YY Vertical, based in the French Alps, set out to solve a basic but very real problem: how do you install a hangboard at home without breaking out a drill or turning your wall into Swiss cheese? The brand’s answer is two no-drill mounting systems, the VerticalBase and the SandwichBase. We set up both at home and at the office, on one weirdly sized door and one pretty questionable partition wall, to see whether the promise actually held up. VerticalBase by YY Vertical © Vertige Media There’s a sentence you hear from just about every climber at some point: “I really need to put a hangboard up at home.” The response usually comes right behind it: “Yeah, but I can’t drill into the wall. Or the door frame. Or this cardboard drywall.” A hangboard, that finger-strength training board climbers use for dead hangs and pull-ups, is both a sign that someone is finally getting serious about training and the start of a long negotiation with the place they live in: permanent holes, shaky DIY, plaster that looks one session away from giving out, endless discussions with the landlord or whoever also has to live with the setup in the middle of the apartment. That is exactly where YY Vertical comes in with two no-drill hangboard mounts: the VerticalBase and the SandwichBase. The promise is simple: real training, several times a week, without leaving a mark on the door or the wall. A hangboard without drilling into the wall Most climbers have seen it somewhere: a hangboard screwed in above a doorway, bolted straight into a wall that never asked for any of this. YY Vertical flips the problem around. Instead of relying on the wall, both systems use the door and the door frame. The VerticalBase and SandwichBase work off the same basic idea: the hangboard stays in place through compression and support, not drilling. This is not improvised DIY. It is a system designed to spread the load and avoid the kind of damage people worry about with a fixed setup. For this test, we deliberately picked two situations where most people would think twice before installing a traditional hangboard: At home, a wide interior door with molding, about as far from standard as it gets. At the office, a lightweight partition wall that sounded hollow the second you knocked on it. Both are the kind of setups that make you think: if this goes wrong, it is not just the hangboard coming down. The wall might come with it. VerticalBase: making a tough doorway usable The VerticalBase went up first, at home. The door frame is deep and topped with molding, exactly the kind of place where most people give up on the idea of a hangboard before they even start. Nothing about it matches standard dimensions, and the idea of drilling into it dies before the drill even leaves the drawer. It is the kind of setup that pushes the whole “hangboard at home” plan into the familiar pile of delays: later, when we have a more normal door, later, in the next apartment. VerticalBase back - YY Vertical © Vertige Media VerticalBase back - YY Vertical © Vertige Media Setting up the VerticalBase, though, was surprisingly straightforward. Attach the hangboard, adjust the telescoping frame, brace it against the edge of the doorway, tighten it down. No tools to hunt for. No careful measuring. No bubble level dragged out for a one-time home-improvement moment. In about 30 seconds, the hangboard was up and at a height that actually made sense for training. The unit has two usable sides: the front for the hangboard, and the back, where you can mount holds. That turns the doorway into a small adjustable training wall without adding anything to the wall itself. The built-in bubble level lets you check that everything is straight at a glance. And because the VerticalBase can be set at pretty much any height in the doorway, it is easy to switch things up: full pull-ups, lower dead hangs, technical work around shoulder height, or simple adjustments based on the user’s height. We left it in place for three weeks and did not go easy on it. Session after session, different people hung on it, cycling through dead hangs, pull-ups, and a few more dynamic moves to see whether anything would start to shift. When it finally came down, the result was simple and concrete: no marks inside the doorway. No compression damage. No scratches. Not even the kind of tiny chip you would be tempted to pretend you never noticed. SandwichBase at the office: the partition wall that somehow survived The SandwichBase got sent into slightly rougher territory: the office. More specifically, the office partition wall. The kind of surface that makes you uneasy just from the sound it makes when you tap on it. It is not the kind of wall anyone would choose for an old-school pull-up bar or a permanently mounted hangboard. Just thinking about screwing anything heavier than a picture frame into it already makes you picture drywall breaking loose. SandwichBase by YY Vertical © Vertige Media SandwichBase back - YY Vertical © Vertige Media SandwichBase back - YY Vertical © Vertige Media That is exactly where we installed the SandwichBase. Its setup is different from the VerticalBase. The support “sandwiches” the doorway by bearing against the frame. In plain English, it does not pull on the partition wall. The load goes through the door structure instead. That still means you need solid trim or molding. When we set it up, we were still skeptical, especially since our trim looked thinner than the recommended 6 mm. In use, that skepticism faded pretty fast. The hangboard stayed completely stable, even once we started putting real load on it: pull-ups, dead hangs, and a few more energetic movements. The wall did not crack. The frame did not deform. Nothing shifted. The SandwichBase also has one big advantage in an office or any multi-use room: it comes off in seconds. If you need to close the door, or you have someone coming into a workspace that is not supposed to look like a training area, you remove the mount and the hangboard together, and the room goes right back to normal. Again, no damage to the frame or the wall. A hangboard at a height you can actually use There is one point no product page really puts front and center, but this test made it impossible to ignore: height. Before YY Vertical, there was already another hangboard installed in a more traditional spot, above a bathroom door. On paper, that made sense. In real life, it almost never got used. The reason was painfully simple: you needed a step stool to reach it. The routine was always the same. You would feel like doing a couple of hangs, realize the board was eight inches too high, ask, “Where’s the step stool?”, then get distracted and move on. A training session that starts with a side quest usually does not happen. With the VerticalBase and SandwichBase, the hangboard ends up at a livable height: high enough to hang without your feet dragging on the floor, low enough to grab with nothing but your hands. You walk by, hop on, do a few reps, and move on with your day. That is probably where these no-drill mounts really separate themselves from a fixed setup mounted too high. They turn the hangboard into an everyday training tool, not something installed above a doorway that nobody actually uses. VerticalBase or SandwichBase? After a few weeks, the use cases became pretty clear. The VerticalBase stands out as the more versatile option for tricky interiors: wide doors, molding, unusual frames. Its adjustable system lets it work where more traditional setups give up fast. It is easy to picture in an apartment where you want a real training setup without messing up the trim or the look of the place. The SandwichBase feels more plug-and-play. It is built for a standard door, an office, or a bedroom where you want to install and remove the hangboard in no time. It is also the option that will reassure climbers who have no interest in finding out the hard way what their partition wall can handle. Here, the load goes through the doorway, not the wall. But it does require one simple, non-negotiable thing: a door frame with solid, structural trim or molding. If that molding is purely decorative, it will not be enough. In both cases, the core promise stays the same: a hangboard installed with no drilling, stable even under dynamic pull-ups, and a much calmer answer to the question, “Am I messing up this wall right now?” For climbers who want to get stronger without risking damage to their walls, the VerticalBase and SandwichBase check the main boxes: stability, no holes, intact walls, and hang sessions that finally happen on a regular basis. The VerticalBase is priced at €289 and available here . The SandwichBase is priced at €189 and available here . Sponsored by YY Vertical.

