The Cleanest Line

Les Landes

by Patch Wilson

A friend of mine, Nick Pumphrey, who I grew up with surfing, skating and generally causing mayhem, now lives in South West France. He has called Hossegor home for about six or seven years now. Now turned semi-professional photographer he still works the summers in bars and restaurants and sleeps in his van to save money so that he can head on missions throughout the winter. His van holds this amazing quiver of longboards, single fins, alaias, bodyboards and swim fins. All the wave-riding equipment you could need for whatever one of the best stretches of beachbreak in the world could throw at you.

[Me cruising on my Fark Quad. Photo: Nick Pumphrey]

Back to Patagonia - Part 4

by Crystal Thornburg-Homcy

 

 

After more than a week camping in Patagonia with Jamie Sterling, Jack McCoy, and Mel and Kenny, founders of 1% for the Planet member Sol Raiz Organics, along with their crew, we regrouped and repacked for the coast. While we were in Santiago packing our surfing gear, we heard that the nearby ski resort, Valle Nevado, still had snow and was closing for the season. We decided to make a day trip to visit the over 10,000-foot-high mountain.

The drive up the mountain was as thrilling as hearing the “Wild Bull” breathing outside our tent. The sharp turns and steep cliffs with no guard rails looked down onto car cemeteries. With no coca leaves to chew on the altitude was getting the best of me; I closed my eyes and tried to relax. Our whole drive we didn’t see one patch of snow, just dirt. We were all wondering if there would actually be any snow at the top. I was ecstatic to get out of the car finally to discover a white-capped mountain with patches of mud. It had been almost eight years since I’d been snowboarding, a sport that I’ve love to do at least once a year my whole life growing up. I guess I had been so focused lately on traveling to other coastlines in search of waves that I neglected visiting snowy peaks.

Sicily Climbing Vacation, Part 2: Pasta Con Le Sarde

by Brittany Griffith

Full disclosure: the following sardines and pasta recipe is not my own. And I know what you are thinking: “Sardines? Gross!” But have you read the fine print about sardines? Printed on the box of the Wild Planet ones I bought: “Ounce for ounce, sardines provide three times more calcium and phosphorous than milk, more iron than cooked spinach, as much protein as steak, and as much potassium as bananas. These sardines are considered a Best Choice for Sustainability by a consensus of environmental organizations.” My point? A) Sardines are where it’s at, and B) I recently came to appreciate the hidden virtues of sardines in Sicily (which actually led me to Point A… so maybe these are a little out of order, but, whatever… just stay with me).

Editor's note: Today's post is part two of Patagonia ambassador Brittany Griffith and friends' Sicily Climbing Vacation. All photos by JT.

Chris, Whitney, JT, Burr and myself had been in the car for over an hour. We were headed to the 2000-year-old ruins of Agrigento, and were hungry but couldn’t find a place to eat. JT, desperate for food, pulled the car over in front of a restaurant with a façade that looked like a Long John Silver's with fake anchors, fishnets, and other seafaring paraphernalia.

Hesitatingly, we followed JT inside. The maître d’ put out his cigarette, warmly shook my hand and spoke to me in French. I told him, in French, that I was American. He smiled wide and then greeted us in English. He was large, bald, and missing a front tooth.

Sicily Climbing Vacation

by Brittany Griffith

“Why would you come to Sicily to climb when you live in Utah?” the svelte Swiss woman asked in a barely detectible, yet posh accent. I looked at her blankly for a few seconds, wondering if she was attempting “second-language humor” or if she was indeed serious.

“Uh, we don’t have overhanging tufas along the Mediterranean,” I said, still somewhat unsure if she was putting me on or not.

“Yes, but there are no creks,” she said, miming a handjam.

I’ll trade “creks” for good olives, authentic gelato and cheap prosciutto any day of the week I told her.

“But Sicily is not well known to Americans, no?” She was unflagging (but correct) in debating our choice of European vacation, but still I hesitated…was this one of those Euro rhetorical questions: “no, yes” or “yes, no”?

