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James Kassay bouldering in Hueco Tanks, Texas

ajfclark

7-Mar-2012
9:31:06 AM

BD athlete James Kassay bouldering in Hueco Tanks, Texas from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.

davidn

7-Mar-2012
10:39:12 AM

James is an amazing climber to watch, he does it like he's born to it.

Thoughts...
- 2:21 - dab on Esperanza. Sorry, but there it is. I am surprised BD is putting out a video of James making what many boulderers would consider an invalid ascent (at least for an ascent of something sufficiently high grade to be newsworthy - no one cares if you dab on your V0 project).
- The footage of Free Willy wasn't worth including.
- Drop-off problems suck.

dalai

7-Mar-2012
11:56:45 AM

On 7/03/2012 Useful wrote:
>James is an amazing climber to watch, he does it like he's born to it.
>

The technical precision of his footwork on the hard flashes in particular is a great indicator of someone who is very skilled and can react quicky and clearly on the go..

>Thoughts...
>- 2:21 - dab on Esperanza. Sorry, but there it is. I am surprised BD
>is putting out a video of James making what many boulderers would consider
>an invalid ascent (at least for an ascent of something sufficiently high
>grade to be newsworthy - no one cares if you dab on your V0 project).

Definitely needs to sack his spotter for setting up the pads that poorly! Given the finishing jug he wouldn't have fallen off regardless, but still is a dab...

>- The footage of Free Willy wasn't worth including.

True - only problem included where the footage wasn't great. Rest was very nice indeed.

>- Drop-off problems suck.

Barefoot on Sacred Ground has been linked into the top of See Spot Run -great and apt problem name ;-) But if Fred claims the FA without bothering to finish up See Spot Run, don't see why James needs to...

There are plenty of good reasons why not all problems should top out (protecting flora etc), but once again agree that if a problem can be topped out it is the better result...

JimmyK

7-Mar-2012
12:00:53 PM

Thanks for your thoughts Useful!
I agree that that the footage of Esperanza is unfortunate as it has a "dab" in it. Fortunately I did do the problem more than once but this was the only footage that worked out...
Was it that Free Willy footage was too dark for you to make out the start? Ill keep that in mind for next time and see what I can do to make it better.
It does feel strange dropping off to finish a problem... But personally I would much rather boulder a "drop-off" problem rather than not doing a problem at all... (Just my thoughts)

Hope you enjoyed the rest of the video and thanks for the positive words!
James

davidn

7-Mar-2012
12:37:44 PM

Actually I was thinking of adding a caveat down the bottom, which is:

Drop-off problems suck, and sit starts do too sometimes, but that doesn't mean I really hate doing em (or understand it's impossible not to sometimes). So we agree. Speaking of sit starts, is Mana the problem with the little finger move to get off the ground? Nasty. Whichever one it is, it looks like the first move is significantly harder than the rest - which is what makes sit starts so contrived sometimes.

Re: Free Willy, yep. Just couldn't see anything for a while, which is probably partly due to the antiquated computer I'm using.

To reinforce the positive, it's a great thing to see some footage of Aussies getting out and doing it. It often surprises me for example, that there isn't more footage of Aussies getting out and doing some Grampians bouldering, considering how saturated the airwaves are with hueco, rocklands and font (understandably of course).

Duncan

7-Mar-2012
1:34:24 PM

Damn, James is an utter beast. Some phenomenal sends there. I watched some strong climbers working Loaded With Power withe the full beta spray down, and they still didn't flash it. Badass!

In regards to the comment that "no one cares if you dab on your V0 project" - that's bullshit. A dab is a dab is a dab. Back around and do it again.

Dr Nick

8-Mar-2012
6:36:06 PM

Great climbing, and it was nice to be able to get a feel for just how crap the holds are on a lot of those problems - often it's just a white blob of chalk on a featureless surface, so you've no idea.

But....

I'm fairly sure that was filmed on a small hand held video camera. Investing in a reasonable tripod (or even a fairly cheap one) will get rid of the shakes. It might be worth playing around with the manual exposure settings as well - Free Willy could have been pushed a bit to get the shaded area dark but visible, and you'd be able to do some mucking about with aperture to get more of the frame in focus on some of the others where it's in close. A DSLR in video mode makes this kind of tweaking easier, at the expense of convenience. A DSLR/tripod + the handheld would open out all sorts of techniques...

If you're putting out videos for sponsors, it's good to make the videos as well as you can. Note that I'm absolutely not saying I can do better, just that I can identify a weakness.

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