A rockfall killed two 30-year-old climbers on Saturday, April 11, in Montserrat Natural Park in Catalonia. About 30 miles from Barcelona, the massif is a historic and heavily visited climbing destination. As authorities have closed off several routes, the geological investigation is still underway. Monserrat, Spain (cc) Corentin Largeron / Unsplash The alert came late in the afternoon. On Saturday, April 11, at around 4:30 p.m., a third party found the two climbers unconscious at the base of a wall in the Columpi sector, near the Can Jorba parking area in the municipality of El Bruc on the south side of the massif. Emergency responders from the Bombers de la Generalitat, Catalonia’s regional fire service, the SEM medical emergency system, and several helicopters were dispatched after a major rockfall. The two victims, a man and a woman, both 30, had suffered severe head injuries. One of them was found in cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated at the scene before being airlifted out. At that point, both climbers were in critical condition. The man, who was taken to Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, died of his injuries on Sunday. The woman, who was treated at Bellvitge Hospital in the Barcelona metro area, died during the night from Monday into Tuesday, according to information confirmed by her family on April 14. Rock instability appears to be the cause Authorities have not yet released the name of the exact route the party was on, but the cause of the accident does not appear to be in doubt: a major natural rockfall. Montserrat is known for its huge conglomerate towers, a sedimentary rock formation that can be vulnerable to erosion. Early findings have already ruled out a failure of climbing gear or fixed anchors. The exact sequence of events, however, is still being clarified. According to family sources cited by the Catalan daily La Vanguardia, the two climbers were part of a group of seven. The two mountaineers were reportedly struck and fatally injured by falling rock after the group had finished the climb and was packing up gear at the base of the wall. To better understand how the collapse happened, the Institut Cartogràfic i Geològic de Catalunya, or ICGC, has carried out several drone reconnaissance flights in recent days. Those inspections are intended to identify the exact point of failure and assess the risk of further rockfall, whether tied to weather, underlying geological weakness, or other structural factors. Five routes closed, fixed anchors may soon be removed In response to the tragedy, and with the area described as “highly unstable,” the Patronat de la Muntanya de Montserrat, the public body that manages the site, moved immediately. Numerous blocks and rock fragments remain in a precarious position in the gully and on the upper part of the wall. As a safety measure, five climbs in the Columpi sector have been closed and marked off: Lady Sue, La Gordi, Del Xavi, La Fàcil, and De la Marta. According to regional broadcaster 3Cat, park management is now considering permanently removing the fixed anchors from those five routes within the next week to 10 days.

In the United States, the massive and highly controversial restructuring of the U.S. Forest Service is sending shock waves through the outdoor world. Between the agency’s headquarters move, the closure of regional offices, and a broader push toward centralized control, the whole ecosystem is starting to wobble. For climbers, local and visiting alike, this administrative upheaval directly threatens access to crags—outdoor climbing areas—site management, and the continuity of on-the-ground work. Little Cottonwood Canyon (cc) Patrick Hendry / Unsplash Utah’s red sandstone, the legendary crack climbs of the American West, and the boulders scattered through Colorado’s forests all have one thing in common: a huge share of these climbing areas falls under the U.S. Forest Service. The agency manages nearly 193 million acres of public land. It is a vast forest, rock, and recreation empire now caught in a major political crisis, at the exact moment when climate pressure and growing recreational use would seem to call for the opposite: stability, local knowledge, and enough people in the field. Announced on March 31 by the Trump administration through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the overhaul would move the agency’s headquarters from Washington to Salt Lake City, shut down all regional offices, and replace them with a model built around fifteen “state leadership” offices. At the same time, research would be centralized at a single site in Fort Collins, Colorado. Officially, the goal is to bring leadership closer to the landscapes being managed, cut administrative overlap, and simplify decision-making. In bureaucratic language, that is called reform. In political terms, it looks a lot more like a hard reset from the top down. “Relocate or resign”: an unlawful ultimatum? For the National Federation of Federal Employees, the union representing 20,000 agency workers, this is anything but a calm rationalization effort. Its executive director, Steve Lenkart, argues that the restructuring may violate fiscal year 2026 appropriations language, which bars the use of federal funds to relocate offices or reorganize services in this way. The union also accuses agency leadership of sidelining employee representatives and dodging any real negotiation over the terms of such a sweeping overhaul. By replacing local offices with ultra-centralized state-level leadership, the agency risks cutting itself off from that field knowledge On the ground, many employees see the move as a barely disguised ultimatum: adapt, pack up, or quit. Teams that have long been rooted in rural communities, close to the mountain ranges and forests they manage, are watching the institution’s center of gravity shift toward a more vertical, more urban, and more openly political model. And the Forest Service is entering this transition from a position of real weakness. Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the agency has already lost more than a quarter of its full-time workforce, including nearly 1,400 wildfire specialists. What does this mean for climbing? Access Fund, the leading U.S. organization defending climbing access, points out that roughly 30 percent of climbing in the United States takes place in National Forests . This is not some niche corner of the sport. It is a major piece of the country’s climbing geography. Whatever the federal agency loses today in clarity, capacity, and day-to-day effectiveness will be felt directly at cliffs, trailheads, parking lots, and permit offices. Four major threats are starting to come into focus. 