Top Snowboarders Face Off in Travis Rice's Supernatural at Baldface, B.C. (Video)

By Samantha Cook

Starting today, 18 of the world’s top snowboarders will face off in the inaugural Red Bull Supernatural Contest, a competition unlike any before. Snowboarder Travis Rice, one of our 2012 Adventurers of the Year, has created his dream playground designed to determine the best snowboarder on the planet.

Located in the backcountry of Canada’s Baldface Lodge, the heli-access-only 2,200-vertical-foot “Scary Cherry” run has been enhanced with more than 80 man-made features that took Rice and his crew five months to build. The course is designed to test a wide range of skills such as navigation and the ability to ride natural terrain as well as overcome challenging man-made obstacles. The daylong competition will run sometime between today and February 8 to ensure the event takes place under the best possible weather conditions.

“Inspiration for the course design came from nature, straight up, and the crazy features that I’ve seen people ride,” said Rice. “Also, some inspiration came from what they are able to do with mountain biking courses, like building stuff through the trees. There’s no limit to what is possible with a little creativity and some will.”

Rice himself is known for his creative moves. In his film The Art of Flight, he and his friends performed breathtaking snowboard feats in previously uncharted terrain. Now with a course of his own design, Rice seeks to inspire competitors to show off their own ingenuity. His ultimate goal for the competition? “To crown the best, most well rounded snowboarder in the world.”

Patagonia's Cerro Torre Gets the Chop: Maestri Unbolted (Photos)

By David Roberts and Kathryn Sall; Photographs by Hayden Kennedy and Jason Kruk (seen here on the summit of Cerro Torre)

Read our follow up on David Lama's simultaneous first true free climb of Cerro Torre's southeast ridge.

On January 16, 2012, mountaineering history was made. The actors in the drama were two of the best young alpinists alive—a 21-year-old Coloradan, Hayden Kennedy, and a 24-year-old from British Columbia, Jason Kruk. Their deed took place on a savagely steep needle of granite and rime ice in southern Patagonia called Cerro Torre. Kennedy and Kruk knew that what they were trying to do was audacious in the extreme, but they could hardly have anticipated that it would trigger the most explosive mountaineering controversy of the last decade.

* * *

Although it rises to an altitude of only 10,262 feet, Cerro Torre has been called the most beautiful mountain on earth, as well as one of the most difficult. On the border of Chile and Argentina, the peak soars nearly 5,000 feet from base to summit. The indomitable French mountaineer Lionel Terray, who made the first ascent of nearby Fitz Roy, doubted that Cerro Torre would ever be climbed. The greatest Italian climber of his day, Walter Bonatti, failed on an attempt less than halfway to the summit in 1958.

Then in 1959, Bonatti’s bitter rival, Cesare Maestri, came to Patagonia to slay the dragon via its north face. His climbing companions were his fellow Italian, Cesarino Fava, and the Austrian Toni Egger, one of the outstanding ice climbers of his day. The three set out on their attempt and reached a gunsight notch that they named “The Col of Conquest,” 1,800 feet below the summit. Having agreed to act in only a supporting role, Fava retreated alone down to Camp 3. Maestri and Egger prepared an attack on the summit. Fava settled in to wait. After three days, gusts of warm air melted the ice near the top of the mountain and set loose colossal avalanches. After three more days without any sign of his climbing partners, Fava assumed the worst. On the sixth day, to his shock and surprise, Fava discovered Maestri, sprawled and helpless in the snow, a thousand feet from Camp 3.

Maestri had an extraordinary story to tell. After three bivouacs above the Col of Conquest, he and Egger had reached the summit of the mountain that Terray deemed impossible. But on the descent, an avalanche had caught Egger in mid-rappel and swept both him and the climbing rope off the mountain. With a desperate effort, Maestri regained the fixed ropes below the Col of Conquest. But just above Camp 3, he lost his grasp and fell. When Fava found him, he was barely conscious. Fava helped his exhausted teammate stagger the rest of the way down to base camp. With Egger, Maestri claimed, had gone the men’s camera, carrying the only documentary proof of the men’s landmark ascent.

Back in Italy, Maestri recuperated fully and boasted about his amazing climb. At first, the climbing world accepted Maestri’s account and showered the exploit with accolades. Lionel Terray called the first ascent of Cerro Torre “the greatest climbing feat of all time.” But doubts soon emerged. How had Maestri and Egger climbed so skillfully, especially given the horrendous weather? The sheer steepness of the final stretch above the Col of Conquest made the wall look unclimbable, even by the finest mountaineers of the day.

Once a pioneer of clean solo climbing, Maestri turned after Cerro Torre to a new style—bolting everything he touched—that only served to undercut his claim. After a crack British team failed even to come close to making the second ascent of Cerro Torre in 1968, the doubters came clamoring.

