Interpretive dance party!

...Kris Holm, the famous unicyclist, dropped by for a bit and sent some of the harder problems, including the North Parkade Dyno. Not bad for somebody who doesn’t climb.

Other famous personalities joined our group, including buildering.net superstars: Kenny Frazz, and Allen “The Thinking Man’s Alain” Roberts. Both are very strong climbers and I suspected that one of them would be taking home the coveted Ardman Award.

The Chan Centre route was a new addition to the buildering circuit, a nice wide crack good for foot-jams and perfect for the hands. It allows access to one of the Chan sub-roofs, not the tin can proper, but still a nice vantage point. A janitor stopped by at one point to comment on what a great job we were doing -- not really, but he did say he wouldn’t call the cops if we left immediately.

The highlight of the evening had to be Allen’s amazing ascent of the Belkin Art Gallery North Drainage problem. Think of climbing a triangle suspended off the ground by about 4ft. The sides of the triangle lack any sort of features, and don’t come together at a sharp enough angle to make much difference. To make things worse, the edges end about halfway up.

Lacking footholds, the initial pull-up requires an impressive amount of shoulder strength. Once your feet are on, you squeeze your legs together as hard as you can and try to bump up your hands. At this point it’s anyone’s guess what to do. A weird gaston ? A lieback? A headjam perhaps?

Eventually Allen nailed the problem simply by getting his legs as high as he could on the sides, and reeeeeeeaching way up to the finishing jug (by jug I mean a little metal edge covered in water).

(next page...)

We were subtle.

These would make great business cards.