Sandthrax Video 10-11-12

[Brian in SLC]

Ha! Squamish. That's a friend of mine who's filiming...hilarious!

Poor Cedar...!

[ratagonia]

Hard to find folks who've both done Sandthrax, and, done a vetted OW in a climbing area at a certain grade. Be fun to sic some of the OW masters on it and get their take. There's a few floating around and some that might take up the challenge.

I've done both... but, yeah, 20 years apart. My best efforts being Crack of Fear on the Twin Owls (1988) and the Hollow Flake on the Big Stone (1994?). I got up both of those, free; one of em even "on lead", if you wanna call that "on lead".

Not like I do rated climbs any more. But, after aiding as high as a #5 camalot gets you, I thought it was hard 5.9 or easy 5.10 to get up the next two feet. Skinny squeeze at that point, rather than OW. After that, cake.

I disagree with a previous poster's description. It does not have a sense of exposure. It is just off vertical, so it does not try to spit you out. The problem is making progress. It has one prominent foothold that gets you up the first 5 feet. After that, there are no extraneous holds, inside or out. The size is just wrong. You can get a hand/fist stack at full extension in the back, which or course does absolutely no good. It is a corner crack, and the outside corner is smoothly rounded making it useless. Couldn't get anything with my feet.

People who have successfully free climbed it went over-the-top (Steve Brezovec, 11c bridging (and he is short!)) or used hip flexibility (cheaters!) to stem off the wall behind the climber (too far away for me to use). Someone who is a better climber than me (not hard) and especially someone skinny could probably thrutch up it at easy 5.11 level.

Tom

[flatiron]

The "Wide Boyz" is part of the Reel Rock tour. Was in SLC last week (awesome, really). Its 4 short films. Great stuff. Its showing in Park City tomorrow night if anyone is interested. Their tick list of climbs had a bunch of stuff in Utah, including a local Little Cottonwood stuff. Great footage.

2nd on Reel Rock Tour, great great stuff.

And a big big 'hats off' to you guys on Sandthrax. Wow! Maybe the best video I have seen, I love not having music and listening to the chatter as you negotiate your way thru. Very impressive.

[summitseeker]

Very impressive. Great video

[hank moon]

Shane and/or Hank, did Chris go back and do the OW?

He aided it on home-made cams and pieces of wood (peeking out of my yellow bag in pic, below).


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