Today, Maestri’s 1959 “ascent” of Cerro Torre is widely regarded as one of the most blatant hoaxes in mountaineering history.

Extreme Photo of the Week: Ice Climber Chad Peele on First Ascents in Norway's Fjord Country

Photograph by Celin Serbo, see more in our Extreme Photo of the Week

Adventure: Where were you climbing in Norway?
Chad Peele: This shot was in a valley outside of Eidfjord.

A: Norway is pretty sweet for ice climbing (or so we hear from Will Gadd who put this area on our Adventure Bucket List). Would you agree?
CP: Yeah, Norway is awesome for ice climbing! The glaciers of past carved such a labyrinth of fjords which hold plenty of water and just the right temperatures to form long flows of ice.

A: What were you thinking in this moment?
CP: I'm sooo cold!

A: Why does the ice look golden like that?
CP: I'm not exactly sure why this ice had that golden color, but typically frozen waterfalls will change colors depending on the minerals and sediment in the water.

A: Tell us about this route?
CP: We climbed this route in three pitches, probably totaling around 500 to 600 feet. By most standards, it was not an incredibly difficult route with a rating around WI4-4+, but it was so cold that day that everything felt so much harder! We thought that calling it "Goldmember" after the Austin Powers movie was a fitting and humorous name.

A: How do you scout first ascents? Both in terms of finding them and planning your route?
CP: Scouting and researching for first ascents relies on a lot of local word of mouth concerning where people have been climbing and where people have not travelled to. To be honest, it takes a lot of walking around with binoculars in the cold and can be quite tricky sometimes.

A: How long have you been ice climbing? How'd you get started?
CP: I first learned to ice climb in Alaska with St. Elias Alpine Guides in 1997 and have kept it as a winter sport/winter work ever since then.

A: What's next for you?
CP: Right now I'm ice guiding in the San Juans of Colorado while waiting for more snow and planning my upcoming Alaska and Washington state mountain guiding season.

Video: In Spain, Climber Chris Sharma Preps For the World's First 5.15c and Settles Down

Chris Sharma: A Sense Of Place from Prana Living on Vimeo.

We checked in with the indefatigable Chris Sharma, known for rock climbing the hardest routes on Earth. Once a world-wandering rock hound, Sharma has now put roots down in Catalonia, Spain, the limestone epicenter for sport climbing. Far from resting on his laurels, the 30-year-old is quietly training for the world's hardest rock climbing route—a 5.15c—and marveling at the golden age of rock climbing that is upon us. —Mary Anne Potts

Adventure: Are you still deepwater soloing these days?
Chris Sharma: I am here in Mallorca [Spain] doing some deepwater soloing right now. I haven't been here for a while. I've really gotten into sport climbing over the last few years. I actually have some good friends from Santa Cruz, California, who are visiting. I've been giving them a tour. And we've been doing some deepwater soloing. It's really cool for me to come back to Mallorca. 

What does Spain have to offer a rock hound like you? 
CS: I live in Catalonia, the province of Lleida, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It's a really special place right now. In the 1990s southern France was the epicenter of sport climbing. Everyone around the world would go to the south of France. That was where the best competitions were. That's were the standards were being set.

And now that has moved to Catalonia. That has to do with me living there, establishing a lot of the hard routes. But then, just in general, it's really an international epicenter. Everyone goes there. It's where all the hardest climbs are right now. The grade 5.15, which is pretty much the highest level out there, there are a handful of these routes around the world. But 90 percent of these routes are in Catalonia in Spain.

Climbers Anker, Chin, Ozturk Claim Meru's Shark's Fin Summit, One of World's Most Challenging

Tents at Tapocan base camp glow in the Himalaya night.

By Samantha Cook; Photographs courtesy The North Face

For more than 40 years the Shark’s Fin, a route on the northwest face of the 20,700-foot Meru in the Garhwal Himalaya, eluded the attempts of some of the world's top alpinists and remained one of the last unclimbed features of the region. Not anymore.

The North Face athletes Conrad Anker (right), Jimmy Chin (center), and Renan Ozturk (left) reached the summit today, nearly week ahead of schedule. Their feat is notable. Shark’s Fin is considered on the world's most challenging climbs, as its terrain is diverse. The lower third is a classic alpine snow-and-ice route, the middle a mix of ice and rock, and the final section is an extremely difficult, overhanging headwall.

The trio was well aware of the difficulties they would face. They had attempted the route in 2008, but were forced to turn around when they were just 100 meters from the summit.

“It’s some of the most technical, high-altitude climbing on Earth in unimaginably punishing conditions,” said Anker. “This time we came back to settle some unfinished business. We all had something that kept us motivated.”
The team was determined to not repeat their previous experience. They spent three weeks at the base camp of Tapocan acclimating, sorting gear, and studying the precarious climb that lay ahead of them. Their fortitude paid off, and the Shark’s Fin was completed in just six days, unhindered by any sort of setback. Besides their familiarity with the route, the climbers credited favorable weather conditions and the strength of each individual team member to their success.

