Saturday, January 31, 2009

Ethan Pringle, Flight of the Bumblebee

Today Ethan Pringle repeated Flight of the Bumblebee (v8? superhighball) at the Secrets of the Beehive Area, making the third ascent of this intimidating line (after Kevin Jorgeson, FA, and Kevin Daniels). The problem begins with a leap to a good hold and then follows a flake and rising seam up and right on good crimps to a small overlap. Getting established above the overlap is the crux. Ethan rapped the line to brush and feel the holds before climbing it second try. The landing is bad, with big boulders, and the climbing is insecure. Overall, Ethan felt it was more scary than This Side of Paradise but not so scary as The Beautiful and Damned. Here is a cool video of Kevin Daniels doing the second ascent.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Wills,

If you didn't already know, there's footage of Ethan doing this ascent of 'Flight of the Bumblebee' here. It's a really cool short film of some great Bishop problems!