Rock Climbing News – February 2014

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 Friday, 28 February 2014 Andy Kirkpatrick returns in Spring 2014 with his fifth UK lecture tour. Since his last tour in Autumn 2011 Andy has been busy climbing all over the world. This time around the maverick mountaineer will be talking about climbing El Cap with his 13-year-old daughter (as featured in CBBC’s My Life series), revisiting Norway’s Troll Wall, his latest winter expedition to attempt the North Face of the … Read Full Story Eiger and his current trip to Antarctica to climb Ulvetanna. As usual, it’s likely to include some very fast talking, some possibly not very pc jokes and some pretty epic pictures. “Never has trying not to die on a mountain seemed such a good laugh!” THE HIGHLAND NEWS DATES & VENUES MARCH Tue 4 BUXTON Opera House 0845 127 2190 Thu 6 SHEFFIELD Sheffield University Students Union 0114 222 8777 Fri 7 KINROSS Loch Leven Assembly Hall 01738 477018 Sat 8 EDINBURGH EICA 0131 333 6333 Sun 9 INVERNESS Eden Court 01463 239841 Mon 10 ABERDEEN The Lemon Tree 01224 641122 Mon 24 SALFORD The Lowry 0843 208 6010 Wed 26 DURHAM The Gala 03000 266600 Thu 27 DERBY The Assembly Rooms 01332 255 800 Fri 28 CAERNARFON Galeri 01286 685222 Sat 29 BRECON Theatr Brychieniog 01874 611622 Mon 31 BIRMINGHAM Town Hall 0121 345 0600 APRIL Sat 5 LANCASTER The Dukes 01524 598500 Tue 15 SHREWSBURY Theatre Severn 01743 281281 Wed 16 RADLETT Radlett Centre 01923 857546

For more information please visit http://www.speakersfromtheedge.com/theatre-tours/andy-kirkpatrick-inappropriate-climbing.

 Tuesday, 25 February 2014 The Banff Film Festival is once again touring the country with a selection of some of the world’s best new climbing and adventure films. The Banff Tour has 56 stops this year including 12 new communities. Come and see why more than 400,000 people head to screenings across the globe to catch up with friends and get psyched for adventures in the year ahead.

As well as seeing a

… Read Full Story mazing films, you can also win some great prizes from Tour partners including Jottnar, Black Diamond, Keen, Cotswold Outdoor, Osprey and Sea to Summit. There is also a free Clif Bar for everyone in the audience. This year’s climbing films feature a swag of award winning films – including the best of the Reel Rock 8 climbing films as well as winter surfing in Norway, wingsuit flying in China and the alps, whitewater kayaking in Mexico, mountain biking and freestyle skiing. You can check out the trailer and all the films that will be showing at http://banff-uk.com DATES AND VENUES March 1 – Plaza Community Cinema, Liverpool 4 – Lady Mitchell Hall, Cambridge 5 to 15 – Union Chapel, London 18 – Komedia, Bath 20 – Electric Cinema, Bridport 21 – Hall for Cornwall, Truro 22 – City Hall, Salisbury 26 – Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells 27 – Grand Pavilion Porthcawl,Porthcawl 28 – The Ffwrnes, Llanelli 29 – Cheltenham Town Hall, Cheltenham April 2 – Corn Exchange, Exeter 3 – Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne Minister 4 – Lighthouse, Poole 5 – Theatre 1, UEA, Norwich 8 – The Torch Theatre, Milford Haven 9 – Victoria Rooms, Bristol 10 – Victoria Rooms, Bristol 11 – Concert Hall – Brighton Dome,Brighton 12 – Gulbenkian Cinema, Canterbury 24 – Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate 25 – Playhouse, Whitley Bay 26 – Princess Alexandra Auditorium, Yarm May 4 – Everyman Theatre, Cork 6 – The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny 8 – Town Hall Theatre, Galway 9 – Theatre at the Mill, Belfast 10 – The Helix, Dublin MORE INFORMATION If you’d like to book tickets, see more information, watch the Trailer – visit http://banff-uk.com/.

For more information, visit www.ukclimbing.com.

