Saturday, July 5, 2008

Samurai crack warrior


We arrived at the Squamish Campground at the same time as a Japanese climber, his name is Yoshida. Now he's our neighbor, he always seems very quiet and discreet and rarely seems to come out of his tent. Recently we found out that he's a bit of a legend of Japanese climbing. Twenty years ago he did the first ascent of a very hard crack in Japan, nowadays it's rated 5.14 which means that at that time it was probably (one of ) the hardest crack climbs in the world. Now he's 45 and came here to Squamish for three months with just one objective... to climb "Cobra Crack" a climb which is potentially the hardest crack today. He's totally committed even to the point of adapting gear loops to his harness specially for friends, to place them faster. He works the route for a full day and then takes a couple of days rest rarely coming out of his tent. We suspect that he practices intense samurai meditation...
It's very inspiring to see somebody so committed and we really hope that he does it! Gamba!!!

Here is a picture of sharing beta with a samurai!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's funny.

On our first trip to Yosemite a japanes guy was giving comment leading my first crack, like 'no, you should place more gear there', 'no, that's a bad placement'...was a bit stressy

Ha stayed on our campground and was a big fan of YOSHIDA? The guy was kinda strange, we thougt Yoshida did not exist..but he is and looks strong like a power snake!

Have fun there