29 November 2011

Vaporized


Julie Andrews once sang about climbing mountains and fording streams but I don’t think she had this in mind.  Just watching this has left me in a state of nervous exhaustion. OK, well perhaps I exaggerate a little but you will really find yourself rooting for Joel Zerr and Kyle O'Meara as they attempt to climb this huge boulder rock... thingy.

They teamed up to overcome the particular problems this boulder rock thingy (which we suspect was left behind by a glacier some thousands of years ago) presents to climbers at Bliss State Park in Lake Tahoe, California. As that particular US state is renowned the world over for having  a higher than usual proportion of positively barking mad inhabitants it is an appropriate venue for something which looks at first to be quite impossible. It seems that this problem is an anomaly of the park and is now considered to be an area test piece.

Zerr exhorts one and all to get out there and try it. Well, twenty years and twenty pounds ago, perhaps. Yet I still suspect that the intrepid duo of climbers were Ioan Gruffudd’s stunt doubles in the recent Fantastic Four movies – I swear I can see their arms and legs stretching at certain points in this film (taken with a Flip Ultra HD in 1280x720 at 60fps before you ask - and the music is by Break Science).