Weekly Roundup

Jo George and 8a.nu have both written glowing reviews of the forthcoming film of Dave MacLeod´s ascent of Rhapsody, and it has also made it onto the BBC Scotland website in conjunction with the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival where it is to be premiered this weekend. French sport and competition climber Alex Chabot has had his controversial ban from World Cup competitions increased from 8 to 10 months. The reason? Alex claims it is he doesn´t “want to take part in a masquerade (wearing logos) in order to satisfy the powerful (French Climbing) federation.”He goes on: “I compete because I love the sport, but it seems like the FFME has lost its original values. Now a days when climbers talk about the French Federation, most of them don´t evoke a passion for the climbing but for the politics, conflicts, the incompetence.” The BNC may not please all of the people all of the time, but they sound an awful lot better than the FFME Source: 8a.nu The General Assembly of the UIAA took place on October 14th with over 60 members present or represented, with the important mandate to vote on the future of the UIAA. They announced that the GA voted to create an Independent Federation to govern and administer Competition Climbing, with over 60 votes supporting this proposal!Source: UIAA An international team have just returned from the Miyar Nala area of the Himachal Pradesh in India. Oliver Metherell, Michel van der Spek, Jeremy Frimer and Sarah Hart managed the first  ascents of two new routes in the area.Oliver Metherell and Michel van der Spek made the first ascent of Goya Peak – (5,300m) (D / HVS) and van der Spek and Huayhuash guru Jeremy Frimer made the first ascent of Gateway Ridge which featured climbing of up to 5.9 to 5.600m. Mitch van der Spek on the summit ridge of Goya Peak. Ollie Metherell. The area is remote, requiring a day of jeep transportation and a two day walk in but the team found excellent alpine rock routes of very high quality.Oliver Metherell says: ´We found the approaches to many of the routes to be time consuming, featuring challenging walking over boulder fields. Apart from this, the area has great potential with many superb objectives yet to be climbed, including ice climbs, mixed climbing and alpine rock. The Petzl Roc Trip is taking place next week on Lalymnos with the following heavyweight line up og international stars: Chris Sharma Mel Lacasse Dave Graham Leila Said Belhaj Alex Huber Steve Mclure Charlotte Durif Manu Romain Antony Lamiche Isa Carrier Arnaud Petit Steph Bodet Ivo Krastev Martina Cufar Klemen Becan Liv Sansoz Sean McCALL Chris Lindner katie Brown Dani Andrada Daila Ojeda See www.kalymnos-isl.gr for details ———————————————————————– If you have any news worth reporting please contact Matt – matt@planetfear.com / 0114 2969114 ———————————————————————–

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