The Continuum Project

Hey All,

It's that time again. The weather is cooling down and the ice is starting to form. I am super pumped this season to climb ice because I've been trapped in my basement for the last couple months editing my newest film, "The Continuum Project" From what I've been reading in the posts and forums and all that jazz people are pretty psyched to check it out. It ships Nov 27th, just in time for the holiday season so don't be shy. Get that certain someone a nice climbing DVD. He or she will thoroughly enjoy it. You can purchase it at alstrinfilms.com

Be sure to check out Alpinist.com for 6 exclusive shorts from the Continuum Project.

Tell you what, the first three people to e-mail me an exciting story about the outdoors, whether it's your first experience climbing or your trip to Patagonia, I want to hear about it. I'll send you a free Continuum DVD and post your story on my blog next week. chris@alstrinfilms.com

The Continuum Project follows some of the world’s best climbing talent around the globe to document bold new routes and daring repeats on ice, rock, and in the alpine.

Shot entirely in High Definition, watch as Guy Lacelle, Audrey Gariepy and Mathieu Audibert establish terrifying new ice routes in Norway and Rob Pizem and Mike Anderson crush brawny off-widths and delicate face climbing in Zion. Get on route with Ines Papert and Cory Richards as they blitz Kwangde Shar in Nepal and witness Majka Burhardt and Sarah Watson free the Beckey Route on Elephant’s Perch in the Sawtooths. Discover the rewards and risks of exploration with Jon Walsh and Ian Welsted as they establish a beautiful new mixed line in the remote Icefall Brook range of British Columbia and cool down on the difficult sport routes of Lions Head in Ontario with Sam Elias, Emily Harrington, Leslie Timms and Lauren Lee.

Extending the focus of Higher Ground, gain new perspective on the motivations and courage of some of the world’s top climbers through the superb cinematography and innovative approach of The Continuum Project.

Fundraising event in Crested Butte

Thanks to all of you who came out and enjoyed the film with us this past weekend. Rocky Kimball contacted me a couple months ago and asked if I'd be willing to show Luxury Liner in Crested Butte as a fundraising event for the Rocky Mountain Field Institute (RMFI). I immediately jumped on board for this. I think more climbers who recreate and climb in Indian Creek need to step forward and do their part for this area. For those of you who don't know RMFI began working with the Bureau of Land Management and the Dugout Ranch in 1989 to preserve Indian Creek Canyon and mitigate recreational impacts. In conjunction with groups from Outward Bound, Prescott College, Western State College, Colorado College, and Montrose High School, RMFI has built trails to many popular climbing sites and completed major restoration in several side canyons. RMFI has also completed a comprehensive trails and campsite inventory to assist the BLM and the Nature Conservancy in developing a recreational impact mitigation and management strategy for the area.

Saturday night we raised $1000 for RMFI to help with the continued efforts of Indian creek. Jim Donini with the American Alpine Club was there to talk about the trail day they are putting on with RMFI in Sept. So thanks again for everyone who came out to show their support.

Climbing in the Bugaboos

Woke up at 2:45am, brewed some coffee, loaded our granola bars and started our 3.5 hour approach to the Becky-Chouinard route on South Howser Tower in the Bugaboos Provincial Park located in British Columbia. The goal was to be back before dark.

Whenever you hear the words, "the goal was" you know it didn't go

as planned.

Let me start off by saying I finally went on a climbing trip without my video camera. It was a

shock to hike in somewhere without cords, batteries, laptop and my camera. Laura (my wife) and I decided it was time to take our first vacation together. We opted for the Bugs. I've always wanted to climb in the Bugs, the granite looks bomber and the climbs look amazing.

We warmed up on the Pigeon Spire, we got our alpine start. Left the boulder camp located

below the hut around 9:30am. It was a fun outing. The next day we left a little earlier 8:30am to climb the Northeast Ridge of B

ugaboo Spire. Maybe we got

off route a little to access the col because the guidebook says to scramble. We roped up for 3 pitches to access the co

le. The rock was super loose on fifth class climbing.

Once at the base of the route the climbing went super fast. I wish I would have taken the time to read about the traverse from the North to South summit. We did the tr

averse with a few rappels and some very exposed ridge traverses but made it back to camp just before dark.

We thought we hadn't had enough adventure yet and we really wanted a long day so we decided to climb the Becky-Chouinard route on S. Howser Tower. We took a rest day to figure a few things out and try to get some local beta from Sean Isaac who was in the cabin guiding.

