Every year the BANFF Mountain Film Festival (@BanffMtnFest) selects a set of great films for a world wide tour. One of the stars of the 2014 tour was this winning documentary on the beginning of counter culture climbing in the Yosemite Valley.
Author: Arthur
My name is Arthur Page and I live in Portland Maine. I've been climbing on and off for about 8 years. This year I've decided to up my climbing game and have been training to move past the gym and start out-door lead climbing this summer. I'm currently bouldering between V2 and V3 and climbing top rope at the gym between 5.8 and 5.9. I started this site because of how difficult it is to find climbing resources. Most videos lack production quality and getting any reliable information involves dropping hundreds on a class at a gym. To me this is counter to what I believe to principles of climbing. It is a sport centered around personal challenge, community, and sharing. I hope you feel the same way and I hope you enjoy figure8!
We say goodbye, I say hello.
This is a bit hard to admit, but after years of living a lie, we must confess that we are actually just I. Thats right, I’m sure you couldn’t tell but this whole operation is orchestrated by just one person and I’m tired of pretending that we are a team of blah blah blah.
5.9 | Salt Water Taffy
You’ll find this route on the center column facing the lead wall and if you like surprise endings, you’ll dig this route. It has some real fun moves and some fun features. You’ll find a nice mix of pinches and buckets with just enough grit to make a nine.
5.8 | Main Sprinkler Valve
This route is in the back corner next to the auto-belay and it is a douse. It’s a blue route with some nice corner work in the middle but the top is all tiny holds. This route isn’t rated yet but we have a spoiler for you.
5.7 | Liftchair Sunset
It has been too long. The last figure8 Podcast episode was published back in January 2017 so I thought a nice easy 5.7 route would be a good warm up for my day and for the Podcast.
Why Podcasts?
In the last few years, online video has become omni present. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Vimeo are the primary channels but there are a host of others all fighting for your video. Apple Podcasts has been traditionally an audio experience so we’re often asked why we opted to use this format. There are a few advantages to Apple Podcasts that locked our decision to use them for our content delivery.
We’re going to need a bigger boat
When this podcast first started, it became immediately clear that storage was going to be an issue. The podcast was captured on a GoPro Hero3 Black and being a purist, each episode was released in stunning 1080p HD quality. The resulting file sizes were 1gb to 4gb which nearly broke everything but we made it work with a few tweaks.
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Welcome to Approach
Here at figure8 we’re equal parts climber and media enthusiasts. We get just as excited about crushing a new route as posting the video to the podcast. Since the figure8 project started, we had to overcome some obstacles for sure but we appreciate the challenge because the project is always better off in the long run. In the spirit of transparency, this section was created to share those lessons, the underlying problems, and solutions with you.
Social Update
Just a heads up that we have made a few small changes to our social services to streamline our accounts. Now facebook, twitter, and instagram are all climbfigure8.
The change away from con_figure8 were two fold; to align to our instagram account and because we realized that con_figure8 doesn’t actually mean anything.
At the time, con_figure8 was a loose play on the word ‘configured’ and a distant nod to Apple’s Configurator program but we ultimately decided that the phonetics didnt justify the weird syntax so we have abandoned the naming convention.
If you haven’t spent a lot of time working on websites and social media, its hard to see the clutter of our modern world. With so many people on earth, finding new wordplay is pretty daunting. You end up adding hyphens and trying to tap memonics burried deep in the mind of your audience. Anyways, it’s taco Tuesday so have a taco!
5.6 | Steep Sheep
I have been climbing on the guest pass of a friend at Salt Pump for a while. We have a routine, we climb a few top rope routes, get pumped out and call it a day. I’m lead certified at evo Rock + Fitness but had never bothered to get lead certified elsewhere. Until today, when we decided it was time to take my lead test.
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5.8 | Rub the Belly
You may not have noticed but I haven’t been on a lead route in more than a year. I’ve also never captured a clean climb on a lead route, ever! The sadness ends today with this 5.8 route at evo Rock + Fitness in Portland, aptly named ‘Rub the Belly.’
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5.8 | Das Tufa
This green route faces the benches on the center pillar and was a fun one with some nice features.
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5.8 | Outside the Cones
If you scroll down a few you’ll see that this route below but the previous climb was done on top rope. This time around I sent it on mock lead.
5.7 | Pirate Ships (evo Portland)
The last time I climbed this route, I was winding down and wasn’t able to climb it clean. This time around, I made it clean, but also realized again at top out that I was not only on the wrong rope, but the rope was also twisted.
5.9 | Get Your Wallet (evo Portland)
This is the same route from below climbed a while ago but this time around I’m climbing for a lead test.