1. The slow deterioration of access trails This is the most visible effect. An internal report revealed by The Washington Post  shows that trail maintenance has fallen by 22 percent, reaching its most critical level in fifteen years. For climbers, that means overgrown approach trails, steeper and less secure walk-ins, and a higher risk of erosion that can eventually threaten the long-term stability of some climbing areas. 2. The growing threat of megafires This one is less visible, but potentially devastating. According to a recent analysis, wildfire prevention work dropped by 38 percent in 2025 compared to the previous four years. Access Fund is worried about the Forest Service’s actual ability to fight major fires as the American West comes out of a dry winter. For climbing areas, the scenario is familiar: long closures, damaged infrastructure, and walls that can remain inaccessible for years. 3. Administrative gridlock This is a critical point, and one the general public often misses. Access policy is not shaped only by big public statements. It also lives or dies in paperwork. Access Fund is already having trouble finalizing certain partnership agreements, the business agreements that are necessary to roll out its stewardship and infrastructure programs. Closing regional offices could bog down the processing of permit requests. A delayed permit, a stalled agreement, or the disappearance of a key institutional contact can be enough to freeze an entire bolting, trail, or safety project in place. 4. A breakdown in local relationships The growth of climbing in the United States has depended on patient coordination between local groups, national organizations, and public land managers. That ongoing back-and-forth is what makes it possible to build a parking area, protect a raptor nesting zone, or calibrate the fixed hardware on a cliff. By replacing local offices with ultra-centralized state-level leadership, the agency risks cutting itself off from that field knowledge. The climbing community stands to lose essential contacts, people who actually understand the environmental and logistical specifics of a given range or canyon. Access Fund points to one final issue, less dramatic on the surface but heavy with consequences: the planned closure of more than 70 percent of Forest Service research facilities . Behind those budget cuts is the loss of valuable scientific data on ecological change, forest disease, and recreational-use management. Without that field research, future decisions about logging, conservation, and public access could end up being made half blind. As legal challenges multiply in an effort to freeze the restructuring , the outdoor season is opening under a cloud of real uncertainty. Between deteriorating visitor infrastructure and wildfire risk made worse by staffing shortages, the climbing community may well end up paying the price for this institutional power struggle.

A 60-year-old Czech climber died on March 27, 2026, on Kalymnos after three fixed anchor points failed one after another on a route bolted in 2002. It was an extraordinarily rare accident, and it raises urgent questions about how one of the world’s premier sport climbing destinations handles rebolting. Between volunteer burnout, murky finances, and responsibility spread so thin it almost disappears, the accident exposed the weak points in a system already under severe strain. A route setter on Kalymnos © Klara Stein On March 27, 2026, a Czech climber finished climbing St. Savvas, a 5.12c (7b+) in the sector known as Jurassic Park, on the Greek island of Kalymnos. At the anchor, he went through the standard sequence to lower off and started coming down to clean his quickdraws, the clipped pieces left on the bolts while leading. As he weighted the system, both anchor bolts failed at the same time. The force then transferred to the lower bolt beneath them, which failed too. The man fell 15 meters, about 50 feet, and hit a ledge. He was conscious at first, but difficult access delayed the evacuation by several hours. He later died in the hospital from his injuries. The Worst-Case Scenario The news hit the climbing world hard. Kalymnos is not some obscure crag. It is one of the biggest sport climbing destinations on the planet. On this Greek island in the Dodecanese, between 12,000 and 15,000 climbers come every year to climb roughly 4,500 bolted routes, according to Aris Theodoropoulos, president of Rebolt Kalymnos and one of the major figures in Greek route development. A few hours after the accident, Rebolt Kalymnos posted a statement on Instagram that read: “The climber did nothing wrong. The main cause appears to have been a series of failures in aging hardware.” The group is at the center of the island’s rebolting effort. Since the accident, it has announced inspections of every route equipped before 2005 and precautionary closures of sectors considered suspect. The reaction was immediate and international. On social media, the dead climber’s wife called on people to support Rebolt Kalymnos. Donations quickly began coming in, though Theodoropoulos told us he could not confirm how much money had been raised. “It’s the worst accident I’ve seen in 50 years of climbing” Aris Theodoropoulos, Greek route setter and president of Rebolt Kalymnos What he could speak to was his distress. Reached by Vertige Media, he said he was “devastated” by the accident. The route where it happened was one he had personally bolted in 2002. “It was one of my first routes on Kalymnos,” he said in a video call from the island. “It’s the worst accident I’ve seen in 50 years of climbing.” There had already been one fatal accident on the island tied to human error. But March 2026 was different. Never before had an anchor on Kalymnos failed like this. The expansion bolts Theodoropoulos used at the time were 10 mm 304 stainless steel, a material considered standard in the early 2000s. Twenty-four years later, that stainless steel has proved poorly suited to Kalymnos’ marine environment. “The anchor was completely corroded inside the rock. Even the best stainless steel can’t last more than 20 years here,” he now says. After checking different sectors, the picture has become stark. Roughly 1,000 routes equipped before 2005 have never been rebolted. On an island with about 4,500 routes, that means nearly a quarter of the network could pose a danger to anyone climbing on it. Rebolt Kalymnos now recommends avoiding all of those older lines until they have been fully inspected. Fifteen sectors are also being considered for temporary closure. The Titanium Option Among local bolters, there now seems to be broad agreement on the technical fix: Grade 2 titanium glue-ins paired with epoxy. Titanium does not suffer from the same kind of corrosion, and the epoxy comes with a theoretical 100-year guarantee. That choice is