 Monday, 24 February 2014 Youth Color Climbing Festival – Imst/Tirol 2014 will be held in June this year. Event details as follows: Date: 07th – 08th June 2014 Place: Kletterzentrum Imst Event Program: Friday, 06th June 2014: 5 p.m to 8 p.m: Registration in the Cafe Susi/Climbing gym Saturday,07th June 2014: 08.00 a.m.: Climbing Hall will be open

08.45 a.m.:

… Read Full Story Forerunning of the routes (outdoor/indoor) 09.00 a.m.: Start with the competition – all details depends of the number of registrated athletes – each competitor has to climb a lot of routes 07.00 p.m.: Climbing Hall will be closed Sunday,08th June 2014: 08.00 a.m.: Climbing Hall will be open 08.45 a.m.: Forerunning of the routes (outdoor/indoor) 09.00 a.m – 2.00 p.m.: Start of the second part of the competition 03.00 p.m.: Trophies or super final – if necessary Who can participate? Category “children” (2003/2004) and category “pupil 1“ (2001/2002) Parents must allowed this participation and the kids must have their own climbing equipment! All participants must show their passport at the registration!

For more information, visit http://egw.ifsc-climbing.org/2014/14_JS_YC.pdf.

 Friday, 21 February 2014 Last week, the untimely death of 43-year old Jay Renneberg stripped the California climbing community of one of its most dynamic personalities.

“A man of full-throttle passions,” in the words of his longtime friend Dave Johnson, Renneberg was once clocked doing 107 miles per hour—on a water ski. Renneberg conducted drives to the crags at similar velocities, and he balanced his respons