As I mentioned earlier we were up by 2:45 and out of camp by 3:30am. We were doing very well getting

to the base and scrambling to the first pitch of the climb. There was a party ahead of us but by a few pitches and they motored on ahead pretty fast. We only saw them one other time throughout the day. The first ten pitches went very good. We were keeping a good pace and looking at our watch we knew we were going to be back at camp just afte

r dark....or so we thought.

Towards the upper pitches I decided to not read the topo description as closely and got off route on almost every pitch. We both started loosing

steam a little and next thing we knew we were a pitch from the summit and it was 9:45pm. Damn I thought. This sucks. Here we are with no extra clothing and we're about to spend the night on the summit of the South Howser Tower. I'm sure many people have done this but for me it was a very humbling experience. I've never been benighted on anything. To me this meant I failed. I didn't complete this route in a day and that was my goal.

This time was different though. I was up there with my wife. This is the first time I am doing a big climb without one of my regular "dude" climbing partners. I realized I had a lot more fun climbing the route with her. Sure, I would be at camp by now if I climbed it with a friend but now we get to experience the bivy together. I can't explain it much more but once I came to terms of being benighted I started laughing. We both started laughing once we decided to sleep on this exposed ledge with rocks digging into our hips and kidneys all night. Did we sleep? Not really. Did we freeze? Hell yeah we did. But we also made it down safely in the morning and in the end that's the success of the trip. You always want to come home from a trip.

Sport Climbing in Lions Head, Ontario

That's right. You heard it. Call me a sell out I don't care. I spent 8 days filming sport climbing and guess what. It was fun. It was walk up and steal the low hanging fruit sort of thing compared to my typical alpine, ice, and big wall filming. The crew was awesome. I headed up there with climbers; Sam Elias, Lauren Lee and Emily Harrington and of course accompanied by the man himself Keith Ladzinski as still photographer. We were the full on media circus. It was great. Actually the best part about shooting with Keith is his sense of humor. Here we are two fellows; Keith shooting stills and myself shooting video hanging from ropes at times and just talking smack the whole day. Thanks for those great rappell shots off Lions Head Terry!!

Talk about easy access. The approach is a mellow 20 minutes on pretty flat trails. You come up to the edge of the cliff and either rappell in to shoot or just hang out on top and shoot down on the climbers.

This trip really allowed me to get pretty dialed with my Letus Ultimate setup. I purchased a lens adaptor for my camera last year and haven't had a whole lot of opportunity to really shoot with it in the field because it adds a lot of weight to the setup. Because of the short approach and easy stances on the cliff I was able to use multiple lenses and zoom into these climbers at really cool and wild angles.

All of us concluded that the local climbing scene at Lions Head is the best. The people are the most psyched about climbing and they are all there to climb and push their friends to the next hardest grade. I have never been to a crag and experienced this type of warm welcome as a visitor. You guys are all the Bomb!!!

I recommend anyone thinking about climbing here to buy your plane ticket, gas up your car, or stick your thumb out, stop making excuses and get up there to climb. You will not regret it. Soon to follow a new short about the area but until then you can probably find photos by looking at any of the athletes blogs. Sam Elias or Lauren Lee

It's been so long

I apologize for the long long time of no blog entries. Those of you who know me understand completely I'm sure.

Lots of changes in the passed year but I won't bore you with that stuff:

For starters HG Productions is now doing business as Alstrin Films. Check out the new website. alstrinfilms.com We will keep this websit

e updated with the newest trips and video teasers.

Speaking of trips. I just got back from Namibia. Where the hell is Namibia you ask? That's the same question I asked when Majka Burhardt asked me to come along and film the expedition. Namibia is located just north of South Africa.

We spent three and a half weeks driving and climbing. More driving than climbing but that's the way things go sometimes. It was a very successful trip though. Our team consisted of Majka Burhardt, Kate Rutherford and Peter Doucette. The media circus on this trip consisted of Gabe Rogel - photographer and myself. You can view lots

more photos on Gabe's website. Click on recent trips - Namibia.

I flew into Windhoek, Namibia after 36 hours of traveling. I

immediately picked up my rental truck and started driving for 5 hours to our first climbing destination - Spitzkopp. Did I forget to mention I almost drove off the road twice by falling asleep at the wheel? Spitzkopp is an established climbing destination consisting mostly of bolted slab climbing. I met the crew, it was my first time meeting Kate and Gabe.

I'm not going to go too much into detail about the trip because it will be posted on Patagonia's Tinshed website in the fall. Look for it. I'll have a nice new trailer to watch on there as well.