based on ten years of research by the UIAA, the international climbing and mountaineering federation, which updated its anchor standard in 2020 after documenting the different forms of corrosion that affect stainless steel in marine environments. The biggest danger is stress corrosion cracking, a failure mode invisible to the naked eye that can cause an apparently intact anchor to break under very low loads. In other words, a bolt that looks fine on the surface may already have lost its strength inside the rock. An anchor on the island of Kalymnos © Aris Theodoropoulos Theodoropoulos knows all of this well. He says the Thai precedent has now become the reference point. “The only solution, not just for Kalymnos but for the whole Mediterranean, is titanium,” he said. The problem is cost and supply. According to Theodoropoulos, only one manufacturer, the Greek producer Peter Lappas, currently offers anchors certified against stress corrosion cracking under UIAA standards. Reached by Vertige Media, Lappas said the alloy is much harder to work and therefore much more expensive. “You’re looking at 6 euros per bolt on a large order,” he said. “That’s twice the price of regular stainless.” Installing glue-ins also requires careful, skilled work. “And you have to know how to do it,” Theodoropoulos added. “What we need even more than extra help is experienced, well-trained bolters.” At the current pace, he estimates it will take 10 to 15 years to secure the entire island. Backed Against the Wall Rebolt Kalymnos was created a year and a half ago. It now coordinates about 20 volunteers and operates almost entirely on donations. So far, the group says it has completed around 50,000 euros’ worth of work. That is real progress, but tiny compared with the scale of the job. “We go sector by sector. It takes us 10 to 15 days for each one,” said Theodoropoulos. “We’re getting lots of offers, even from France. But it’s not easy to coordinate all of that.” So how did one of the world’s best-known climbing destinations end up relying on a small group of volunteers for both equipment and safety? “Everything is amateur because nobody has ever put a cent back into the safety of the activity” Claude Idoux, former route setter at Kalymnos Few people have asked that question as relentlessly as Claude Idoux. After moving to Kalymnos, the French climber poured himself into opening, bolting, rebolting, cleaning, and making the island’s climbing safer. He has since left, but not before leaving a massive mark: more than 700 routes established, between 80 and 100 routes maintained each year, and the creation of a volunteer rescue team. In his view, the Czech climber’s death could have been avoided. “As early as 2013, when I inspected the sector where Peter fell, I warned that the area was inaccessible in the event of an accident,” he told Vertige Media. Several accounts also say the Kalymnos rescue team took too long to reach the victim on March 27. For Idoux, all of it points to the same deeper problem. “Everything is amateur because nobody has ever put a cent back into the safety of the activity,” he said bitterly. “I often felt like I was doing everything by myself.” He says he personally spent 40,000 euros over twenty years on the island. When he arrived on Kalymnos in 2005, this former transport-company owner had left France to fully devote himself to climbing. At the time, the island was on its way to becoming one of the major hubs of international sport climbing. After an Italian climber, Andre Di Bari, discovered the area and helped reveal its potential in the late 1990s, Kalymnos kept attracting more and more climbers. In time, it became one of the beating hearts of international climbing, with the Kalymnos Climbing Festival drawing stars of the sport as early as 2010. “As we have seen for years, if we do nothing and wait for something from them, we are going to die” Aris Theodoropoulos “At first, the municipality understood the opportunity,” Idoux said. “It paid bolters, supplied hardware, and provided housing.” The goal was to build a tourism economy on an island in decline, where the small local population had mostly lived on modest tourism and sponge fishing. Today, nearly the whole local economy depends on the flow of climbers, yet little of that money seems to make its way back into cliff maintenance or rescue. In Massouri, the island’s main village, the streets are lined with packed tavernas, gear shops, bars, and rental agencies. Climbing is good business for a long list of local players. Over time, the municipality stepped back. Aris Theodoropoulos on Kalymnos © Simon Montmory “To the point where it basically stopped doing anything,” Theodoropoulos said. “And worse,” Idoux added, “when they did do something, they did it without consulting anyone. So they did it badly.” The two men, who know each other well, point to the same example. In 2018, the municipality of Kalymnos reportedly received 600,000 euros in European funding. Exactly what that money was meant to cover remains unclear. But this winter, a municipal project began to rebolt between 150 and 300 routes, depending on the source. The problem, Theodoropoulos said, is simple: “They didn’t use titanium. They used stainless steel.” “That’s a Band-Aid fix,” Idoux said. “We now have all the information we need to know that the hardware they placed will be obsolete again in a few years.” Idoux says he knows the company handling the job. “The guy who got that contract is from Athens. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has no history here. Odds are he’ll rebolt routes that don’t even need it.” Theodoropoulos reached a similar conclusion, in less colorful terms: “Officially, they are the ones responsible. They are in charge of climbing on the island. But as we have seen for years, if we do nothing and wait for something from them, we are going to die [sic].” Contacted by Vertige Media, the municipality had still not responded to our questions. Money and Blood Now that he has broken his silence, Idoux says the first step is obvious: stop opening new routes and focus on making the existing ones safe. “Honestly, nobody even knows anymore how many routes there are on Kalymnos,” he said. “Some people say 4,500, some say more than 5,000. There’s no point in having more lines if the ones already there aren’t being maintained.” Unless, of course, some people benefit from that situation. That includes Theodoropoulos himself, who is both president of Rebolt Kalymnos, whose mission is rebolting, and owner of the guidebook, whose commercial value depends in part on new routes being added with each edition. Asked about that by Vertige Media, the Greek climber said some of the guidebook revenue does flow back into his association, though he did not provide an exact