“Ah yes, but who doesn’t prefer an adventure?” I said, answering her question with my own. She looked at me like I was a day-old croissant. I giggled.

And for the next two weeks we – JT, Chris Kalous (JT’s college “Outdoor Adventure Floor” dorm-mate from freshman year) Whitney Boland and myself – got ourselves into plenty of adventure… both climbing and as tourists.

[Above: Because the temperature was fairly mild, we kinda forgot about the shorter daylight hours of winter. We got back to the base in the dark and had to hike out by iPhone light and the flash of the lighthouse beacon. Photo: JT]

Back to Patagonia - Part 3

by Crystal Thornburg-Homcy

I made my way through the Pumalín Park area in Patagonia. Fjord Quintupeu was my next destination along with fellow surfer Jamie Sterling, Sol Raiz Organics, and filmmaker Jack McCoy. We paddled our kayaks into the wind with the sun warming our faces while refreshing splashes of freezing water hit our faces. We had a day of paddling, passing by waterfalls, isolated ranches, salmon farms, and seal colonies. When we finally made our way to the entry of the Fjord Quintupeu, the sun was starting to slip behind tall peaks that were blanketed with deep emerald forests, revealing heaven-high waterfalls.

[Above: Crystal Thornburg Homcy+Chile from The Wave Journal. Video: Jack McCoy & Erik Derman]

We navigated through the fish farm to get to our resting point at the base of a waterfall in the Quintupeu Fjord. The crew was ready to warm our bones as the temperature was dropping fast. Our escort boat was far behind back at the port, hours away with the warm gear. We attempted to stay warm by gathering wood, putting our girl and boy scouts skills to work. We finally got a flame going on the soaked logs. As we began to warm up, we passed the time waiting for our boat by doing yoga on the beach, and keeping our fire alive. The clouds began to seep into the Fjord, and the darkness was setting in. Our boat was finally spotted on the horizon. This time, we set up camp under the stars with the rumbling sound of a waterfall instead of the “Wild Bull.”

WideBoyz on Century Crack: Talking Grades

- By Tom Randall and Pete Whittaker

Take a peek at the latest issue of Climbing magazine and you'll find Patagonia climbing ambassador Pete Whittaker sporting the kind of face that only climbing offwidths can produce. The story that goes with this photo: "The World's First 5.14 Offwidth." Together with his partner Tom Randall and photographer friend Alex Ekins the crew from the UK travelled throughout the American West ticking off our nastiest off-widths. Here's an excerpt from the Wide Boyz blog, discussing how the two came up with the landmark grade. -Ed.

Ok, so I suppose it’s finally time to lay our nuts on the table and come up with a grade for Century Crack. There have been stories of superlative climbing events over the years that have been surrounded by grading controversies, climbing style arguments and conflicting personalities battling it out for the first ascent. I’m not sure that Century is any different from this; Stevie’s had his say, certain keyboard heroes have mass debated and the 9a grade has been thrown around.


[Patagonia Climbing Ambassador Pete Whittaker takes a breather to avoid going batty on his attempt to climb Century Crack. Canyonlands, Utah. Photo: Alex Ekins via WideBoyz blog.]

What a Mess – Remembering a World before Plastic Pollution

by Gerry Lopez

I spent a lot of time surfing a spot in Indonesia called G-Land. Remotely located on the edge of the Alas Purwo National Park, on the southeastern tip of Java, it was, relatively speaking, far from civilization. Actually, as the Indonesian sea eagle flies, it was only about 15 kilometers from the nearest village but with the terrain and local inhabitants in between, it might as well have been a million miles. Residents of that area included the Java tiger, herds of wild boars, the Indonesian wild water buffalo, the Komodo dragon, more deadly snakes than one could shake a stick at… well, I often wondered what I was doing out there with no more protection than a few surfboards.