I will say it was one of my better trips I have been on in a

while. I saw some amazing animals most of us only see in the zoo and spectacular scenery the type we see on National Geographic. I was able to film a first ascent climb on the highest peak in Namibia and walked by a tree full of African Killer bees and lived to tell about it. Ahhh yeah, but now I'm home and enjoying the garden, which by the way is doing good thanks for asking. In the mean time check out a very short clip of the climb they put up.

Blown Away in Norway

I just came back from an ice climbing trip in Norway. After two week there with Guy Lacelle, Mathieu Audibert, Chris Alstrin and Alex Lavigne, I realize that what I’ve heard about this country was true…..it is the ice climbing paradise and an amazing place to discover. The 4.5 millions inhabitants of Norway are spread out around the country giving each of them a lot of space to enjoy the beautiful gifts from the nature around them. The colorful wooden houses of the villages along the fjords surrounded by rocky faces is very unique to the place.

Eidfjord (photo: Audrey Gariepy)

We ran into the first crux of the trip right at the airport. How are we going to fit the five of us and all our gear in that tiny Ford Focus “Station Wagon”? Strapping most of our gear to the roof, I still can’t believe that we managed a way to fit it all! So, we hit the road along the mountain passes singing songs from the “Dixie Chicks” and being as comfortable as you would on a hanging belay in the spindrifts!

When we arrived there, we just couldn’t believe what we were seeing. None of us have ever seen so much ice in such a small area. We could barely talk, just looking at each other with a big smile on our face. Where are we going to start? The potential was endless but a particular wall got our attention over the other stuff. All these long and steep ice lines right next to each other, we got to climb them all.

Voringfossen Wall, Eidfjord (photo: Audrey Gariepy)

Three days later, we had climbed 5 of them. They were all great. The routes ranged from 250 to 325 metres in length. The most impressive one was the furthest right with a first pitch of WI6+R, which Guy led like it was grade 4. After we were done with what we wanted to climb on this wall, the weather warmed up and the first pitch of the route fell down. It made us realize about how lucky we were to get the chance to climb those beautiful routes in good conditions. Guy was saying that the numerous years of ice climbing taught him that when you want to climb an ice route, you’re better to do it right now and never wait the next day…..it happened to be true for us in that case.

Audrey on Voringsfossen Wall, Eidfjord. (photo: Chris Alstrin)

Since the conditions deteriorated on this wall we decided to take a day off to drive around to find something else. In that day only, I’ve seen more waterfall than I have ever seen in all my life. The only problem was that most of them were melting down or weren’t touching the ground anymore……or maybe they never did. Anyway, we had to wait to the end of the day to find this perfect frozen yellow line in this narrow valley in Hjolmo. The line was so nice, that even the river to wade through, the little unfrozen waterfall to hike through, the boulder field covered with snow that we would have to cross didn’t discourage us.

The perfect waterfall in Hjolmo. (photo: Guy Lacelle)

The next day, we started the approach very early. Crossing the river with freezing water up to our knees and then we managed to go through all the cruxes of the approach. After three hours, we finally made it to the base of 300 metres with a sustained 170 metres of steeeeeppppp ice up to WI6. The day was a little too warm and we climbed the route in a total whiteout. We couldn’t see much around us, but we could hear a lot of big chunks of ice falling in the little cirque surrounding us. It was like climbing in a shotgun field. I remember thinking that it was safer on the route than I will be on the descent back to the car. Even though all that made me feel a little nervous, I couldn’t help to enjoy the climb so much. The line was just so straight and constantly steep. One of the best I’ve climbed for sure.

Eidfjord (photo: Audrey Gariepy)Road between Eidfjord and Gol (photo: Audrey Gariepy)

I’ve been very impressed about the potential of ice climbing in Norway. The waterfalls are everywhere….the only problem is you need a few cold days in a row to have them frozen!!! I was happy to go to the most popular places like Hemsedal and Rjukan to do some classic climbs like Hydnefossen and Lipton. But I enjoyed a lot more to go exploring around and find other nice lines that I’ve never heard about. Maybe they were first ascents? Maybe not? But one thing for sure is that our little group have been pretty lucky to climb them. -Audrey Gariepy

Guy climbing close to Eifjord (photo: Alex Lavigne)
Group (photo: Alex Lavigne)

Higher Ground US Tour

Check out our US tour dates.  

Bend, OR                Feb 19

Eugene, OR            Feb 20

Seattle, WA            Feb 21

Tacoma, WA           Feb 23

Walla Walla, WA   Feb 26

Berkeley, CA           Feb 27 

http://www.hg-productions.com/tour.php