amount. “The economic players need to get off their asses. They all profit from climbing, and at some point they have to put some money back in” Claude Idoux According to Idoux, very few people on Kalymnos handle cliff maintenance with no personal stake in it. He does not directly blame Theodoropoulos, but he says he would not want to be in his shoes. “I’ve always preferred my position to Aris’ because he makes money off volunteer work,” he said flatly. After a fatal accident, everyone has a reason to point somewhere else. On Kalymnos, where the interests are tightly entangled, that becomes especially easy. But for Idoux, the responsibility is collective. Long before the Czech climber died, he had already been pushing for a professional rescue team and for three full-time people dedicated to route maintenance year-round. That costs money. “The economic players need to get off their asses,” he said. “They all profit from climbing, and at some point they have to put some money back in.” He has no shortage of ideas. He first tried, unsuccessfully, to set up a membership-card system to fund his rescue team. Today he believes an arrival fee could work. “Every climber comes over by boat from Kos. You catch them when they arrive and make them pay a fee. I’ve got plenty of friends who’d be willing to pay. When a Swiss friend tells me he pays 30 bucks for four hours in a climbing gym, well, this would be the same price to climb in one of the most beautiful places in the world, safely.” Claude Idoux, a former route setter on Kalymnos © Claude Idoux Idoux has ideas. But Idoux is gone. The Frenchman abruptly left the island, selling off all of his assets there. On the phone, he described what he called a complete breakdown after another episode in which he again found himself at the center of an emergency. “I had to help some young people who’d wrecked their car. Nobody came to help them. Meanwhile the mayor of Kalymnos was having dinner with the Japanese ambassador. I walked into the restaurant covered in blood and told him this had to stop. That’s when I realized there was no will on their side anymore.” A few days later, he left the island, leaving behind the same knot of responsibilities and failures, still very hard to untangle. The UIAA is now trying to do exactly that. From May 1 to May 6, the organization will hold a meeting on Kalymnos. It had been planned before the accident, but it now carries a very different weight. The municipality, Rebolt Kalymnos, and the local rescue team are all expected to sit down together. Two days will be devoted to rebolting training based on international standards, and the bolts from St. Savvas will be analyzed in a lab. For Theodoropoulos, the meeting represents a measure of hope. “I hope something good comes out of it,” he said simply. In the meantime, doubt is already settling in on the island. Local professionals say they are seeing concern rise among clients, with some now asking for guarantees or limiting their climbing to sectors that have already been rebolted with titanium. The March 27, 2026, accident brutally exposed the reality on Kalymnos: a municipality that is officially responsible but barely involved, an economic model whose profits do not seem to flow back into safety, and volunteers overwhelmed by the size of the task. Can the UIAA meeting finally force a clearer distribution of responsibility? If not, how long will it be before another anchor fails? The questions are not new. But after a climber has died, no one can ignore them anymore.

A strange image has been making the rounds in both climbing and space circles: Ocún crash pads, the thick foam mats used for bouldering—climbing without ropes on shorter problems—strapped to the launch tower of an Isar Aerospace Spectrum rocket. So what exactly happened? © Isar Aerospace Climbers noticed the detail right away, especially because the Czech brand itself seemed to discover the scene at almost the same time as the rest of the internet. The image has an almost perfect absurdity to it. In a setting full of cables, steel, and cryogenic procedures, you can clearly make out Ocún crash pads fixed to the launch structure . This is the kind of gear you expect to see underneath a tall boulder, not next to an orbital launch vehicle. The shot was spotted and discussed in particular on Reddit , where several users tried to figure out what the pads were doing there based on where they were attached to the tower. Ocún, for its part, leaned into the surprise. On social media , the brand said its Dominator crash pad had ended up on Isar Aerospace’s “Onward and Upward” mission, using wording that suggested this was not part of any planned collaboration on its side: “We definitely didn’t see this coming... but we’re in.” Without a detailed official explanation, the most plausible theory is still the one put forward by several online observers: the pads may have been used as protection in spots where parts of the infrastructure—especially components involved in quick connection or disconnection during launch—could strike the structure or need to absorb impact. That remains a theory, not an established fact. The image spread so widely in part because it arrived during an already messy stretch for Isar Aerospace. The first test flight of its Spectrum rocket, on March 30, 2025, got off the ground from Andøya, Norway, before the flight was terminated about 30 seconds later. The launcher then fell into the sea in a controlled descent . Even so, the company described the test as useful, saying it confirmed the rocket could lift off and provided valuable data for what comes next. The second mission, called “Onward and Upward,” matters more. This time, the goal is not just to test the rocket. Isar also wants to validate a key stage of its program and send a small payload into space, with five mini-satellites and one experiment onboard . But again, nothing has gone according to plan. A first attempt, in January, was canceled because of a technical issue. Another, on March 25, had to be scrubbed first because a boat entered the safety zone, then because of a fuel temperature problem. Then, on April 9, the company called off yet another attempt so it could check a leak in a pressurized tank. As of this writing, the mission still has not launched. That may also explain why this crash-pad story took on such a life of its own in both climbing and space communities. It brings together two worlds that seem to have nothing in common, suddenly linked by the same piece of protective gear. In one case, it cushions human mistakes. In the other, it may be there to soften purely mechanical force. And there is something about that collision between bouldering culture and the launch industry that feels almost too good to be just a logistical detail.

