Have you been wondering what is going on in Australian climbing of late? Well, if so you are probably not alone there.
There hasn’t been all that much Oz climbing news reported of late, well, at least that’s how it seems. It’s as if things have gone a bit quiet. I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly, several of our best climbers have been recently out of action – due to injuries and other reasons. Secondly, what news there is hasn’t been reported as well as used to be. CRUX magazine has folded and the Australian Climbing Association, Chockstone and climbing.com.au web sites haven’t updated their news feeds much in years (with climbing.com.au having been off-line for ages; perhaps it is defunct?). It seems the main contributors to those outlets have been putting their energy elsewhere – and that’s understandable.
Over the years I’ve reported a lot of climbing news but my work as a climbing photographer is not normally simply driven by news — or the apparent “newsworthiness” of what I shoot. I’d far prefer to produce an image that has merit beyond the fact that the climber is doing (or has done) something “newsworthy”. I’m trying to find some sort of “vision” beyond the “news” – and “newsworthiness” usually has little, if anything, to do with it. Well, that’s what I generally try to aim for anyway. Climbing is to me a whole lot more than just ticking big numbers and I want my photography to reflect that. So while it’s not its driving force, through my work I often do come across “newsworthy” situations and often I’m happy to photograph it some way or another — as the situation allows.
Whenever I do photograph something newsworthy I’ll usually post something here on my blog (well eventually anyway, I still haven’t yet blogged about Adam Ondra’s 8c+ onsight that I photographed!). But the general lack of reporting of Australian climbing news of late, which I referred to above, has recently got me thinking. For example, Adrian Laing from the Blue Mountains recently pulled off a very dangerous and difficult first ascent on Nafees Cap near K7 in Pakistan. I think it’s one of the most adventurous hard climbs by an Australian that I’ve heard about in a fair while. It has been reported in New Zealand, Italy and the USA but a few months later there has not yet been a single blip about this here in Australia. I’m not sure what exactly that says about the current state of Australian climbing reporting, but I do think we can do better.
So I’ve decided to open up the scope of this blog a bit and from time to time I might post some climbing news here. It won’t become the main focus of this blog, far from it, but I will post the occasional news that I think is exceptional and in danger of getting overlooked elsewhere, regardless of whether I personally had anything to do with photographing or reporting it. But oh man, how I would have loved (and probably also hated) to have photographed this one…
So without further ado, the following post is a report on “Ado” and co’s Pakistani first ascent! More tk.
