Flutterby™! : rock rats

Yosemite's new breed of 'rock rats' is about the cultural changes in rock climbing. I'm linking to it primarily because it quotes Lynn Hill, who once gave me some beta while I was top-roping out at Sunset Rock on some a killer overhang whose name I forget right now. It involved working out an underlying flake, but the hard part was making the transition out around back on to the face. Her advice went something like "Reach out with your right hand, find that vertical crack. Good, now put your left pinky and ringfinger in and haul up, then go dynamic and get your left hand in the horizontal about two feet up."

Yeah. Right. But it was fun to try and I think I got that left hand in once before I was totally blown. This was compounded by the fact that because it was a long overhang, each attempt involved getting lowered down quite a ways and re-climbing.

But back to the article, it's about how, as the sport has grown dramatically in popularity, safety has been replaced by daredevil attitudes as people vie for spectacular stunts for sponsors. It's also worth noting that the guy in the video that they link to autodarwinated in '98.