For the last five years the Editors of the USA's most popular and respected climbing journal, Climbing magazine, have awarded the Golden Piton to celebrate the year’s top climbing achievements.
Matt Samett, Senior Editor at Climbing magazine gives us the full results:
This introduction by Climbing magazine's Dan Dewell
The gap between the hardest traditional climb or free solo and the hardest sport route narrowed to a sliver — engulfing territory usually reserved for bomber, evenly spaced bolts — with, respectively, Dave MacLeod’s E11 testpiece, Rhapsody, and Chris Sharma’s deep-water solo in Mallorca. Hard onsight traditional climbing ventured into the world of alpine big-walls — as with the newly freed Linea di Eleganza on Fitz Roy.
Endurance-fiending alpinists took the single-push, light-and-fast mentality closer to its outer limits, exploring high-altitude rock, snow, and ice on the famed slopes of Denali and the unheralded flanks of beautiful Chomolhari.
Meanwhile, sport climbing and bouldering sends went from “How hard?” to “How many?” Patxi Usobiaga and Dave Graham sent so many difficult routes and boulder problems in 2006 that most of their peers at the top of the sport looked like slackers by comparison.
In their fifth year, Climbing’s Golden Piton Awards recognize the top achievements in seven different disciplines — a tough task in such a genre-bending year.
At the time of Hard Grit thing, there was always this idea of having a Sacrificial belayer, started from End Of the Affair. It seems now we've moved on to the time of the Sacrificial Spotter.
Ackbar06 Feb 2007
In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com: Being rewarded for how many hard boulder problems or sport routes you climb rather than the quality of the line seems a bit odd.