… Read Full Story ibilities as vice president of BARE-CO., a multi-million-dollar tractor-parts company, with high-volume soloing binges at Lover’s Leap, often done at night, the cracks and eyebrows of the Leap lit by the dancing beam of his headlamp. A self-made man, Renneberg won financial independence at a young age, then went utterly destitute—“living in my car broke” as he described it—only to re-emerge in a totally different industry and win back his financial security. With casual élan, Jay could juggle fire sticks while riding a unicycle, entertain a restaurant of strangers, romp up world-class granite, dead-center a long-range bull’s eye with a high powered rifle, convulse a crowded crag with hysterical laughter, and conduct high-stakes business. None of his myriad friends would have thought it unusual to find him doing several of those things simultaneously. Despite the attention he’d given to achieving financial stability, Jay considered time his most valuable commodity. “Every day I work to own more of it,” he wrote on Facebook, with a wish that “more people shared the value that it is what you DO in life that matters, not what you have. I have difficulties remembering the specifics about a new Porsche that I owned; but I can recall the exact details of my first rock climb 24 years ago.” Jay grew up the Sacramento area, where he lived most of his life. In 1988, as a teenager working at Sierra Outfitters, he came under the wing of Dave Stam, one of the founding members of the loosely organized Ghoulwe Mountaineering Club. (The club’s oddball name springs from an accidental, beer-fueled mashup of “couloir” and “gully.”) Johnson and Stam both remember Jay as something of a club mascot, and for more than 25 years he was a lynchpin of the club’s adventurous and social activities. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jay hooked up with Jon Bowlin. The two of them founded a successful business—Bungee Jumping Systems—that was at the vanguard of bringing bungee jumping to the United States. Those were wild times for Jay. He worked at a climbing store during the day; at night, he led commando bungee-jumping expeditions to the high bridges of the Sierra foothills. He made Mexico’s first bungee jump—into Copper Canyon. At a Sacramento Kings’ game, Jay bungeed from the roof and plucked a can of soda from the floor at the nadir of his first bounce. Dressed in a tuxedo, Jay bungeed from the end of a crane mounted to the roof of Sacramento’s 423-foot tall Wells Fargo Building just before the building’s completion. Bowlin BASE jumped off behind him. Jay cut short his own BASE jumping after Bowlin’s fatal accident in 1993, and in 1995 Jay vanished from the climbing scene. Few Ghoulwes saw him for the next decade. He’d gone domestic, helping his new wife, Jeanette, raise her four children from a former relationship. Jay returned to climbing in 2006. With a vengeance. “Jay was high-octane,” says Charlie Downs, one of his regular partners. “People either instantly liked him, or else found him totally overwhelming. There wasn’t much middle ground. “When Ron Vardanega and I started hanging out with Jay again, we immediately started climbing a lot more. He brought out the best in you as a climber. He didn’t necessarily push the grades, but he pushed the volume. I went from doing one route a day to doing three, four or five, the whole time laughing at Jay’s hilarious banter.” With Jeanette, Jay climbed in Yosemite, Tuolumne, the Tahoe area, and throughout the High Sierras, aiming to acquire the skills needed to climb the Nose of El Capitan, a goal they accomplished in 2009. Unfortunately, their marriage disintegrated a few years later. Jay’s enthusiasm for an objective was infectious. “Most climbers say, “Well, yeah, that could be fun, we should do that sometime,” explains Dave Johnson. “With Jay, it was like ‘Yeah, we could go this weekend, but what about now?’” Charlie Downs had always been amazed at Jay’s ability to get things done. “He’d get excited about something, and then he’d go after it like he was digging a posthole. He’d go to great depths pursuing a subject he wanted to learn about. He was an extremely intelligent guy, and I’m convinced he could have turned himself into a heart surgeon if he put his mind to it.” After the Nose, Jay started competitive sniper shooting and as Ron Vardanega describes it, “in typical Jay style, he became so good so fast that the local shooting club amended their by-laws so that Jay could join. He hadn’t been competing long enough for the previous rules. He quickly became a national competitor.” Jay epitomized the words of Tennyson, a man who “ever with a frolic welcome took the thunder and the sunshine.” But he only ever shared the sunshine. He seldom discussed any of his life’s struggles. He kept those bottled inside, which may have been the root of his undoing, for as gregarious and open-handed an individual as Jay could be, he was also prone to long disappearances, and during them, none of his friends would see him. “If you needed help, he was the guy, but there was some kind of loneliness to him, too, in his DNA,” says Dave Johnson. Jay died on the morning of January 29, 2014. Details of his death haven’t been released. “Jay wasn’t the kind of guy to seek help,” says Charlie Downs. “In a way, he was extremely private. He really resisted anybody reaching out. He wouldn’t let us touch him.” Jay instantly charmed and engaged children, and he stayed involved in their lives. One of the many young people profoundly influenced by Jay’s life is Ron Vardanega’s 19-year old daughter, Kristen. Jay’s death inspired her to write: “We should strive to appreciate as many days as we can, and to remember the extent of which our individual lives are valued by others. Remember that you are loved, and even if sometimes it doesn’t seem like it, your ripple can cause waves.” Jay is survived by his father, Bob, a sister, Lana Albertson, and legions of friends. Remembrance details: there will be a visitation on Wednesday, February 5, 2014, from 4:00-7:00 pm at Mount Vernon Memorial Park, 8201 Greenback Lane, Fair Oaks, California and a funeral on Thursday, February 6 at the same location, at 2:00 pm. The Ghoulwe Mountaineering Club plans a Jay Renneberg memorial sometime this spring or early summer, probably at Lover’s Leap. Details forthcoming on Supertopo and Facebook.

source: www.rockandice.com

 Wednesday, 19 February 2014 Join Parenting Diabetic Kids on a free afternoon of rock climbing for kids and teens with type 1 diabetes and their siblings. There will be educational sessions for parents and guardians while kids climb. Steve Richert from LivingVertical (http://livingvertical.org/) will be showing his inspirational documentary Project 365 that chronicles the 365 days in a row he spent climbing while managing hi … Read Full Story s type 1 diabetes. Steve will be available for a question and answer session after the film. Absolutely no previous climbing experience is necessary. We will have Rock Type 1 volunteers and gym staff on hand to show you the ropes. Climbing passes and gear rental are free of charge to event participants. The event will be held at: Rock Spot Climbing 1174 Kingstown Road South Kingstown, RI 02879 Sunday, March 9, 2014 from 4:00 PM to 7:30 PM (EDT)

For more information, visit http://forum.parentingdiabetickids.com.