A meta-analysis published on January 9, 2026, in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living delivers a blunt assessment of scientific research on high-level climbing: its conclusions rely overwhelmingly on male data. Across a pool of 246 studies measuring performance, 66.5% of participants were men, compared with 22.7% women, and only 34 papers offered a real sex-based comparison. For years, then, climbing science has operated under a thin veneer of universality while quietly treating male physiology as the default. (cc) Simon Spieske / Unsplash The review, led by Kaja Langer and her team, focuses specifically on performance factors in “advanced to elite” athletes across bouldering, lead, and speed. That is exactly the level where training optimization and injury prevention require real precision, and it is also where the imbalance is hardest to ignore. Of the 246 studies included, 102 looked only at men. Just 8 focused only on women. This is not a new problem. In late 2025, a study led by Danielle Lee had already flagged the chronic underrepresentation of women in climbing research, both in the athlete groups being studied and in the research teams themselves. The myth of the universal body For a long time, sports science has generalized findings from samples that were never truly representative in the first place. That does not always come from a conscious decision, but the consequences are real. When researchers test mostly male subjects, the data they collect on strength, endurance, and recovery mostly describes men. “Women are not simply small men” As the study’s authors note in pointing to an “obvious male bias,” that kind of extrapolation quickly runs into limits. Frontiers puts it plainly: “women are not simply small men.” Different physiology means different biomechanical and metabolic responses. That lack of representation directly affects the areas that matter most in athletic preparation. Among the 34 comparative studies identified, the research base is especially thin on key topics. Only two papers deal with training and adaptation. Two focus on injury and mental health. Three look at cognitive and psychological factors. Put simply, sex-specific data is missing in exactly the areas where coaches and medical staff need it most. Injury research is a clear example. Existing studies suggest that women climbers are more likely to deal with issues affecting the shoulders, neck, and head, while men are more exposed to finger, elbow, and ankle injuries. So when prevention protocols are built mainly from male injury data, they leave out a meaningful part of the clinical reality. The point is not to split climbing into two sealed-off categories. It is to recognize that the drivers of performance, and the body’s points of vulnerability, may differ by sex. The cost of the scientific gap Nutrition and energy availability may be where the research lag does the most damage. In a sport where power-to-weight ratio matters, low energy availability, including RED-S, can pose a major health risk for athletes. And yet coaches and support staff still lack well-validated benchmarks for adjusting training load and nutrition to the realities faced by women climbers. A 2025 review on nutritional needs in climbing had already pointed to a glaring lack of documentation and the absence of recommendations specifically designed for women. What little data does exist still raises concern. In the cohorts studied, 80% of women climbers did not meet recommended daily iron intake, and 30% showed clear iron deficiency. This goes well beyond an academic debate. It is about bodies that struggle to recover and absorb training with a much smaller margin for error. That is exactly why the international SAGER guidelines, short for Sex and Gender Equity in Research, call on scientists to report clearly and rigorously how sex and gender are handled in their studies. Their message is straightforward: leaving out that dimension “limits the generalizability of results.” In the end, this major review challenges the idea that elite climbing is somehow neutral. It is a reminder that even in a sport that measures performance through precise metrics and technical language, watts, grip strength, grades, gender bias does not disappear on its own. The issue for sports science is no longer just whether participation numbers look balanced on paper. It is whether the field is ready to adopt the methodological rigor this work demands, and stop confusing the most studied body with the universal one.

At 25, Laura Pineau has climbed her way into the sport’s top tier with a string of huge performances over the last 12 months. It’s the product of relentless work from a climber who has never left much to chance, and who has recently decided to own the parts of herself that don’t look polished. A portrait of “Mademoiselle Fissure.” Laura Pineau on “The Nose” on El Capitan, in Yosemite © Thibaut Marot You have to see her to get it. In front of hundreds of people onstage at the Grand Rex in Paris, she just stops giving the mic back. She hypes the crowd, translates, jumps in with follow-ups, answers her own questions, invites the film crew onto the stage. After 15 minutes of Q&A, Laura Pineau has quite simply taken over the event. Cyril Salomon, whose job is supposedly to manage the conversation, has to admit it: “Next time, you’re MCing the whole night.” That’s just how it goes. The co-founder of Montagne en Scène has just met Laura Pineau in person. And he got steamrolled. The Crown The Paris crowd has just watched the premiere of The Queen Swing , one of the night’s films, which tells the story of the feat Pineau pulled off with American climber Kate Kelleghan. Between June 6 and 7, 2025, the two women completed the legendary Triple Crown of Yosemite — El Capitan, Mount Watkins, and Half Dome — in less than 24 hours. Those are three of the most iconic walls in Yosemite National Park, in California. Altogether, it meant 2,200 meters of climbing and 30 kilometers of hiking, finished in 23 hours and 36 minutes. The audience had spent much of the film holding its breath, wondering whether the pair would actually pull it off. When the credits rolled, The Queen Swing  got a thunderous ovation. The performance warranted it. No all-women team had ever completed that linkup in under a day. “I’ve loved improv since I was little. I love getting people around me on board” Laura Pineau The next morning, sitting in a café across from the Grand Rex, you would almost have to guess that the person in front of you is one of the best climbers on the planet. Technical shell, jeans, approach shoes, big round glasses — Laura Pineau doesn’t exactly look like a showgirl. You have to wait until she starts talking to feel the energy filling the room at what seems like 280 beats per minute. “I’ve always been like this, super extroverted,” she says over a cappuccino that’s