I will be giving my first slide presentation in 10 years at Neptune Mountaineering at 8PM Thursday March 12, this is in Boulder, Colorado. Paying attendees will receive a raffle ticket for the end-of-evening give-away for a three-pack of Ice-Holdz, these are sweet modular holds for indoor ice-climbing and dry-tooling, I would certainly relish having these Holdz on my wall so whomever wins this is going to be one lucky dog!
The show is entitled My Life as an Ice-Climber: From the Bronze Age to the Ice World Cup, I will attempt to discuss in one-hour my personal experience with the evolution of ice-climbing from my early efforts in the 1970s using primitive wood-handled tools on up through my current interests in competition winter climbing and Bear-Back mixed, obviously this is an enormous amount of ground (and ice) to cover so this one promises to be an insightful ride.
Topics to be covered include 1) How climate change is affecting the winter-climbing game; 2) The role of competition climbing in defining the ethical parameters of winter climbing; 3) The myth of "real" climbing (gravity will always whup-yo-ass); 4) The Mixed Euro-scene and why THEY are so good; 5) Indoor Mixed and the future of the winter game.
Attendees are encouraged to stay after the presentation and air their personal views on spurs, leashes, bolts, competitions, rock n' roll accompanied mixed climbing performances and whatever else burns yer butt. Profanity will not be tolerated but otherwise have-at!
You can bring beer so come early and socialize. ALLEZ!!!
Photos: Left; RCC competing in the 2009 Ouray Ice Festival, the shooter is Rob Fullerton. Right; Rob Cotter on Les Droites North Face, Mont Blanc Massif, 1988. The shooter (was) the late Mark Bebie.
Neptune Show: aftermath...
I had exactly 19 people come to my show, that is 19 paying attendees. "They all came to see you!" Susanne assured me, I am really not sure whether to be depressed or elated. I showed 100 slides, there was some hassle with the connector in that I had neglected to bring mine and the one there was incompatible, so off to the Mac store uptown to buy a $19 connector ( I later packaged this one back up and returned this for a refund, I'm sure come one will get excellent use from buying this later.)
The show went well, I was ruthless in selecting slides and staying on message, next time I would like to have more video footage, no small feat given it has been hard to find partners this winter let alone anyone to film. The show is in the box though and may reappear next autumn in some incarnation.
My own impression was that 1) Ice/mixed climbing is at a nadir here in the US, popular interest has diminished greatly in winter climbing, the major climbing publications rarely cover this subject (except to pronounce this type of climbing dead, of course.) 2) There are too many people/athletes/personalities/whatevers touring and giving shows these days, people have slide-show brain-freeze plus the well-reported on climbers (i.e., the ones in the Patagonia catalogs garner the Lion's-share of notoriety. 3) As some one once told me, Americans go to McDonalds because they don't like surprises, they want their Big Mac the exact same way every time, so doing a very different type of show (as opposed to travelogue, slides/music, etc.) isn't going to go over big.
So what's next? I really can't decide if I had a good season or an awful one, I covered very little new ground in terms of routes or areas visited, no truly hard sends, on the other hand I felt like I climbed well, in particular getting a handle on bare-back technique which will come in handy next winter for competitions, if I do any that is. With that said I had some nice days on the hill, did not sustain any injuries, pulled off a few good sends and did not embarrass myself at Ouray, could I have climbed better?
Yes, absolutely, one can always improve of this I am certain...
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