Monday Morning Inspiration Video

Youtube is great, especially for those of us who don't have TV because, now, when somebody says "did you see..." we can check out whatever it was we missed.

Anyway, I was doing some research and found this vid of my friend Katie attempting to onsight The Tombstone. This route is historically very hard and scary. Dean Potter took a long time to do the first ascent and videos of him falling near the end were pimped by Black Diamond for ages. Subsequent ascents doused the grade a bit, though it's still one of the more impressive crack lines in the US. Katie is small and has very very good endurance. She's an ex-competition climber, one of the best in the world, and one of the first women to onsight 5.14. After quitting climbing for a few years, she's back with a different attitude. She no longer competes and, instead, lives in her car, travels, climbs, and writes (ah, the memories). Cracks, regardless of grade, tend to favor or disfavor individuals entirely based on finger size. Katie is small, so if Dean did it she can probably, at least, get her fingers into the thing. Whether or not those locks are good, however, is another story...