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When we get around to it we will have an archive of all our new stories.
The new Climbers' Access Society of BC site was launched today. The old site was getting outdated and was hard to maintain. With the new site members will be able to track their membership and subscribe to feeds so that they can be kept up to date with the latest access news from their area. Check it out at http://www.access-society.ca/. The site is a bit bare at the moment but will be filling up as we get time.
Islandclimbing is featured as site of the week on gripped.com this week. If you're looking for climbing news from a Canadian perspective, you should check out their site or grab their magazine.
The Squamish Mountain Festival is happening next month (July 16th - 20th). Check out their site for details and hopefully we'll see you there.
Squamish Mountain Festival
I've been working on the island climbing site for the past year or so off and on and have decided to deploy the new changes. A couple things will be missing for a little while but should be back soon. The main thing is everyones pictures and comments on news articles.
We have some cool new features though including some great google maps integration. You can now pick your 'homebase' and the site is then customized from that city or town from then on, letting you know how far things are away from you. You can change this homebase at any time by clicking on the change link under the island climbing logo. For quite a few of the areas, there will also be directions on how to drive to the area. To check out the new directions feature, have a look at one of the gyms in the gym section.
I also added some good support for area admins, something that I was working on in the last site but never finished well enough to deploy it. I'll be adding people as area admins soon.
Hopefully people like the new site and find it easy to use. I'll be adding in more crag info soon.
Hello everyone, The time has come to invite you all, on behalf of the Climbers Access Society, to the seventh annual Eldred Adopt-a-Crag. Come to the Eldred, climb, camp and enjoy. This years event is important to attend. Your presence will increase awareness about climbing in the Eldred as construction of a power line is currently underway near camp.The event will take place May 17/18, 2008 at the 34mile marker on the goatlake main in Powell River, Rain or shine. Come self contained to camp, eat and drink. There will be a potluck on Saturday night. Extra care on the access road is necessary to avoid conflict with industrial traffic. more info contact Andy: (604)487-0245 or reply to this e-mail. Please feel free to forward to anyone else who might be interested.
Saturday April 5th ,2008
The Boulders Climbing Gym, Saanichton, BC
Format:
Scramble style, with isolation finals
Schedule:
Youth - Registration starts at 9:00am, Competition at 10:00
Adults - Registration starts at 12:15, Competition at 1:15
Cost:
$35 plus GST, includes prizes and a t-shirt
register by March 26th if you want a t-shirt
For more information:
sebastian@climbtheboulders.com
250.544.0310
www.climbtheboulders.com
The Boulders Climbing Gym, a not-for-profit facility, is seeking a full-time climbing gym manager. Located in Stelly’s High School in Saanichton, BC, we are a two-year old 5400 square foot facility, specializing in youth and community programming. The Manager is responsible for risk management, programming (including coaching, specialty programs, and outdoor courses), staff scheduling, route-setting and day-to-day operations. Qualified applicants will have at least: two years of experience working in a climbing gym; ACMG Climbing Gym Instructor Level 1 certification, but preferably Level 2 or higher; a minimum of Standard First Aid Certification; experience working with youth in an educational setting; and a passion for climbing.
More Info
From the Access Society:
Access to Skaha Bluffs remains a hot topic for this season. As you all know, the purchase of Sublot (SL) 18 was a success; however; that was only the first phase of the access issue. The following remains to be resolved:
Legal access across a right of way to SL 18 - TLC is negotiating with the land owner and we are anxioulsy awaiting an outcome;
Legal access may not be in place for the Easter long weekend;
The road to SL 18 will be upgraded (under construction) this year with a parking lot developed simultaneoulsy - slated for completion in October or November;
Should legal access be granted, everyone can expect to have to walk from, most likely, the end of Smythe road. The trail is likely to be flagged
Access through the North end remains across private property; and
Braesyde farms, the traditional access, remains closed.
It is probably best for all to consider other climbing venues for the Easter weekend
John and Mike Waters put a new route up at Boss Wall. Hot Tamale,5.11-, 12 bolts, 20m climbs first 4 bolts of 5.10 arete then heads left over juggy roofs. crux at last roof. see photo at comox lake section http://islandclimbing.com/areas/show/11
John
We will be having our Annual Nanaimo River Adopt-A-Crag on September 29th and 30th. It starts at 9:00am and runs till 5:00 (or later for the keeners) on both days! Please contact: Greg Sorensen at outerlimits@shaw.ca or phone at 753-6644 for more info. If you are on facebook we have an "event" through the Nanaimo Climbers Group. If you can make it please contact us as we will have prizes and we need a rough idea of who can make it! Thanks for your time.