“We all complement each other well,” said Ozturk, who participated in the expedition just five months after fracturing his vertebrae and skull in a ski-mountaineering accident in Jackson, Wyoming. “Conrad is the ice- and aid-climbing master, Jimmy is strong on aid-climbing and steep, snow trenching, and I’m more tuned for the free climbing required on the climb’s middle section.”

For Ozturk, the reward of the climb was less about being the first alpinists to complete it, and more about the cultural experiences and stunning landscapes him and his teammates were able to experience together. “Climbing with such close friends in one of the most visually stunning parts of the Himalaya is the kind of adventure that fuels my soul,” he said.

Video: Steph Davis's Climbing Secret? It All Comes Down to the Fuel

Steph Davis: The Tactic from Prana Living on Vimeo.

Rock climber Steph Davis has been scaling walls for more than two decades. In that time she became the first woman to free climb the Salathe Wall on Yosemite's El Cap, and she has free soloed the Diamond on Longs Peak in Colorado four times. These days, when she gets to the top of a cliff, she takes the quick way down—she BASE jumps. For the past ten years she has also been vegan—and says it has made her a better athlete. It sounds counterintuitive to our conventional understanding of how to fuel performance. But Davis says it works. Below Steph answers some of our questions about her extraordinary experiences.

See Steph and Mario Richard BASE jumping in our Extreme Photo of the Week gallery >>

Tell us your experiences with food and training in the comments section below. 

Climbing "the Strike" in the Black Hills Needles with Legendary John "Verm" Sherman

Photograph by Dawn Kish

John "Verm" Sherman is a legend among us. He pioneered bouldering and invented the V-scale for grading bouldering problems. He also championed the development of bouldering at Hueco Tanks, Texas. Quite a legacy. Here Sherman tells us about climbing "the Strike," ascending all Ten Pins in a single day in the Needles of South Dakota's Black Hills, with local guide Cheyenne Chaffee last summer. Photographer Dawn Kish climbed and rappelled several spires, as well, to document the feat (her tips are coming up next, stay tuned). Sherman is the author of several climbing books, including Stone Crusade, Sherman Exposed, and Better Bouldering 2nd edition (due out in October). See the image in our Extreme Photo fo the Week gallery.

Adventure: For starters, is this type of geological formation unusual?

John "Verm" Sherman: There are hundreds of such spires in the Black Hills Needles, hence the area's name. Molten granite and pegmatite intruded into metamorphic schist in such a way to form fins and spires. The softer schist has eroded away, leaving the spires. In my experience—I've climbed in over 600 areas in the U.S.—this is unique. I have been to other areas with lots of spires, but almost always they are made of sandstone, not granite.

Adventure: Why is this pin called Super Pin? Do they all have good names?

John "Verm" Sherman: Of the 10 Ten Pins, Super Pin and Hairy Pin are the most challenging and dangerous because Pete Cleveland did the first ascents of both and he was determined that these spires would be elite level climbs with very little fixed protection.

Legend has it that he led Super Pin with only one piece of gear and upon reaching the top rigged his rope to descend and pulled it before anyone else could climb it, leaving himself as the only person bold enough to stand atop the spire. Later, climbing legend "Hot Henry" Barber established the line I'm pictured on, which is still very scantily protected, but not the unabashed death route Cleveland's path is. Nevetheless, climbers still debate whether a fall on Barber's line would end your career or not.

On this day my partner was a local guide, Cheyenne Chaffee. We set our belay up high in a notch between Tent Peg and Super Pin with the plan being if I fell, Cheyenne would jump out of the notch down a 40-ft face vertical face below. Timed right, this would pull enough rope through the belay system that neither he nor I would hit the ground. We don't always climb that way.

The Art of Flight: Welcome to a New Era of Adventure Filmmaking

By Mary Anne Potts; Photograph courtesy Red Bull Photo Files

New York City is a lot of things—outdoors hot spot is not generally one of them. Last night, however, there was no cooler place to be than the premiere of The Art of Flight, the groundbreaking new snowboarding film by director Curt Morgan, the Brain Farm production team, and Red Bull Media House.

Maybe you have already heard about it...50 Cent and Justin Timberlake did tweet about the trailer when it came out last spring. It now has 3.7 millions views on YouTube.



The anticipation was palpable at the Beacon Theatre as 1,500 (highly attractive) fans—including surfers from the Quiksilver Pro—listened to the DJ, slurped on Red Bull and vodkas, and waited for Travis Rice, Jeremy Jones, and our new favorite, Nicholas Muller, and the other incredible snowboarders to hit the stage. And the film delivers.

