ABYSS - North America's Highest Bouldering

ABYSS - North America's Highest Bouldering from Louder Than Eleven on Vimeo.

ABYSS, the latest viral film from Louder Than Eleven, provides an insider’s look at rock climbing development. Exploration of secret, alpine climbing terrain high above Colorado’s Front Range has created a flurry of debate regarding the philosophy, secrecy and ethics of development. Culminating in Ben Spannuth’s FA of one of the world’s highest elevation 5.14s, ABYSS opens the floodgates of passionate debate within the climbing community.

The scandal unfolds in this 48-minute piece, featuring such climbing talents as Paige Claassen, Matty Hong, Chris Schulte, Mayan Smith-Gobat, Dave Wetmore and Matt Wilder and narrated by Jon Glassberg. Additional commentary from the insightful minds of Peter Beal, Herman Feissner, Joe Kinder, Brady Robinson, Ben Scott, Chris Sharma, John Sherman, and Clark Shelk.

Louder Than Eleven is a Boulder based production company specializing in outdoor media to promote the sport of rock climbing by creating captivating action entertainment.

www.lt11.com
www.abyss.lt11.com
www.facebook.com/louderthan11
www.twitter.com/louderthan11

Music
Immune System - “Gehenna” - www.myspace.com/immunesystem/music
Milyoo – “Classic” – Lexington, KY – soundcloud.com/milyoo
Immune System – “The Orme”
Abel Okugawa - “Milk” www.abelokugawa.com
Milyoo – “Phoenix”
Chaptabois - “Walk” - Facebook.com/Chaptabois
Milyoo – “Multitude”
Milyoo – “Pully”
Yosemite Music - “102” - soundcloud.com/yosemite-music
Immune System – “Initiation”
Milyoo – “Classic Refix”
Milyoo – “Takedown”
Louis W T Buick (Lucky Cub) – “92” - soundcloud.com/lucky-cub
Milyoo – “You are You”
Louis W T Buick (Lucky Cub) – “EXX”
Yosemite Music – “Water”
Neon Highwire - “Isometric View (Novelty Music Scene Mix)” - http://www.neonhighwire.com/
The Slow Waves – “Underbelly” - www.facebook.com/theslowwaves - www.theslowwaves.com

ABYSS - North America's Highest Bouldering - OUTTAKES from Louder Than Eleven on Vimeo.

Outtakes, bloopers, and deleted scenes from ABYSS - North America's Highest Bouldering.

Download ABYSS for free at http://lt11.com/downloads2/

http://abyss.lt11.com/
http://lt11.com/

Chris Schulte bouldering in Squamish, BC

Black Diamond athlete Chris Schulte bouldering in Squamish, BC from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.

Chris Schulte early spring bouldering in Colorado's high country

BD athlete Chris Schulte early spring bouldering in Colorado's high country from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.

Black Diamond athlete Chris Schulte recently sent us this video and report of his early season bouldering forays into the Colorado high country. Nice to see the trees budding, the snow melting and boulders drying out! The video was shot a couple months ago, and now the alpine bouldering season is in full swing.
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Winter has moved on, and the infrequent snowstorms that passed through the Front Range have given way to spring showers, feeding green shoots and tiny buds, washing the chalk off the lowland grips and intermittently confining one to a rest day or a gym session. As the seasons revolve along, the sun burns away the tiny amounts of snow we got up here in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and with the exception of a wild winter wind having deposited some unusual drifts here and there, the alpine season is starting up quickly and nicely.

It’s always a treat to head up into the higher zones at the beginning of each new season: the journey takes one through a few different layers in the climatic strata, down roads often travelled but not seen for many months. It’s a nostalgic trip, and the familiarity of the roads and trails sets a pace and a mood for the day. Early in the season, the journey is just as valuable as the climbing, if not more so.

The first forays are little reconaissance sorties into the middle layers, the roadside sectors of the mountains, like Guanella Pass or the Bear Lake Road. With that, a good guess for what’s going on up high helps you pack up and head out for a full day of what amounts to alpine climbing with a pad. These little trips are, for me, a grounding experience, and I can take this time to try and repeat established problems, to re-set my counter a little for the coming months of hiking and hunting new lines.

