Dernières News

It is 14h59, Sunday, May 20th, in Oike Park, by the peaceful shores of lake Kawaguchi. As the award ceremony reaches its end, Seiji Okamato and Ryu Kodama, the last two runners, cross the finish line hand-in-hand to a huge round of applause and are welcomed onto the stage by both the organizing committee and the winners of the races. Seiji Okamato proudly shows a bag full of trash he picked up on the trail and carried all the way.

Rifle over the years has become one of the most popular summer destinations in the Western United Sates. The two-mile long canyon is full of variety and a great community of climbers that gather there year after year. Many people are locals, from Carbondale, Glenwood Springs, Boulder, Vail, Grand Junction and, for the most part, make for a great experience. Aside from the people, the area is beautiful, full of lush green vegetation and trees split by a crystal clear stream.

In Florida, "Santa Claus" was getting ready for the upcoming Christmas work rush and brushing up on his rappelling technique at a local shopping mall. But the exercise didn't go exactly as planned. Instead, this poor "Santa" got his beard caught in the descender. We still don't know if he ever made it down..

Last fall, from October 26-30, 2011, more than 600 climbers gathered with our team for Petzl RocTrip China. All participants discovered and enjoyed more than 250 brand new pitches on unbelievable limestone especially prepared for the event. The long-awaited movie has now arrived.

Around the new year, my fiancé, Chris, was writing a long list of his goals and turned to me  "What are your climbing goals?"

"Just one," I replied.  "I want to climb 5.14." 

For me, this would not just be an objective accomplished for the year but – if I could pull it off – a lifetime climbing goal.

Behind every great send, there's a great belayer.
The GRIGRI 2 helps the belayer work in unison with the climber.

Ethan Pringle has been putting some serious effort into Jumbo Love recently. That's the 5.15b "king line" bolted by Randy Levitt and first climbed by Chris Sharma in 2008. Since Sharma's send, no one else has climbed the route, which tracks for 250 feet up the center of the severely overhanging 3rd tier of an area known as Mt. Clark, on the Nevada-California border. Pringle is no stranger to Mt. Clark or to Jumbo Love -- he worked the line with Sharma back in 2007. Now, he's back, and dedicated to sending one of the world's most epic sport climbs.

Macedonia, the new place to be