the boulders. Cedric Lachat was so nervous that he accidentaly stained his nose with chalk in a Mohican style.
	Trying the first of the male boulders.
	Kilian Fishuber on the same movement.
	Slap to the big volume.
	Going 'agro'
	The technical upper part of the same problem.
	Rustam Gelmanov.
	The World Champion, Dimitry Sharafutdinov.
	Cedric Lachat on problem #2.
	The german, Thomas Tauporn on problem #2.
	Kilian on the same one.
	Cedric reaching the top hold on problem #3.
	Adam Ondra fighting his way up on the last problem.
	Dimitry Sharafutdinov on the final problem, #4.
	The male podium.