Annual attempt for a repeat of the short crack/seam on Whale Rock...
hard to pass up on a hot day and a good river level - think around 1.8ft OPG this day. Always good for a few not-so-serious efforts...
approach from up river - Whale Rock and the Three Sisters rock formations...
(Lower image from Internet - NOAA Fisheries)
guess that it does resemble an Orca whale in profile at this angle...
the Yough has to be one of the cleanest rivers anywhere when running clear - you can always infinitely see river bottom from this POV atop the Three Sisters when these conditions.
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Posting a third in a series of old film shorts:
Bouldering (1999)
Run Time 24min. (Approx.)
A bit of mundane minutiae: Filmed entirely on 16mm film - Eastman Kodak Color Negative 7245 EXR 50D (as we recall - there's a file folder in the archive cabinet with all the technical and processing details, but we ain't goin' back ta' look). Processed, color corrected/timed and scanned to Beta video tape for studio DNLE editing at WRS Film Labs located in Crafton, PA. They've since closed their doors a few years back*. Don't know how many (dubbing) generations this video print represents - we just grabbed an old off-the-shelf DVD for the MP4 transfer. Definitely a few considering the three-color bleeding. We discovered, too, that DVD discs apparently degrade over time - a few wouldn't function (20+ years age). Originally copied to VHS video tape with later transfer to DVD-disc when that format became available and we had acquired the resources. Filmed entirely MOS. Later studio dubbed the voice over and a few sound effects. It used to be fun goin' out and recording sounds (e.g., throwin' large boulders in the pond) - weren't any on line effects libraries at the time. Music pilfered (for the most part) from Gary Hoey's brilliant soundtrack to Bruce Brown's equally brilliant Endless Summer II theatrical film. YouTube apparently screens uploaded videos concerning copyright issues. They gave us the green light so I guess we're good. Posted for viewing herein only - no malicious intent intended. If it should disappear that's the reason. We sure as heck ain't goin' back and re-editing (although, we'd like to change some of the corny dialog). Either way thanks Mr. Hoey (and Co.)
Old school through and through. No pads back then ('99 and earlier) - carpet squares, old floor mats, an attentive spotter. Pads did arrive on the scene at around this time, though. We probably visited 20+ local SWPA boulder field and one-off sites throughout '97 to early '99 acquiring footage. Strongmen Rob and Matt with muscle girl Sarah as backup attended to the climbing chores. Your loyal scribe stepped in when necessary.
We had to keep the boulder problems to pretty much stuff we had wired (maybe V4 difficulty at the stiffest now'days) not wanting to "blow the budget" on wasted footage of repeated falls. Think that a 50ft film roll gave ya' about 3 minutes of footage. The spring-drive Bolex, Cine-Kodak and a Russian-made K-3 cameras we employed each gave ya' about an average 17 seconds shooting per (spring wind) drive cycle. We had video resources available (gave some consideration to Hi-8 photography), but wanted to stick with film for various reasons.
Strongman Matt was definitely primed at the time - a pretty good climber considering a 6'-3" frame at a body weight of probably around 215lb. He'd put up a few pretty hard un-repeated problems that he wanted to include but we told 'em no for the aforesaid reasons**. Also with consideration, knowing him, that it would be a big fight with 'em to back off if he failed on the first attempt or two and he would insist that we keep "rolling" (he wasn't payin' for film and processing). We eventually returned to three of those problems and he nailed two first try and the third on the third try. Boy was he pissed! He was pretty tall with a long reach, good vertical leap and pretty good at long dynos to small edges (see around 19:25 of the video as example). Toward the end he had wanted an MP4 copy to extract a few clips for Instagram posting, unfortunately time ran out.
Muscle Girl Sarah in current times on two old "Matt Dyno" routes
Consider this post dedicated to 'em
Final note: There's a fun end sequence of some "river bouldering". We were always out on the water so naturally would have some fun on the boulders and stone piers dotting the Yough gorge. There's a few good one-offs hidden back in the brush and upper slopes flanking the Lower Yough***. We caught a bit of flak for wanting to include that clip as it wasn't considered "real climbing". Those routes were usually climbed barefoot, so we stuck some climbing shoes on 'em to be legit - made sure to get at least one shot of the boots. Now'days "Deep Water Soloing" is just another recent sub-category to the fun of rock climbing - gotta' love progress.
*FYI for a guy or two who had questions regarding Super 8 film processing and video conversion - we came across these guys here, MovieStuff, LLC, who manufacture what appear to be pretty nice and affordable film scanners in every format.
**Also, nine times out of ten ya' can't tell the difficulty of a climbing move on motion pictures, anyway. We mainly just wanted to showcase the great bouldering around these parts. We're really just landscape photographers, adding people for scale.
***And we'll never tell, now, considering all the recent access issues around here.
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