Aaron has put up some new routes on Greyback Peak in the Wapiti Valley. Check out his post here.
No Name Yet - Right side of Boss Wall - 5.11
See John's post in the forum for more details.
Hello all, This is an invitation/reminder regarding the sixth annual Eldred adopt-a-crag/blue sky weekend. Climbing season is here again let's kick it off well up in the Eldred.
Agenda:
Friday May 4. Camp is opened, The fire will be Lit.
Saturday May 5. Great weather, Climbing day ,followed by salmon bake potluck.
Sunday May 6. Trail work on psyche slab trail/Outhouse floor replacement.
Where: Eldred Climbers camp 34mile Goat main Powell River
What To bring: Be self sufficient to camp,climb,and eat.Dish for potluck. some trail tools.
Colin Dionne, CASBC
A quick note to anyone who is developing new climbs in the Victoria area.... Proceeds from "Rockclimbs of Victoria" go to the Bolt Fund. If you would like rap rings, hangers and stainless steel bolts, contact Mark Freeborn at bornfreeoutdoors@shaw.ca and he will gladly give them to you.
Note: With the damage from the big wind storms throughout the winter, some of the money gained from guidebook sales has gone to chainsaw rentals... Countless hours have already been put in to clean up the trails to your favorite crags. As we haven't been in to all crags yet this season, if you notice that a particular trail needs some work, please contact Mark and he will do anything that he can to help out.
From the Access Society newsletter:
The Land Conservancy of B.C. (TLC) and Skaha rockclimbers have been working hard on this issue, with support from Mountain Equipment Co-op, the Access Society, and others. After considerable effort and negotiations, there is now some public news. Access at Skaha is in place for 2007, and there is an agreement to purchase land that will provide access from 2008 onward. The latter requires substantial fundraising, and will take a lot of work over the next few months. We need $1 million!
To donate visit the Land Conservancy here or check out the Access Society website for updates and details.
Saturday March 24 ,2007
The Boulders Climbing Gym, Saanichton, BC
Format:
Scramble style, with isolation finals
Schedule:
Youth - Registration starts at 8:30am, Competition at 9:30
Adults - Registration starts at noon, Competition at 1:00
Cost:
$35 plus GST, includes prizes and a t-shirt
register by March 10th if you want a t-shirt
For more information:
sebastian@climbtheboulders.com
250.544.0310
www.climbtheboulders.com
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
There are a couple boulder competitions on the island this month.
The first one is actually this Saturday (March 10th), sorry about the late notice, at the Romper Room in Nanaimo. It is the CEC Youth Local and Tour De Bloc open competition. For more info on this, check out the Romper Room's site at http://www.climbromperroom.com/Competitions.php.
The second comp isn't until the end of the month and it is at the Boulders Climbing Gym (Stelly's), in Saanichton. I don't know all the details yet, but will post again as so as I get them.
Apparently a few Vancouver Island locals have a new climbing video in the works. Along with some Smith Rock footage, the video with include a lot of climbing on Vancouver Island. Watch your local crags this spring/summer for a couple guys running around with cameras and sending some crazy lines.
John Waters has just released a new pdf guide for Boston Falls ice climbing. You can go and download it in the new Boston Falls section.
Valhalla Pure will be opening another store this coming April in Victoria, well Langford/Millstream actually. They have a bunch of job openings as well, so if you're interested check it out here.
In the past year outdoors store have been popping up like crazy around Vic. I'm surprised that there is another one opening.
Apparently the main parking at Skaha is closed as of Nov 1 because the owner wants to sell the land.
http://www.skaha.org/SkahaBluffs_Main.htm
Big thanks to MEC who has kindly agreed to donate money to pay the server costs of running the islandclimbing.com site. In return we have agreed to put the MEC logo on our main page.
Just so everyone knows, the islandclimbing.com site is maintained, created, updated all via. volunteering. The site will always be free and any money ever gained from the site will be given right back to the climbing community either to local bolts funds or the Access Society. We are in the middle of writing up a mandate and will post it in the future.
Thanks to Al Agopsowicz, we now have a very large amount of new data for the site. Al has been putting out the "Greater Victoria Climber's Guide" every year since 1995 and has very generously given us permission to use all the data and topos that he's collected and created over the years. We now have topos for almost every area in the Victoria region and tons of new climb information. We'll be putting up a thank you page later to thank everyone who is making this site possible, including all the people who contributed to the "Greater Victoria Climber's Guide" over the years.
We are still working on lining up the topo letters with the climb numbers and will get it done as soon as we can. We will also be working on a feature to automatically generate PDF files for each area so that you can bring the topos to the crag with you. Stay tuned.
Winter is slowly creeping up on us but no need to fear, there are still a few nice places that you can go and climb when it's cold and wet outside.
