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bachar
Trad climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 22, 2007 - 04:58pm PT
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G gnome - yeah the "Lion's Head" had some bad ass mantels. I was able to do 'em all but Jim Wilson was the master at those.
Chapman - Hell yeah Dale could mantel! Kauk's friend Tony too...so could RK himself, and you too if I remember correctly.
Largo - remember the "V" mantel in C4 ? - I think that was yours. Not the hardest press , but weird on the elbows and palms.
What about those old school Pratt mantels on Columbia Boulder? Way ahead of their time!
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kk
climber
overrun with traffic and people land, aka S.D.
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Feb 22, 2007 - 05:25pm PT
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yeah hoot, the EZ mantle at black mountain gotta be up there in the "hard mantle" ranks
the sit start still has no send as far as i know.
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Tahoe climber
Trad climber
a dark-green forester out west
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Feb 22, 2007 - 06:28pm PT
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I think that sit starts begin loosing their appeal at 30, jaybro, not 40
FWIW, I've seen some incredibly hard mantels in gyms, too.
One really fun mantel is on Stranger Than Friction 5.10, out at Enchanted Rock in TX.
Not as hard as many of these mentioned, but it's definitely thought-provoking your first time to lead it!
-Aaron
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aldude
climber
Monument Manor
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Feb 22, 2007 - 07:11pm PT
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Check out " The Velodrome " just north of the parking area @ Echo View in SLT. V 5 ?
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Feb 22, 2007 - 07:13pm PT
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Pinch Overhang!
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Tahoe climber
Trad climber
a dark-green forester out west
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Feb 22, 2007 - 08:04pm PT
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which one's velodrome?
I've climbed damn near everything within my limit at Echo View, but don't have my guide book handy...
-A
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bachar
Trad climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 22, 2007 - 08:11pm PT
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kk - Killer photos, thanx. Looks classic.
The EZ mantel eh? Gotta go back down there - they're must be tons of new stuff since I last went there with Largo...speaking of which, what about that Largo mantel? the one they printed the photo of him manteling with a cigarette in his mouth...
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Feb 22, 2007 - 09:20pm PT
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Yo, Bachar, I remember the V mantle and the Pratt mantels as well. The V mantle was a joint ripper and you had to swim your way over those Pratt mantels, which got so greasy by mid-summer they became virtually impossible, at least for me.
The mantel on the Pinch Overhand is not a true mantle in the purest sense because you can reach up and pinch that flake. The stuff John B. is talking about are pure, gnarly presses, usually on totally sloper surfaces with almost no friction coefficient. I was never flexible enough to c*#k both shoulders like Dale and John and RK and Chapman et al so it was just brute force for me and I really hated it sometimes that I weighed so much. Those guys could just float that stuff while I was blowing a gasket.
That mantle you (JB) mentioned (cig in mouth) up at Black Mountain is like easy 5.12 and not in the league of these others. Like I said earlier, some of the dime mantals Powell and Henny did out at Roubidoux were fricking grave. And those Lion's Head mantles at Stoney were also super strenuous and Jim Wilson really had them dialed. In the early 70s that guy was really one of the best boulderers in the US. Crazy strong and he'd go WAY high sans cordage.
Funny thing is that manteling was huge back then and I can remember when I was climbing all the time I always had a huge callous on the palm of my left hand.
Some memorable mantels were ones that weren't max hard presses but were very balancy, like that one on the Amazon Face over by Curry Village. You had to palm off this little bullshit rill and reach way up to an edge and man, you really didn't want to pitch off from there 'cause bones would be showing if you did.
Just some rambling thoughts. . .
JL
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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Feb 22, 2007 - 09:38pm PT
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i'll never forget the first time i bouldered with KP. mike paul had dragged him down to santee, or, as henny penny would call it "rubidoux light". this would be early '76 or so.
anyway. we take him to shockly's lunge and he glides it in his tennies. i mean, he literally floated it with no visible effort. i was like..."whoa...he flashed it.....in tennies....and made it look like 5.3..."
the rest of the day went like that. towards the end of the sesh, kp started eyeballing these two half-dime edges on the back side of the black dot boulder that we'd never even noticed. he reaches up, locks his nails down, yards up and OVER the edges, presses OUT on the edges, gets a foot up and stands. swear to god, i was f*#king slackjawed. speechless.
and this was at the end of the day, on his first visit to santee.
i spent the next 20 years trying to repeat that sucker before i gave up. never saw another soul get on the thing. KP didn't even name it. he was off to the next problem without batting an eye.
i shudder to think what the guy did at roobeedoux when he was projecting....KP and henny were the best dime climbers i've ever seen, and i've seen 'em all. too swole, i say.
grave, indeed.
