We were on the North Face of the Eiger. Clint Eastwood was dangling free over an ugly overhang with his rope attached to the end of a ladder that was rigged like a diving board. It protruded about 20 feet over the edge of a rock ledge….
We already introduced their objectives. Now meet the nine teams chasing those summits with all of Mug Stump’s boldness and commitment to light and clean alpinism.
In 1971, a 19-year-old John Bouchard, climbed the 400-foot Black Dike up Cannon Cliff, solo, despite having a stuck rope, one mitten and a broken pick. In his time, a WI4+ was unheard of, and only four years earlier, the hardest “stepless ascent” was Mount Washington’s Pinnacle Gully at WI3+.
Every climber has a different torso length, forearm length, wrist flexibility, posture and middle school softball trauma; everyone’s swing is different. Consequently, the swing of this tool will feel good to some and not to others. The Nomic climbs beautifully for me. It is one of the very few pieces of equipment that actually increases my ability level dramatically, rather than simply making me look the part.
“Chasing the Unknown,” Episode 9 of the Regulators, takes you from the start of the ice season this year in October as my partners and I started hitting the hills in search of ice. It seems like every year we start searching earlier, yet we still expect to find ice somewhere.
The continued search to discover and climb the northernmost rock formations on Earth in Franz Josef Land, Russia