Patagonia surf ambassador, Gerry Lopez, shares a story today about life before single-use plastics. Read on for some rarely seen photos from the early days at G-Land and an opportunity to join the Plastic Pollution Coalition. [Above: With waves like this, who would want to do anything else all day long? Gerry at G-Land, sometime in the late '70s or early '80s. Photo: ©Don King]

In the mid to late 1970s, we were permitted to build a temporary camp with some bamboo tree houses and a shack to cook in. The lack of human presence made the beaches – the only area we frequented – absolutely pristine. We brought our drinking water in glass bottles, the only containers available at that time. We dug latrines out in the jungle and burned all of our garbage. When the coming of the monsoons heralded the end of the surf season, we left.

Kusum Kanguru - Taking the Gear for a Walk

by Barry Blanchard

In the spring of 1991 I was guiding in the Everest Region of Nepal - the Khumbu. Knowing that I would be looking to climb a route on Kusum Kanguru on my own after the departure of my last climbing guest, my Sirdar, Tensing and I took advantage of a couple of down days to go up and have a wee peak at the unclimbed southwest face of the mountain. The Thadokoshi was a wild tramp. I really don't think that anyone had ever been up there. We saw a red panda prance from boulder to boulder in the creek not five metres in front of us. When the creek deepened into a slot canyon Tensing hacked down a tree with his kukuri and notched steps into it to create a ladder to get us out of the pit. Ever sensitive, he noted my solemn guilt at cutting down a tree. "I am sorry that I cut down tree," he stated in all sincerity.

Patagonia alpine ambassdor Barry Blanchard checks in today with a pre-trek report and a sat-phone call from a recent trip he took to Nepal. [Above: The unclimbed southwest face of Kusum Kanguru on November 8, 2011. Photo:Tom Schnugg]

In a swizzle stick tangle of immature bamboo the kukuri came out again hacking away like a machete to clear a path. I could have reached out and touched the Himalayan Thar that we ... startled?

The Labyrinth - an excerpt from Best Women's Travel Writing 2011

From The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011 - an excerpt from “The Labyrinth,” a story about surviving Costa Rican heartbreak and whitewater by Bridget Crocker, Patagonia copy writer. Bridget and fellow BWTW11 contributors will be reading at Diesel, A Bookstore in Malibu on Sun., Dec. 4 at 3p.m.


[Author and river guide, Bridget Crocker. Photo by Tony Demin.]

“This upper section is called ‘The Labyrinth,’” Roland says, cinching down his frayed lifejacket. “It’s been run maybe three or four times before today. I’ve seen it a couple times and I’d say it’s pretty solid Class V. Lots of steep drops through tight chutes. There are a few slots we have to make—it’s not an option to miss them. I think I can remember them all, but we’ll have to scout as we go. There’s no way out of the gorge once we start.”

Normally I would be anxious about taking a flaccid shredder down a little-run Class V boulder garden without the safety of other boaters along or even an evacuation route. Plus, Roland forgot his helmet and we have no throw bag. Oddly, I couldn’t care less. I feel no hint of the usual Class V jitters or concern for our lack of preparedness. It occurs to me that I may be spared a trip to Cathedral Point, as our little daytrip down the Labyrinth is suicidal enough.

Éire

by Patrick “Patch” Wilson

Eyeing up a promising looking swell chart and coming to the end of a massive restoration project at work, I jumped at the opportunity to hitch a lift in my friend Lowey’s van and get back out to Eire for some waves again. The swell was looking big and the winds not quite right but I had time on my side and I have found over the years that to get the good days here it’s best not to be in a rush and just to hangout and take the place in.

Editor’s note: Patagonia UK ambassador, Patch Wilson, joins us today with some thoughts about a recent surf trip, and a stack of amazing pictures. Thanks to Patch, Mickey Smith and Tom Lowe for sharing their photos.

Autumn time and the big lows that sweep across the Atlantic throw swell straight at the West coast of Éire along with a lot of weather. In between weather fronts, when the wind is switching around and easing off a little, you can score perfect slabs, points and beaches if you know where to look on the right tide, wind and swell direction. It’s a gamble of: Should we go here and check this slab or here instead and check this point? But when things come together, it’s well worth the waiting and searching.

[Above: Patch Wilson, turquoise bowl. Photo: Mickey Smith frame grab]