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Oakville, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Feb 22, 2007 - 09:51pm PT
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For a brief period of time, I was winning. Largo noticed, but then he regressed.
How many times do I have to tel you how to spel the word?!
Sheesh.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 22, 2007 - 10:51pm PT
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So Right
"On the 6th pitch climb up, then left to the base of a very intimidating corner. Surmount this (5.7) by a wild mantel maneuver, then step right and climb a long enjoyable face to the top of the rock." The Nutcracker Roper's guide 1971
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Jello
Social climber
No Ut
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Feb 22, 2007 - 11:17pm PT
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Split Rocks, CO. Late 70's.
Me doing it the easy way, with a heel hook. Still have to pop into the press, but pulling on the heel makes a lot of difference.
Mike Weis doing it the straight-forward (harder) way. Just prior to popping his elbows vertical for the press-up.
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bachar
Trad climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 23, 2007 - 12:06am PT
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Hey Jello - Using your brains (heel) counts more than using your muscles in my book. Killer pics BTW.
Mike Weiss - yeah baby,,,he could mantel - couldn't heel hook though. Nice EB's!
Etymology: Middle English mantel, from Anglo-French, from Latin mantellum (Merriam-Webster).
Largo could outpress anybody in his prime on a pure "gnarly" press out type mantel.
Come on, I know somebody's got some Largo mantel pics...
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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Feb 23, 2007 - 12:21am PT
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speaking of mantles...
FULL COURT PRESS!!!
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bachar
Trad climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 23, 2007 - 12:24am PT
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bvb - Looks like an easier but enjoyable MANTLE...nice pic too.
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Anastasia
Trad climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Feb 23, 2007 - 12:43am PT
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I am guilty of stealing this from the Stoney Point website,
Bob Camps is mantling on Turlock.
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Hootervillian
climber
the Hooterville World-Guardian
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Feb 23, 2007 - 10:05am PT
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sheesh is right. aid climbers can't even spell mantle.
i thought that largo ciggy photo was of the openers to boneheads?
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Feb 23, 2007 - 10:12am PT
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i'm gonna chalk up the bean.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Feb 23, 2007 - 10:59am PT
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Ament turned me on to mantling in the 60's. I'm surprised no one has mentioned him yet; he was a master. I remember one in C4 (but can't remember where) that Ament did as a double mantle with a really beautiful weight shift from one hand to a higher hand. Inspired, I think, by Rearick, Ament was a proficient hand-balancer and so had a great combination of pressing strength and body awareness on his hands.
With no climbing gyms (even hangboards hadn't been invented yet) a lot of us tried to emulate Gill by doing gymnastics. After Ament told me about it, I too learned to do a slow symmetric muscle-up on a bar. Then I started mantling on every idiotic sloping ledge and protuding bolt in the gym, eventually working up to repetitions of one-arm mantles (on a ledge with vertical wall below for foot scrabbling). How many years of use this took off my now continually aching shoulders I guess I'll never know.
I did some pretty hard mantles in the Gunks when I was at the peak of my one-arm mantling and slow muscle-up power. (This is now---ahem---a good 35 years ago..) They are on popular boulders that see a lot of traffic, but they never made it into the bouldering guides and I've never seen anyone doing them.
One was hard enough for me that I could only do it in the spring or fall; the additional humidity in the summer made my palm friction insufficient. I walk by it often. The rock is often surrounded by boulderers slapping their way up other problems, but it sits there unnoticed and unattempted, having faded into an obscurity that is the universal fate of fads in our world.
If mantles for their own sake have more or less disappeared from the bouldering circuit, they are still sometimes required at the top of your favorite overhanging crimp fest. And here I cannot help but be a bit amused at how weak some of today's fantastic boulderers are when they have to use pressing muscles. It is not uncommon for me to see people fire off moves of a difficulty we couldn't even have imagined back in the day, and then they totally stall on finishing mantles that we used to do with ease.
So next time you see some doddering old farts in diapers walking by your bouldering sess with toothless grins, you'll know what its about.
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