The Art of Flight ushers in a new era of adventure film-making, one that is ratcheted up by the highest quality cameras shooting in the wildest places on Earth never seen before by camera or snowboard alike. Alaska. Chilean Andes. British Columbia. Backcountry Jackson Hole. Backcountry Snowmass.

In short, the film is exquisite. A masterpiece. The riders look invincible as they rip down impossible, near-vertical lines—often for the first time. The slow-motion filmming technique showcases the flawless precision and art that these athletes intuitively whip off.

Is it snowboarding porn? Who cares? The inspiring and well-considered statements from the riders have a profound effect. If you don't want to explore more, train harder, and think bigger about your own life after watching this film, well, then good luck to you. Just see it. And see it on a big screen if you can.

On tour, available on iTunes for $7.99

World Champ Surfer Carissa Moore Listens to Eminem, Bieber Like Other Teens

By Tetsuhiko Endo; photograph by Jason Kenworthy

Carissa Moore is the youngest woman to ever win the world championship of surfing. She’s the first Hawai’ian to do it in 30 years, first woman to grace the cover of Surfer magazine in over ten, and she has a diploma from the Punahou School in Honolulu, the alma mater of that other notable Hawai’ian, Barak Obama. Not bad for a 19-year-old.

Moore has been surfing’s golden child almost since she began riding waves in the mid-90s. After winning 11 junior world titles, she spent the latter half of her teens competing against boys until turning pro. I’ve had the pleasure of observing her surfing from the water on a couple of occasions this year. She exhibits a power and fluidity on waves rare among both men and women. It reflects not only intense training, but a once in a generation knack for the complexities of how to move over a constantly changing mass of water. Perhaps most tellingly, she retains a certain playfulness and spontaneity that is evocative of that other great competitive surfer ... Kelly Slater.

Whether her career will go on to mirror his, only time will tell, but Adventure was able to snag her for a short interview recently to see what keeps her running on all cylinders.

Adventure: Has it been hard to stay motivated after doing this for most of your life?
Carissa Moore: Not really. Both my love for the sport as well as my love of a challenge drives me to compete.

“Burn out” is often a problem for young athletes, how have you avoided it?
CM: With my balanced life. I was kept in high school full-time, and generally lived in a well-grounded atmosphere. Given my upbringing, it would have been almost impossible for me to burn out.

What’s the best part of your job?
CM: Spending time in beautiful places with awesome people.

What’s the worst part?
CM: I can't complain about a single thing.

Do you maintain a certain diet to help keep you in shape?
CM: I eat a lot of vegetables and protein, while staying away from too many carbs and sweets.

What made you want to finish high school?
CM: Not finishing high school was never an option for me. I look forward to one day attending college in order to kick start my second career. I’d like to be a teacher some day.

Do you think being a professional athlete from a young age makes you grow up faster?
CM: The life lessons that you learn on the road definitely contribute to an advanced maturity. You also learn a lot from both the sponsors and media that surround the sport.

What do you think should be the role of sex appeal in the way women’s surfing is marketed?
CM: If done the right way, I think sex appeal is just a bonus that would help market the sport.

What do you always take with you when you travel?
CM: My father.

What’s in your i-Pod right now?
CM: Eminem and Justin Bieber ... it's somewhat contradictory, but it works.

Favorite books?
CM: A book about long-distance swimmer Lynn Cox called Swimming To Antarctica.

When was the last time you were scared?
CM: When I had my ear pierced for the third time three days ago.

You are known for your sunny demeanor. Do you have any pet peeves?
CM: Whenever my little sister uses my clothes without asking.

As Stand-Up Paddleboarders Race Around New York City, a Sport Takes Off

By Samantha Cook; photographs courtesy O'Neill Sea Paddle NYC

“Every day is paradise,” said stand-up paddleboard athlete Annabel Anderson as she looked out into the water from Pier 40 on the west side of Manhattan. Anderson quit a stressful corporate job to dedicate herself to stand-up paddle boarding, and its obvious that she has no regrets.

Last Friday at 6:45 a.m. Anderson, along with over 200 other enthusiasts, was preparing to participate in the fifth annual O’ Neill Sea Paddle NYC, a 26.5 stand-up paddleboard race around Manhattan. The race benefits Surfer’s Environmental Alliance and autism charities.

Unlike surfing, stand-up paddle boarding can be done in any body of water. It’s also much easier to learn. As a result, the sport has become increasingly popular. This year’s race had its greatest number of participants, about 20 percent more than last year.

“Stand-up paddle boarding is the fastest growing sport right now,” said Andrew Mencinsky of Surfers' Environmental Alliance. “We have participants who are coming from Chicago—where there is no ocean— Tennessee, Utah. There’s paddle boarding going on almost anywhere there’s a lake, pond or river.”