Just how bleak can a film about adding a new grade to bouldering be? Everybody knows that Nalle sent a 9A/V17 – The Burden of Dreams. And, naturally, there is a film about it. The thing is, though, that this is not like other bouldering films. It is a grim doco about persistence through the emptiness of solitude. It’s a movie about an individual’s frustration in which blips of progress illuminate a stuttering path through a quiet expanse of bad weather…
For the last year or so, VL‘s Simon Madden has been testing the Aweseome Woodys Cliff Board Mini. Here’s how he found it. This thing could just as easily have been called the Cheap Motel Board, the Mining Camp Donger Board or the Airbnb Holiday Board – but it’s called the Awesome Woodys Cliff Board Mini. The VL Massive and its sometimes large entourage have used the Cliff Board at loads of different crags: under the hard routes of Nowra, to get things moving in the freezing…
Since the invention of breathable fabrics like GoreTex there hasn’t been many radical new innovations in the world of waterproof jackets. Instead, jacket technology has been about smaller innovations – progressively lighter and more breathable fabrics, better designs and manufacturing processes. Built for alpine climbing, the fully waterproof, breathable Fuse Uno Jacket from The North Face (TNF) represents another incremental step in this process. The Uno’s innovation is in the design and manufacture process, a method TNF has dubbed FuseForm: where…
Ollie Kerr reviews the new Petzl Hirundos sport climbing harness I don’t often buy new harnesses – certainly not often enough. My second harness was purchased after my first harness failed. Literally failed. I was seconding my partner up Infinity at Frog Buttress, hauling a rope up behind me. My good friends on the ground, impressed at my climbing prowess, thought they would make the route a challenge by tying my pack to the haul rope. For added challenge, they…
Ocun is a brand that is probably unfamiliar to many Australian climbers, but it’s just recently become available here. We asked Nati local and climbing instructor, Adam Demmert to take the Ocun WeBee Quattro for a test run. This is what he had to say. As a self-professed gear freak and proponent of comfort when climbing, the Ocun WeBee Quattro harness was on my radar to get my hands on or, more to the point, get my waist into. The…
Snakes in the Jungle, Special Operations in War & Business by Jim Truscott (Zeus Publications, Gold Coast, 2015) Jim Truscott’s Snakes in the Jungle is one of the most unusual climbing books you’ll ever read, and that’s because it is far more than a climbing book. There are no doubt very few people who have succeeded – much less even tried — to put together careers in mountaineering, the SAS (Special Air Service) branch of the Australian defence force, and big business….
