Tag Archives: 5.14d

[Vid] Nothing Flat About Flatanger

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Ethan Pringle recently posted this video in which he climbs the first ascent of a new 5.14c called The Eye of Odin in Norway’s massive Flatanger cave (aka Hanshelleren, according to this Swedish blog). You can read Pringle’s very extensive blog about his time in Norway here.

This granite (?) cave has been getting a lot of attention in the past year or so. In fall of 2011, Jorg Verhoeven put up a 5.14d there called Nordic Flower, which he writes about in this blog. I recall talking to a Swedish climber about Hanshelleren back in 2008, so it’s certainly been on the radar for a while, but I think the sea-carved formation is just so big and steep that it has intimidated local climbers until recently. In an interview with Björn Pohl, Magnus Midtbø guesses the cave is 1,000 feet wide, and 500 feet tall, adding, “It makes Santa Linya look tiny!” One blogger describes climbing in the area as “like being close to a nasty animal or a dangerous place.” Perhaps Chris Sharma’s 2008 ascent of Jumbo Love helped break down the perfectly reasonable mental barrier associated with neck-sappingly steep, 250-foot long super-routes.

More eye candy: in December of last year, this cool little video went up, showing Magnus Midtbø and Dani Andrada trying Nordic Flower.

Despite the fact that I’d probably be projecting the warmups in the big cave, I’d love to visit Flatanger. It’s basically a small fishing village — beautiful, idyllic, serene — with a futuristic crag in its midst. Plus, Norway has the highest per-capita coffee consumption levels in the world, which makes it my kind of place. It also sounds like there is more climbing nearby, and a glance at Google Maps (see screenshot, below) shows a region made up almost entirely of rock. I can only imagine this isn’t the only such formation in Norway. In the interview linked to above, Midtbø mentions seven similar caves in the area. Assuming you climb 5.13 or harder, formations like these could make Norway a more palatable climbing destination for those who have previously shied away because of the wet climate.

Satellite image of Flatanger, Norway, and the surrounding region

Satellite image of Flatanger, Norway, and the surrounding region. Lotsa rock out there…

[Vid] Aerial Video Rig Tracks Sasha DiGiulian Climbing Era Vella

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Behold, a new entry on the list of rad shooting rigs allowing climbing videographers to capture the vertical (or beyond-vertical) act in ways they could never quite capture it before.

The Sea to Sky Cable Cam is a portable camera rig that allows a video camera to travel up and down on rope tracks while an operator controls tilting and panning with a remote control. The Sea to Sky crew has used rigs of this sort to shoot a variety of action sports. Most recently, as you can see in the video below, to follow Sasha DiGiulian up Era Vella a 9a/5.14d in Margalef, Spain. (Unconfirmed: “Era vella” means “old threshing floor” in Catalan, according to one poster on Climbing Narc.)

Big Up Productions worked closely with Matt Maddaloni of Sea to Sky to develop the climbing-specific rig used to shoot this footage, which will be edited into one of the videos of the upcoming Reel Rock Film Tour.

Sasha DiGiulian on Era Vella

Sasha DiGiulian on Era Vella (9a/5.14d) Margalef, Spain. Keith Ladzinski photo.

This isn’t a new invention. The NFL, for example, has been using Skycams for years, but it is an early use in the climbing world. And, of course, due to the hard-to-access nature of rock climbs, it is a welcome addition, allowing for some very smooth, otherworldly perspectives on the act of climbing.

In the past, says Josh Lowell of Big Up Productions, his team has used pulley systems to haul a camera operator up overhanging walls, meanwhile dreaming of an unmanned system that could be operated remotely. So Big Up brought Maddaloni out to Spain to help shoot DiGiulian, and also Chris Sharma and Adam Ondra, who were working a 5.15c project in Oliana together. “It took a lot of experimenting to figure out what worked and what didn’t work,” says Lowell, but he’s enthusiastic about the footage, describing it as “long, continuous, single shots of the best climbers in the world trying the hardest route in the world … the camera silently tracking along with them the whole way.” Sounds good.

Not long ago, I wrote about the use of helicopter drone rigs to produce similar birds-eye shots. We can only assume that as climbing grows, along with demand for high-production-value climbing media, we we see more of these floating and flying perspectives and more of these ingenious techniques for capturing them.

Sea to Sky Cam at Kokanee Crankworx

A horizontal Sea to Sky Cam at Kokanee Crankworx

Of course, fancy shots do not a good video make — ultimately, it is the story and the characters that pull us into any movie. Judging by their previous track record, however, the folks at Big Up and the Reel Rock Tour will not disappoint on this front, either.