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So how do I review the best competition of the year so far? First, if you haven’t seen it go straight to the IFSC website and watch the replay! Assuming you know the bones of the result here’s some meat. Slovenia is a funny place, nestled next to Italy it is a small, heavily forested [...]

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Last night after work I took my son down to our local park. It was cold and windy, and with the end of daylight saving it was already getting dark, the ominous Melbourne sky above making it even darker; the playground was deserted. We did our thing. In between chasing him around pretending to be [...]

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Firstly, who doesn’t want to see Taipan – majestically bathed in golden light – and hero-to-climbers Kilian Fischhubber latching a double dyno on his not-so-wonderfully named Southern Delight (34/8c+) extension of the wonderfully-named The Invisible Fist of Professor Hiddich Smiddich? The footage is outstanding, it sits as a fitting climax to the film and generates a soaring mix [...]

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This season has already been one of the most productive of recent years on Taipan Wall, with the ascent of one of the wall’s major long-time projects, Orange Desire (32), by visiting Frenchman, Quentin Chastagnier. Well, now Taipan has another major addition, Trouser Snake (33) by the Blue Mountains’ Lee Cossey. Trouser Snake is the [...]

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The third round of the 2013 Bouldering World Cup season was held in the Austrian Mountain Village of Kitzbuehel over the weekend. Vertical Life’s official European correspondent, Eddie Fowke, was again pointing his camera at the action. Right from the get-go of the qualification round it was clear that everything wasn’t going to script in Kitzbuehel, with [...]

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Phil Goebel muses on indoor climbing and calls for participation in the Victorian State Titles, which are being held on 4 May Most of us have a love-hate relationship with indoor climbing. I love climbing regardless of the terrain, I love hanging out with friends while covered in chalk and tying into a rope and I [...]

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In all the brouhaha of the last couple of weeks VL missed some important news. Last Friday Natimuk local and poster child for the Nu New Wave, Al Robertson, sent his project on Voodoo Buttress. The line is on some prime, highly-visible real estate and many had looked up covetously at the beautiful rock on the blank [...]

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Maybe I am getting old, but it seems to me that our obsession with making climbing gear lighter has gone too far. I say ‘maybe it is because I am getting older’, because when you get older a number of things happen: a. you get grumpier, b. you get hairier everywhere (except your head), and [...]

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On April 11th, Quentin Chastagnier (a direct bloodline descendent of the great Fred Astaire) from Grenoble, France, set out on Australia’s best wall – Taipan – with an array of cut rope slings, locking gates, and the occasional quickdraw. Snaking his way up the plumb unclimbed line above Mirage in conditions as moist as an [...]

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Vertical Life has just learnt that one of Taipan Wall’s finest open projects has finally fallen to a visiting Frenchman (the horror!*). Long known as the ‘Mirage Project’, the line, originally bolted by Julian Saunders (and tried by a number of strong climbers), goes straight up the middle of one of the best bits of [...]

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