Category Archives: Climbing

Am avut ocazia, acum mai mulți ani, să țin în mână macheta acestei cărți, în limba franceză, pe atunci numită Memento. Între timp volumul a suferit mai multe modificări și de conținut și de prezentare iar în 2020 este tradus pentru prima data și în limba română. Motorul din spatele acestui proiect a fost și este Fundația Petzl care are ca misiune, pe lângă dimensiunea de conservare a patrimoniului prin încurajarea unei practici a alpinismului și speologiei într-un mod judicios, informarea publicului amator și astfel reducerea accidentelor și incidentelor montane.

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ice

Photo (c) C. Pogacean O acuza adusa cuplului ghid-client des intalnita pe diverse forumuri romanesti de discutii este cea ca cel din urma ar „merge ca oaia pe urmele ghidului.” Ca ghidul isi asuma riscurile pentru client, client care nu este parte din procesul decizional. Ca o astfel de ascensiune este lipsita de risc, si prin implicatie de aventura, si ca un eventual accident survine din incompetenta ghidului. Nu am sa adresez relatia ghid-client in acest articol ci mai degraba as dori sa discut despre riscul in activitatile montane (escalada, alpinism, schi, expeditii) deoarece viziunea simplista din paragraful anterior denota o lipsa de intelegere a acestui subiect. In limba romana a mai scris un articol pe aceasta tema Marian Anghel insa abordarea mea va fi din alta perspectiva. Photo (c) C. Pogacean Ce este riscul? Termenul de risc este folosit in mod liberal in vorbirea curenta cu putina grija pentru…

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Cosmin Andron

Transylvania Mountain Festival Podcast · Cosmin Andron – Philosophy, Climbing & Mountain Guiding

In a debate with a fellow guide about the current state of mountaineering, Cosmin Andron struggles to answer the question, What is climbing for? From the Carpathian Mountains of Romania to the Western Garhwal of India, the Romanian alpinist recalls false starts, unplanned walls—and the intense, indescribable feeling that lures him on.

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Words: Cosmin Andron Photography: Cristina Pogacean, Jonathan Parker, Cosmin Andron     Ladakh 2017   We arrived in Delhi mid-August, hopeful and with loads of luggage. Cristina and Nasim (her partner) were aiming for H17 in the Zanskar valley, an unclimbed granite monolith. I was to join them as logistical support but I also had plans of my own: last year, during our T16 expedition, I noticed, on a side valley, a stunning mixed couloir that I wanted to attempt once the girls were up on their wall and if conditions were allowing.   A day later we were in Leh where we spent half a week running after supplies, getting the luggage overland from Delhi (thank you Jaggi, Prerna and Gopal) trying to organise transport (with the help of our Ladakhi friends) and getting ready for departure. When Nasim arrived in Leh we were ready and we set off…

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Some discussion erupted on youtube about this video. I’d like to point out a few things here, on my website: first of all the series is aimed at the general public and it has to condense in 3 minutes practical information easy to absorb by audience with little technical knowledge. The contentious point was my saying “factor 1 falls are normal”.  Probably saying “fall factors of 1 or less” would have been better and then “fall factor 2 or more” etc  “BUT the general public operates with two concepts: Fall 1 factor and fall 2 factor. It was clearer and easier to point out the “good” one as opposed to the “bad” one by using the two already familiar concepts. The accompanying point, however, is linked and it states that when falling (in a normal sport climbing scenario for example) we are always closer to factor 1 fall than we…

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Well, how much can one talk about a “lid” without sounding silly… Not much, I can assure you. However, what I discovered, is that it is inversely proportional to the amount of time one spends choosing a good one. I started climbing in a time and culture where helmets were used only for motorbiking and were slowly transitioning from the road to the rock. The major impact I noticed then was an acute stiffening and possible long term strengthening of the neck muscles so I promptly gave up on wearing a helmet. Lucky there was, at the time, no other major impact… I got converted again, in the late ’90s, to the plastic bowl with a brim. It was much lighter and still ugly as hell. What I remember most about my helmet then was the habit in vogue at the time to stash in the mesh the survival blanket and a dry pack…

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Two years ago GoalZero expanded its ambassador’s programme to the East and I was presented by Absolut Explorer with a nice selection of gear to use and abuse. Up until then I either assumed that expeditions will mean long periods of disconnect or that at best an eclectic combination of devices and solutions (not all of them compatible) will manage somehow to keep alive a phone or an e-book Reader while camped in a tent up on a mountain. Partnering up with GoalZero changed that dramatically. In 2010 it was the first time I used, on an expedition in Alaska, a solar panel with a battery. The aim was to power up a sat-phone and a PDA so I can communicate back to Romania. A fairly light setup, it was also light on offering… Car lighter connectivity and low output battery it meant that I could charge only one device at a…

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I In the winter of 2016 I received a request from a free-lance journalist, Maya K. Prabhu, asking for opinions on the alpinism scene in India for a piece she was preparing for the USA based magazine ‘Alpinist’. (Since then the article has appeared in issue nr 54 / summer 2016 under the title Notes from the Frontier). Following the conversation with Maya I felt like I somehow left a rather pessimistic pronouncement regarding the young ‘alpine-style’ aspiring mountaineers in India and, through my involvement in the first Climbathon organized by the IMF in 2013, I knew quite a few of them… That’s not to say I have not been honest about my appraisal, but I felt somehow I was also a bit too harsh… Cristina and I were looking for a project for 2016 and, probably more than ever, not finding the project was the problem but how to finance it.…

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Tendon Master 7.8 half rope – a somewhat long winded rope review –     Disclaimer: I am brand ambassador for Tendon ropes. However, in relation to all equipment sponsors I had or have, I have never endorsed to guided clients, friends or in articles a product I would have not paid full retail price for.   Ropes: every climbers has an opinion on them, has favourites and good and bad stories. However, funny enough, a lot of discussion on ropes nowadays is carried on purely on specs. The other day, on a climbing forum, a beginner climber was asking a simple yet very complicated question: “I’d like to buy a rope and I have narrowed down my choice to two models from two brands. I’ll be using the rope mainly for…. What do you suggest I should choose?” The answers poured from several posters but, of course, as on…

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