literally shaking. “I’ve loved improv since I was little. I love getting people around me on board. And last night, all my close friends were there.” Fired up and emotional, the 25-year-old had no trouble stepping into the spotlight. Partly because it was her first real brush with this kind of public attention. But also because she wanted to balance out what the film sometimes suggests: that she was just some “unknown French climber” answering Kate Kelleghan’s Instagram call. In that version, Kelleghan — an American speed climber — takes the French climber under her wing, coaches her, and teaches her the basics of big wall climbing, meaning long routes on huge rock faces, at record speed. “And you didn’t even see the first cut of the film,” Pineau says. “In that version, I really came off like a beginner. We changed the story a little, because by the end I was the one moving faster on every route, and I was the one carrying the team too.” By then, Pineau already had major climbing achievements to her name. In climbing circles, she is “Mademoiselle Fissure,” one of the best crack specialists in the world, especially in trad, where climbers place their own protection as they go. Among other things, she had already put up a major repeat of an 8b/8b+ trad route — roughly 5.13d/5.14a — in Italy’s Valle dell’Orco. That kind of background would make her more and more comfortable in Yosemite, and over the film’s 53 minutes it becomes increasingly clear that she is the one carrying the Triple Crown project. “I gave up everything to make this film,” she says, adjusting her glasses. “When we started, I told Kate, ‘You know I quit my job for this. We’ve got eight months of training ahead of us, and I’m going to be living in my van off my savings.’” Once she committed, the French climber went all in. She brought in fellow Frenchman Thibaut Marot to shoot and direct the project. She paid for a large part of the production herself. She worked on the post-production with the technical team. She turned down help from a production company. She was also the one who contacted Montagne en Scène to get the film shown. “I wanted us to control the story from start to finish,” she says. “I wanted the film to belong entirely to us.” That makes sense for someone who, her whole life, has never wanted to leave much to chance. Where Does All That Energy Come From? Laura Pineau grew up in Toulon with a mother in sales and a father who ran his own business. By then, the two parents were starting to clash. In a home that she describes as “a little chaotic,” Pineau learned to move through life by holding on to certain phrases. “I remember my parents saying to us all the time, ‘Go play, you’re free.’ And then right after that: ‘But don’t come back crying.’ So I basically never cry. I feel like if you’re given that kind of freedom, you can’t complain afterward.” A top student and intensely athletic, she developed her own working method earlier than most people around her. “Everyone was talking about prépa, the ultra-competitive French prep track,” she says. “But by the time I was 15, I already had a method that worked for me. I could sit at my desk for five hours and work with no problem. So I told my mom, ‘The second I graduate high school, I’m leaving home.’” That is how, at 17 and a half, Pineau ended up in San Francisco for business school. Before that, while boxing was more her sport at the time, she had discovered climbing almost by accident through a local climber named Fred, whom she never saw again. “We were deep-water soloing — climbing above the sea without a rope. I loved it right away. There was something kind of mechanical about it. I’d fall, then start again.” A 7c+ in Toulon, with a smile on her face © Charlie Caille Once in the United States, Pineau got closer to the world of big walls, but first spent a lot of time in climbing gyms. She studied hard, adapted to a different culture, and leaned even harder into her workhorse personality. One story says a lot. “The first time I walked into a classroom, everybody was taking notes on laptops. I had never seen that before. So I downloaded a game that taught me how to type as fast as possible without looking at the keys.” Everything in Pineau’s life seems to run through a series of micro-goals: school, English, climbing. As she improved, she eventually ended up on a 150-meter route with an American friend. “And it was trad too,” she says. “I was in 10th grade, carrying the big bag, and it was scraping in the crack the whole time. I thought I was going to die. It was awful.” Trad and Pineau had a pretty rough relationship at first. “I decided to try leading — climbing first with the rope below me — on an easy route. I do not remember it fondly. I was terrified, and after that day I didn’t do it again.” In 2020, a lot of young people spent their time staring at the ceiling and trying to imagine a future. Pineau, back in Toulon for a gap year, was dreaming about El Capitan, probably the most famous cliff in the world, rising roughly 1,000 meters. Her idols were Lynn Hill and Babsi Zangerl. By then, there was no real doubt anymore. The former boxer knew climbing would be part of her life, one way or another. Back in the U.S., and maybe trying to force fate a little, Pineau embraced the full American climber lifestyle: she moved into a van. In the summer of 2022, after finishing school, she set up in Red River Gorge, one of the most iconic climbing areas in the U.S., in Kentucky. Working remotely for a luggage company, she spent most of her free time outside climbing. “And then one day all the dirtbags — climbers living cheap so they can climb all the time — told me I had to go to Ten Sleep, Wyoming, for a climbing festival,” she says. “I didn’t think twice. I just followed them.” When she started the van, she had no idea that 1,700 miles later, a meeting would change her life. A Gift, the Desert, and Bloody Hands “I see this woman I don’t know at all. I have no idea who she is. But she’s speaking into a mic about her experience, and it hit me hard. She talks about setting routes in gyms with awful guys, about having to carve out space for herself. And about how she did that through crack climbing.” Sitting in the screening room in Ten Sleep, Pineau felt something deep. And like every time she senses an opening, she decided not to let it pass. “So I went up to her and asked if she wanted to climb together.” The woman was Brittany Goris, one of the best trad climbers in the world, and not someone who was exactly used to another woman walking up with that kind of invitation. She said yes. A few months later, Pineau found herself in Moab, out in the Utah desert, relearning trad with an American star. “She taught me so much,” Pineau says. “She let me use all her gear. She passed on her technique. She taught me how to manage fear. It was one of the most important encounters of my career.” “I don’t think