The underground climbing scene changed me

[Music] have you ever looked at your city and occasionally thought wow this place is boring well I have but this is the story of how that changed yeah it's it's quite unique to have something that's just trying to express like climbing anywhere everywhere for all of us because climbing has a lot of quite strict rules that we've arbitrarily said you know in terms of great style ethics it's start Stand start this guidebook is more just like go out express yourself on the wall wherever you are whenever you are just go climb because I mean in the end that's what most libraries want to do like we just want to move well but then these rules kind of help guide us and this guidebook just does it in such a pure way you know of just wanting us to be out there I mean I just think it's yeah it's beautiful it's pretty cool all right enough out of this hippie's mouth we all know climbing isn't just that there's always grades to mark your skill there's competitions and I guess most notably of all Mega hard as sense to help grow that sweet sweet tick list well today I wanted to take you on a journey to the city of Bern that opened my eyes to what climbing can be and also what it used to be however first day I want to talk about movement climbing is like this hippie said a lot about discovering New Movement but then again so are a lot of other sports and if we take parkour for example it's about finding difficult moves practicing at an easier level and then getting ready for the real challenge ultimately it's about conquering your physical and mental body and achieving a move or sequence that you thought was above your limit now this is all starting to sound a lot like another sport we all know and love well the difference lies a lot in our approach towards measurable graded goals 6a7a8a our sport is built on this idea that every climb's difficulty is tangible and we Define our achievements and support on this it's a reasonable thing to do but is it really the best thing for us as climbers what about the remaining 98 of the sport the collection of skills moves the community and so on in my opinion that's where the real magic starts to happen and this is where the story starts to take place and the reason I was in burn to begin with I got a strange message from my friend Hannah Morris who had found a guidebook about climbing in the city now let's explore what this book has to offer now the guidebook in itself is a piece of art it was designed in the end of the 90s and early 2000s by Dr Betty and Dr bomb who had started to pave the way for local climbers with all the best spots clearly marked out now because it was in the middle of the city climbing on buildings was of course the primary targets which can create a bit of a carfuffle with the authorities the because of this they had marked each Boulder area with a main indication which they call the legality scale and much like a climbing grade scale this was designed to give the climber an idea of how legal it was to climb there there was the legal which means you might get asked to leave but it's fine to climb the fast legal which was a spot where you're not really welcome and lastly watch your back the grade that means get the F out quickly should the cops arrive now let's get the night started at the blue tour the Tower of blood seemed to be one of the main spots and sort of the first thing you go to when bouldering in Burn we met up with a crew of local climbers and started exploring some of the lines in the guidebook which offered around a dozen separate lines and all of which had something unique to offer you could say I ended up on this linkup that required a lot more complex movement and precision than you might expect from climbing on a building okay foreign is like a perfect Boulder it's elegant like that mono switch thumb press the pressing in the corner like you don't even find that don't be Rock it was so much fun looking forward to seeing more of these but it's starting off very exciting something that always strikes me is this this concept of vision and climbing just seeing something and being like yeah that I want to do like that's something I just want to get up I want to understand it and I feel like what they've been exploring here and documenting is exactly that they see just a line somewhere yeah we can move them we can create that and make it into climbing what did you just tell me um there is like a big door with like a four four meter okay uh thin thin hand like hand jams but uh look it's like oh a little bit a little bit slippery but but it's nice it's blood and gore yeah um the hand Jam the crack oh this is so perfect oh my name is Michael bring my crack gloves actually yeah yeah I'm gonna go get those crack gloves are on now let's get this freaking door it actually is really cool because it expands as you climb on it so if you get enough force in there I think you can like expand it into a jug see if it's possible you got it going oh yeah come on just one more come on let's get it [Applause] success you almost lived there at the top yeah I felt the feet sliding down but I figured out some minor technical skills on it how to get slightly more in it and also like I just uh accepted that the feet are trash so instead of like trying to do good foot jamming techniques I was just putting them in there and going and it worked because the hand jams were okay enough crack is done but there's still one more line that I saw on this one a Run and Jump very parkour style Boulder like there's nothing on the wall aside from these crimps in the middle of it and it's really high up so let's get to it like one and a half emils tall yeah I think it's gonna be hard like I think this is going to be I'm gonna have to commit fully Channel my inner Toby cigar and just give it my own you going for the big one I think that's the easiest to focus on one and just get like one hand in it and hold it Mexico [Music] yes yes to me this was the perfect confidence between parkour and climbing and also where it hit me climbing here in Burns started out as a form of parkour and it's something that I think we can learn from today the environment the gear the people the chalk just showed that it's a climbing crack but the movements said parkour somehow the limitations of our grades rules and many other things that disrupts the flow of this and climbing was gone and what remained was something really beautiful it's your turn Hannah with this mindset we kept following the trail of Dr Berry and Dr bomb as well as their guidebook ultimately ending up in a children's playground in the middle of the night oh here we have a place for bolt yeah this this is I guess where you can put up holes there's one as well oh here's one yeah see this is how safe it is you can use this on your own ability so this is probably it's gonna be a legal one on the scale so very legal top out slide it's a big ass move good job [Music] there we go yeah that was fun Boulder is done ready for The public's opinion is it a classic or not I guess we'll see but it's up on the wall for future generations to appreciate in this wonderful little dinosaur playground such a sick thing to climber it's like I just get so psyched just because it's I don't even know what it is but it's just movement and it's hard and it's like this gets me so motivated see how the others are doing yeah come on come on stay on stay on keep tight keep tight use the hips yeah perfect so good come on yeah yeah come on around the corner yes yes that's so good this is the crack this is yeah we're at a safe uh like legal spot though so it shouldn't be too but this is a hard one a difficult Boulder and it's a it's a dino much like this Diner right here one of the things that's kind of sick about it is how much it becomes like a very normal climb I mean the absurdity of starting on a handlebar that's in a door going out to this like very concrete Edge that doesn't really you know if you just look at it it's just a door it's just an opening and then it ends up being like a three-star line at least the dining to the crimp is a proper move like something I would love to climb both in a gym and Outdoors and I don't know just having this like right here having somebody who found this wrote it down in a guidebook you know for us to enjoy that's just that's a beautiful thing yeah I'm psyched to explore some more of this beautiful city of burn see what else we have here we continue to explore burn using our chalk our psych and our guidebook to help guide us through the city we scaled some castle walls some beautiful crack features and some very very strange structures all situated in front of our eyes as our night progressed but it wasn't until I got back home to Stockholm that I realized what an impact this adventure had had on me I started to see the rural structures of my city with a completely new eye the erects on my way to the grocery store the incredible flat wall that I biked past hundreds of times but never really given the thought to climb and I realized that it's time to give it a go and start exploring my own city as well to climbing I think one thing that I very much appreciated was seeing how psyched everybody was for each other for like just just one you know like there was no difference or even more of a positive difference than if you're at the crack like everybody was just enjoying themselves so so much [Music] completely detached from like grades rules limitations just because it's such a very very free form of climbing it's just literally if you want to climb you climb otherwise you chill back have a beer do something else that's just it's just incredibly pure and everybody was enjoying that pure form of climbing together but also in their own way you know

Channel: Emil Abrahamsson

Views: 202,647

Keywords: climbing, bouldering, eric karlsson bouldering, ifsc, emil abrahamsson, magnus midtbo, mellow, rock climbing, bouldering bobat, adam ondra

Id: rGV4FzPneNQ

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023