With the wild weather up there, it can be like stepping out into space, high up, just below treeline, with the winds blowing and the sun shining, or the snow turning to rain, turning to hail, and moving on.

The warmer it gets, the higher we go. The passes and roads to some of the best bouldering in the U.S. are opening, week by week, and another season is beginning in some of my favorite places, higher and higher up in the mountains, further and further afield.

Chris Schulte bouldering through the Colorado winter

BD athlete Chris Schulte bouldering through the Colorado winter from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.

Black Diamond athlete Chris Schulte lives and breathes bouldering 24/7, 365. So it's no surprise that he makes the best of Colorado winters and gets out bouldering even in cold, snowy conditions. What is surprising, as you hear in this video, is that Schulte actually prefers it to be freezing cold.

Chris Schulte bouldering in Hueco Tanks, Texas

BD athlete Chris Schulte bouldering in Hueco Tanks, Texas from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.

BD athlete Chris Schulte makes a trip to the iconic boulders of Hueco Tanks each year, always finding new problems, new adventures and new challenges. Such was the case this year—exactly what Chris was looking for. Below is Chris’ report about his season in Hueco as well as a video he edited together of some of his favorite moments and sends.
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El Paso sits on the southern edge of the nation, on the edge of a vast desert, wild with car thieves and gangsters, traffickers of human, arms and drugs, bad drivers without insurance, and a big tall fence festooned with discarded plastic bags and bits of refuse running alongside a trickling, muddy brook.

Hueco Tanks, not 40 minutes away, sits peaceful and pristine, an anchor for our human and climbing culture. I’ve been coming here season after season, annually, bi-annually; the space here remains constant: a vortex, magnifying and edifying me and the experiences of my life time and time again. I can come here with peace, and have more peace. I can come here with tumults unheeded, and reap the whirlwind of my deeds. It’s downright psychedelic sometimes, the magic of this place, be it black or white, a magic 8ball or rites of human sacrifice. I’m reminded whenever I come down here, in one way or another, we’re playthings of the old gods when we come to play in their sandbox.

Crawling into the guts of Hueco’s four mountains, you enter another climate, another world. Birds sing, javalinas grunt and wiggle down the trails, coyotes serenade the passing watches of the sun. The greenery drinks deep from the rock wells. The wind howls like the wild dogs roaming the stony arroyos.

Sometimes, the outside world penetrates this fortress of nature: the rumble of bombs and artillery, the staccato pops of heavy machine gun fire and the thump of passing attack helicopters remind you of the very serious world, just beyond the horizon. In recent years, the world has encroached ever more on this oasis: crest a rocky ridgeline and look away north, south, and east, to a private training camp for soldiers of fortune, the cheap box-buildings made to resemble Middle Eastern towns.

In, out, black, white, yin, yang, positive, negative. Always a blend here, tossing you back and forth, making you think, making you try, making you do. A huge, stirring cauldron, boiling with life and experience.

Maybe that’s why we keep coming back: for the slosh, and for the calm, but never for nothing.


Music by: Sunsearcher "Latin Rhythm", and “Flamenco Rhythm” (http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/Sunsearcher)
and
"fiesta en mi barrio" by Scappare di Casa (http://dasandereselbst.org)

Chris Schulte sending Atlas Shrugged (V12) in Red Rocks, NV

■BD athlete Chris Schulte sending Atlas Shrugged (V12) in Red Rocks, NV

BD athlete Chris Schulte sending Atlas Shrugged (V12) in Red Rocks, NV from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.

Black Diamond athlete Chris Schulte spent some time around Las Vegas last year, bouldering in Red Rocks with a crew of friends. Here is the video that lensman John Dickey edited together of Chris and friends battling out the beta on Atlas Shrugged (V12) and Chris' eventual send.

Chris Schulte bouldering in Fontainebleau

■BD athlete Chris Schulte bouldering in Fontainebleau

BD athlete Chris Schulte bouldering in Fontainebleau from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.

Black Diamond athlete Chris Schulte has been over in Europe for most of 2011, bouldering in France and Switzerland. Here is the video he put together from his stay in Fontainbleau that does a great job of capturing the subtle technique adjustments Font requires.