Birth Pains of New Nations - Pete Oxley
Factor Two
The whims and motivations of climbers really are another world to the person in the street. Understanding them is crossing a threshold, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief to start to see the world of risk, adventure, suffering and more in a different light. Those thresholds exist within climbing too. One of them is understanding the obsessive new-router. I think we can all appreciate the buzz of discovering something no-one else has done. We could probably imagine cleaning something, maybe even drilling some bolts, although I bet few of us have actually done it. Even fewer can...
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Hateja - Louise Thomas and Glenda Huxter
Factor Two
If you had to select your late 90s dream team for a British, all-female Himalayan big wall trip, you couldn’t go far wrong with this one. Glenda Huxter was onsighting E7, Kath Pyke had extensive experience on rock and alpine routes, and Louise Thomas brought even more big wall and expedition experience to the team. Their 1997 objective was a first ascent on Beatrice, by chance the first Himalayan Peak named after a woman: British mountaineer Beatrice Tomasson. The south-east face of Beatrice towers over the Charakusa glacier in the K7 region of the Karakoram. The base of the granite wall...
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Finding the Balance - Katherine Schirrmacher
Factor Two
We all get enjoyment from climbing for different reasons. For many of us those reasons change over time, according to our geography, time, money and other pressures in our lives. I’ve read Katherine Schirrmacher’s blog for years, and she’s unusually good at expressing all of those little things that can affect your motivation or self belief. Like many of us, she was excited for the adventure of trad climbing in her early days, but she became an all-rounder; sport climbing, bouldering and competing as part of the British team. Being good at climbing can be a really satisfying thing, but...
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El Capitan - a film by Fred Padula
Factor Two
In the spring of 1968 San Francisco film maker, Fred Padula, drove into the Yosemite Valley and gazed up at El Capitan. He had been approached by one of his film students, Glen Denny, a talented climber and photographer, to advise on making a film about climbing The Nose. Denny had been part of the team that made the third ascent of the route. He’d also made the first ascent of the Dihedral Wall and was well connected in big wall circles. The concept was to create a film that would be as awe-inspiring as climbing The Nose. The logistics of such a film felt impossible to Padula at first. The...
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Hard Grit - Rich Heap, Niall Grimes and Seb Grieve
Factor Two
When it was released in 1998, Hard Grit gave us an insight into something we didn’t often see - the actual ascents of the hardest, most dangerous lines on grit. In an era before everyone had a smartphone, before digital photography was even mainstream, many of the photos we saw in the magazines were staged. The hardest lines captured on video were often toproped reconstructions. Hard Grit changed that, by virtue of a few lucky coincidences and a lot of hard work. Director Rich Heap had helped Johnny Dawes with some of the editing on his film Best Forgotten Art. Johnny left for a roadtrip in...
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A Play for Voices - Helen Mort and Anna Fleming
Factor Two
When you look at the books on a shelf of mountaineering literature one thing is quickly apparent: the vast majority are written by men. The same is true with the episodes I’ve produced for Factor Two. The simple fact is that there have historically been more men engaged in the kind of adventures that we choose to tell those high profile stories about. The kind of stories I’ve sought out have often fitted a similar mould. I came into this episode with a simplistic question. Would those stories be different if the protagonists were women? Back in 1987 Dave Cook addressed the International...
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Brave New World - Tom Livingstone and Twid Turner
Factor Two
It’s hard to be truly disconnected these days. Even in the weirdness of isolation over the past few months many of us have been working from home, constantly bothered by the connections around us. Sometimes it’s just a little too much. I’ve missed the isolation of the mountains, but even they aren’t as isolated as they used to be. In most places in the UK you’re not far from a phone signal. If you’re calling for help that’s great, but if you’re trying to escape it’s not so good. There’s the expectation of contact now. In expedition terms this can mean live-streaming your...
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Deep Play - Neil Gresham and Dr Rebecca Williams
Factor Two
"I climb better when I'm scared." I've heard this quite a few times. I even thought it was true about myself for a while in my earlier climbing career, but it surely can't be true? After speaking with Hazel Findlay about maintaining the bubble of a flow state in the last episode, there was one part of her account which reminded me of something else. Something different. Hazel's story was about maintaining concentration and avoiding falling back into a distracted mind while climbing at her limit. Magic Line has spaced and difficult to place gear, but the physical danger was a small part of the...
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Walking the Magic Line - Hazel Findlay and Dr Rebecca Williams
Factor Two
Flow is a concept that can divide in climbing. For Dave Thomas it was the joyous experience that removed him from other problems in life. For Mina Leslie-Wujastyk it was a performance tool. Mina told me that a lot of her understanding of flow had come from conversations with Hazel Findlay and it had helped her to develop a different mindset both on and off the rock. Off the back of these interviews I wanted to know more, both to understand flow as a scientific concept and as a more ethereal tool for self fulfillment. That journey took me down some interesting paths in climbing, from the...
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The Moment You Doubt - Ben Bransby
Factor Two
Many of the stories in Factor Two feature the same scenario - What next? You always imagine ticking the big goal might be enough, but it rarely is. For Ben Bransby and Jvan Tresch it seemed obvious what was next. Patagonia has long been the most difficult and revered home to big walls in the world. Notorious weather systems, complex peaks, difficult routes and tricky conditions create a mix where simply completing anything in a season is an achievement. In their first season in 2003 they managed just that. On route, accompanied by Adam Long. In fact, they were probably the only team to top out...
info_outlineBack in 1998 Leo Houlding and Patch Hammond achieved something almost unthinkable – a near onsight ascent of El Capitan.
They were just 18, had no big wall experience and headed to Yosemite without any great ambitions for the big faces. They had intended to try to headpoint some bold, hard new lines, but quickly discovered that the sort of lines they were after didn’t exist in Yosemite.
When they arrived there were just two free routes on the mai wall of the Captain. The Salathé Wall, freed by Paul Piana and Todd Skinner in 1988, and The Nose, freed by Lynn Hill in 1993. But the mid 90s saw a new team emerge – the Huber brothers. In the few years before Leo and Patch’s trip the Hubers had started to establish themselves as a free climbing force in the valley.
In 1998 Alex and Thomas Huber made the first free ascent of El Niño. The Hubers employed seriously redpointing tactics to achieve their route, preparing each pitch meticulously before making their ascent. Taking Patch and Leo under their wing they encouraged them to try the route. It was still well chalked, the hardest climbing was in the first few pitches and their hand drawn topo was still fresh.
After borrowing the gear they would need and making up their big wall tactics as best they could over 5 days, Leo and Patch stood on the summit. Leo had managed to onsight all but one pitch, with Patch freeing many as well.
It was an astonishing achievement at the time, but even now El Capitan awaits a true onsight ascent.
Factor Two is brought to you by Wil Treasure and UKClimbing.com
Music credits:
Plantation Jason Shaw (audionautix.com)
Solo Acoustic Blues Jason Shaw (audionautix.com)
Porch Blues Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)
Subdivision of the Masses Philipp Weigl
Brookes Kai Engel
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/