The most obvious place is your local gym.
Beyond the gym there are a few crags around the island that stay pretty dry late into the season. There was a forum thread that we started a while back to try to compile a list of these areas. Have a look and feel free to add to it. No need to stop climbing just because it's raining.
A couple new features have been added to the site. The first one you probably would have already seen. We now have sunrise and sunset for each city with a weather report.
Also, all users can now add news articles to the news section of the site. If we have problems with spamming we might limit this, but for now if you have something that is news worthy just click on the add news button in the news section.
Logan (last name unknown) just climbed the project beside Bad girl at the Sutton Boulders. It's graded V8 tentatively but will need a few repeats to confirm the grade.
The problem is named "Jack's Bitch'n Out" and Logan's last name is White. Thanks Aaron!
I saw Brad down at the gym tonight and he informed me that the signup on the site wasn't working anymore. So, it should be working now and hopefully nothing else goes wrong. If you find anything that isn't working quite right give us an email at admin@islandclimbing.com.
I'm not sure who put them up, but a big thank you to whoever put up the new fixed ropes at Mt. Wells. I was up at Mt. Wells this Saturday running around, doing some mapping and was happy to see the new ropes. The old ones were looking a bit dodgy.
I was talking with Al on the weekend and he informed me that is was Mark from Valhalla Pure that put up the new ropes.
We finally have a forum up and running! One catch, to post on the forum you have to be signed in, just like all the other fun features on the site, like the ticklist and photo uploads. So signup and get posting. If you want a new forum main topic added, just let us know in the website suggestions and comments thread.
The Squamish Climbers' Festival will be taking place on September 9th and 10th in ... you guessed it, Squamish. There are a whole host of activities planned and it should be a lot of fun. For more details check out squamishclimbersfestival.com.
If you'd like to go, but need a ride send us an email at info@islandclimbing.com and we'll try to get you in a car pool. If you are driving over but don't want to pay for the ferry and gas all by yourself, send us an email and we'll try to hook you up with some people.
So I've been spending a bit of time working on the site lately are have added a few new features. The main one being that you can now signup and login to the site. Once logged in you can upload photos of areas that you've climbed at as well as check off climbs that your climbed. I'm working on a fourm right now, and a couple more fun features. So stayed tuned.
I recieved an email from Aaron Hamilton the other day and he is willing to help out with Nanaimo and the Central Island region. Big thanks to Aaron for that. Between him and John Waters we should have a pretty amazing resource as soon as we can convert get it into digital form.
It's been just over a month since we started victoriaclimbing.com and we are expanding already and setting up at our new address islandclimbing.com. I just got an email back from John Waters and he is onboard to make the definitive Vancouver Island climbing resource site. The first area to be added will be the Sutton Boulders and then we will move on to some other areas around the central island region. If you're jumping at the bit and want the Sutton Boulders Guide right now, here you go. A big thanks to John and Mike for all their hard work putting this guide together. It's a tremendous asset to the climbing community on Vancouver Island.
Unfortunetly we didn't make it up to Duncan the other Sunday, but we did get some more information on the area none the less. We are planning a trip back to Duncan in the near future though to get the photos that we need for the topo. In the mean time we are going to be working on Mt.Wells as it is a lot closer to town and we are able to head up there after work and still get some nice sun. Watch the Cyberia section as we are updating the boulders there pretty regularly.
Thanks to Chris Davis we have a couple new areas to add to the site. We still have to go out and do a bit more research, but Chris has been kind enough to let us use some of the content from a Victoria climbing website that he created quite a few years back.
We are currently working on a login system for the site and should have it up and functioning in the next couple weeks. Once the login system is working we will add the ability for users to upload photos and create their own write-up's for their favorite areas. We're also in the middle of filling in a whole bunch of missing information for quite a few of the areas. Cyberia is the first area we will be working at getting up to date and then we will be working on getting Duncan started. This Sunday we will be in Duncan taking pictures and drawing out topos. If you want to help out give us a shout.
The upstairs cave at Crag X has been closed for the last couple weeks due to some upgrades. The upgrades are now done and are a welcome change. Instead of the cave being a flat overhanging wall, the roof is now a series of triangular outcroppings allowing the setters to create some pretty fun problems.
Mark Freeborn of Valhalla Pure Outfitter's Victoria has just released a new guide for climbing around Victoria.
'Rockclimbs of Victoria' builds upon the previous guide by adding some great new routes as well as some amazing photos of the walls.
Here's a map so you can find Valhalla Pure Outfitters in Victoria and get your guide.
The guide will be available at Valhalla Pure for the first six months and the will most likely make it's way around town to other stores after that.
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