Petzl Crew's blog

For their second film, the Les Collets Team stayed with their successful recipe: great climbing sequences (similar to Dosage videos), with an emphasis on climbing, cool images, esthetics and the climbers themselves!

Pour ce deuxième opus, le Team Les Collets ont décidé de rester dans la même logique: filmer une succession de séquences d'escalade (un peu à la manière des Dosages), avec comme ambition de donner la priorité à l'escalade, l'image, l'esthétisme... et bien sûr, aux grimpeurs!

Check out the Petzl Millau Roctrip film, featuring the 90m Infinity Lane routes... 17 minutes of amazing climbing to get you psyched!
For more infos about the movie, photos, wallpapers... Please visit the Petzl website.

Pour la deuxième année consécutive le Petzl Roc Trip fera partie des Vibram Natural Games. L'événement multisports Outdoor rassemblera, autour de Millau, amateurs et sportifs professionnels de l'escalade, du parapente, du VTT de descente, du kayak freestyle et de la slackline.

Le premier topo officiel de St Léger du Ventoux est enfin prêt. Non seulement il contient toutes les voies de St Léger mais en plus il contient les informations remises à jour pour Bédoin "Combe Obscure" et toute la nouvelle falaise de Malaucène.

Sharma onsights two 5.14b's and more...

[updated]
Big Up production report they filmed Chris Sharma sending his project at Clark Mountain! It's called Jumbo Love [5.15b], and it's probably the hardest sport climbing route in the world...

Zillertal RocTrip is over: climbers went back home and the place has been tied up. But the crags and the boulders stay here.

To conclude the trip, Lynn Hill told on stage saturday night: the weather wasn't so nice during this week, but I had a lot of fun climbing here, and I will certainly come back to enjoy the place again.

That's how we choose the locations for the RocTrip at Petzl: Zillertal is a gorgeous valley and a fantastic place for climbing, mountaineering, paragliding, biking... So let's enjoy it, go to Zillertal !

Ewige Jagdründe is a place that has to be earned : you have to cross the fleshy river with water up to your knees, or to warm up on the tyrolean traverse.

But when you're in the place: a sunny meadow with fatty grass to chill out, and trees to hang your hammock on...  Ewige is an invite to rest !

Mmmh ? Climbers ? Oh yeah, you're right, there are also climbers at Ewige, and they're climbing... Yesterday, Gérôme, Chris, Daila, Dany, Markus and many others were here. They worked on several 8-something routes, as usual ;-)

The place is also known as "the two towers". Yes, like in the Lords of Ring... But it's far more welcoming that Tolkien's place. Let's have a look at the pictures. And you can find some outstanding routes rated around 6, right next to the 8 ones.

Beth Rodden completed the first ascent of Meltdown (5.14c) in Yosemite, CA.

She worked on the route for 4 months through the stormy Sierra winter contending with feet of snow. The route is protects completely natural and she placed all of the gear on lead.

I worked harder on this route than any other single pitch climb I have done. Rodden is hesitant to give the route a letter grade, but considering she has redpointed several 5.14a's and did the first ascent of the Optimist (5.14b) in roughly half the time, Meltdown is most likely the hardest climb redpointed by an American woman, and the hardest traditional climb completed in the world by a woman. If it is 5.14c it puts her in an elite category of two or three women ever to have climbed the grade of 5.14c.

See also the news on Alpinist.com.

Mickael Fuselier's balance on the RocTrip in Red River Gorge :

Red River Gorge is obviously the North American hot spot when it comes to sport climbing. This little corner of paradise is located in eastern Kentucky, about two hours from Louisville. The small downside of this place, though, is that there is oil under the ground.

Because of this, the RRGCC (Red River Gorge Climbers' Coalition) bought the land to prevent losing access to the site. Aside from wanting to showcase this magical spot, the aim of this RocTrip was to help the RRGCC by giving them back the cash prizes won by the climbers (excellent concept). The second goal was making the annual Roctoberfest bigger than ever.

Red River Gorge is made up of many crags, and stuff for everyone, from Class 4 to project material. You'll have to search a long time before coming across a bad piece of rock. The rock is sculpted to perfection, and offers one gem after another. The height and overhang of the routes varies from crag to crag (15 to 35 m). After a full-on day, you can go and recover at Miguel's pizzeria, where all the climbers hang out.

This trip was particularly well organized, and stars like Chris Sharma, Dave Graham, Dani Andrada, Liv Sansoz, Emilie Harrington and many others, thrilled the climbers who had come to see the show.

Personally, I enjoyed the atmosphere within the team, and I had tons of fun on this trip. I got to collect a solid bunch of tick marks on about 15 routes, from 8a (13.b) to 8c+ (14.c).

A big thanks to Tony for the belay in Fifty words for pumped. It allowed me to climb confidently through the crux, for which I couldn't clip and in which a fall could have broken my ankles. Thanks also to Petzl for inviting me on this trip.

All the info you need on the Red River Gorge: www.rrgcc.org.

See you !
Mike

Photos © Keith Ladzinski