Nalle Hukkataival in Font

I am starting to work on assembling Pure now. Until this point I have not done much editing... for some reason I like to have a good idea of what to do before I start to make edit decisions. The footage from Font was an exception, as I decided to cut it together right away after returning. I selected a couple cool tracks (one from KRS ONE) and chopped like crazy. I'm really happy with the look I've been developing for Pure. It's not the same as shooting 35mm film, but the system I use basically exposes the picture onto a 35mm frame and then the camera converts the image to HD video immediately. The bad part is that it's like operating a video camera and a telecine machine at the same time, which can make it tricky to film action sports.

Nalle was in good form during the filming, he has spend quite a lot of time in Font lately and has the friction pretty well dialed. He recently repeated a V15 problem called The Island and I was very impressed with the difficulty of the boulder. It's the picture above with Nalle in the red shirt. In order to make the span at the crux of the problem, Nalle has to release his grip slightly on the left hand hold, and then at full extension he can just barely reach the worst part of the right hand. Both holds are sloping, only the right heel hook has any incut at all.

In addition to climbing V15 in Font, Nalle polished off 'The Big Four', a set of classic problem at Cuvier Rampart. Big Boss, Fourmis Rouge, Tristesse, and Big Golden are all about V9 to 10 in difficulty, but completing all of them is tricky as they represent a variety of different technical and physical challenges.

On the last day of filming, Nalle pulled onto the rock (on problems averaging V10) a total of 142 times, judging from my logging report of the video clips. Afterwards he reported that he felt pretty tired. He is on his way to the Nordic Championships at this moment in Norway to compete for his home country Finland and hopefully win some more road-trip fundage.

On my last day in Font I went circuiting with Fred Nicole. He showed me an amazing boulder first opened by Patrick Edlinger (pronounced E-lon-shay) in 1984. The problem is very nice, aesthetically equal to Cedar Spine in South Africa... a tall proud arete, standing alone in the forest. You start the boulder as high as you can reach, and follow the only line of holds and features for about 18 feet to the top. I was able to complete the problem in 3 tries, which is good because each try was a ground-up effort involving quite a lot of moves. If I hadn't done it on try#3 then I doubt I would have completed it.

Fred, when he spots, whispers encouragement so quietly that you cant tell if he said it or if you just thought it yourself.

Today it's cold and there is snow on the ground. I'm looking forward to the next couple months of training in the gym, working on my video, and thinking about goals for next year.