I’m the smartest person out there, but I work like crazy. Nobody will ever put as much pressure on me as I put on myself. Nobody” Laura Pineau Through Goris, Pineau rediscovered crack climbing and the grinding apprenticeship that comes with it. “That’s what I loved most about it: starting over from zero,” she says. “It’s a magical gift to become a beginner again, to suddenly have a whole world to learn all over.” In cracks, Pineau also found something that felt almost elemental. “It was made by nature. You can see that. When you climb it, it feels like the most obvious thing in the world.” With bruises on her body and blood on her hands, she found in those crack systems a new way of asserting herself. But crack climbing was not the only calling she found in Ten Sleep. The same day she heard Brittany Goris speak, she also watched a film that shook her: Pretty Strong . “Four short films about women climbing hard projects together,” Pineau says. “It was just unbelievably inspiring. When it ended, I cried for ten minutes because it hit me so hard.” When she walked out of that screening, she made herself a promise: do the same thing. In other words, climb truly hard projects with women partners. Laura Pineau on Half Dome © Thibaut Marot Ultra-Climber Since then, Laura Pineau’s career has moved between two tracks: film producer and pro climber. The Triple Crown allowed her to leave her sales job behind and pick up a few sponsors. That achievement, which she says “left a mark on Yosemite history,” changed her status. Pineau now has an agent, Marine Thévenet. The recognition she had been waiting for? “Maybe,” she says, searching for the answer in the last of her cappuccino. “I think work pays off eventually. I don’t think I’m the smartest person out there, but I work like crazy. Nobody will ever put as much pressure on me as I put on myself. Nobody.” Built to perform — and to make sure it shows — Pineau is often described in the media as “a machine.” She has just finished another extreme project with Elsa Ponzo: climbing the 100 most beautiful routes in Provence. The numbers are massive. Nearly 18,000 vertical meters, 691 pitches, all in 43 days. Enough to plant a new concept in the world of high-end climbing performance: “ultra-climbing.” It’s big. It’s impressive. But where does it lead? Stirring the bottom of her cup with a spoon, Pineau has started thinking differently about constant performance. She no longer wants to come across as some kind of engine you just switch on and point at a wall. “After the Triple Crown, I started working with a mental coach,” she says. “It was my grandmother who realized I couldn’t close the chapter, couldn’t move on.” With that coach, “the machine” has been learning to apologize, to give herself a break, to accept vulnerability. “I wanted to stop showing people a perfect version of Laura.” Six months after the Triple Crown, in November 2025, Pineau climbed Wet Lycra Nightmare, one of Yosemite’s steepest big walls, graded 8b — about 5.13d. It was another female first. Another major feat. But this time, in the film she produced about it, the climber chose to show the doubts and the cracks too. At the premiere last January at the Salon de l’Escalade, the woman who “never cries” broke down in tears after the screening. “And you’re really not ready for the one about the 100 routes in Provence,” she says, laughing. At 25, is this hyperactive athlete starting to settle down a little? Maybe. The energy is still spilling over, but now she wants to pass something on to the generation coming up behind her. Pineau is preparing to earn her French state diploma, the certification that allows her to teach professionally. “To pass things on,” she says. Her big ascents. Her technique. Her strength. But also her failures, and the questions that came with them. After all, what could make more sense for “Mademoiselle Fissure” than finally letting the armor crack?

Accused by some private gym operators of being too commercial, the future National Training Center in Salt Lake City has become a flashpoint. Now USA Climbing’s athlete commission has finally broken its silence. In an open letter and in comments to Vertige Media, American climbers are presenting a united front: this facility is essential if the sport is going to build real structure and keep pushing U.S. climbing to the top. Climbing World Cup in Chamonix © David Pillet Up to now, the back-and-forth over the future National Training Center, or NTC, had one glaring omission. In one corner were private gym owners, openly hostile to what they saw as an overly commercial project for a national governing body. In the other was USA Climbing, defending a hybrid model built around high performance, public access, events, and long-term financial viability. Caught in the middle of that fight were the people most directly affected by it, and until now, they had largely been absent from the conversation. That is no longer the case. Through its athlete commission, chaired by Danny Popowski, Team USA’s climbers have made their position clear. The tone, first laid out in an open letter and then expanded on in an exchange with Vertige Media, is firm. The NTC is not a luxury. It is an urgent need. In the commission’s words, it is “needed to help make the US more competitive on the international stage, to have a dedicated event stage, and to provide education and development opportunities for our broader community.” The athletes go even further, calling it “foundational to athlete development and the continued growth of competition climbing in the United States.” The point of speaking out was not just to endorse the project. It was also to change the way people are talking about it. Forget the idea that this is just another climbing gym about to crowd an already busy Utah market. In the athletes’ view, the center is first and foremost a response to a major infrastructure gap, and to years of making do with whatever the sport could piece together. Out of the garage That is really the core of their case. Behind the medals and podiums, American high-performance climbing has long relied on a patchwork system. As the letter puts it plainly, the U.S. team has succeeded up to this point “without a permanent, purpose-built training facility.” The next line lands even harder. To prepare, American climbers have depended on “borrowed gym time, temporary warehouse setups, and personal resourcefulness.” In its conversation with Vertige Media, a commission spokesperson drove the point home. Private gyms have historically carried the sport in the U.S., they said, but those facilities “are not designed to consistently replicate international competition environments.” The list of shortcomings is both specific and hard to argue with: wall angles that do not match modern comp climbing, route turnover that is too slow, and event builds that fall short of the world standard. Even now, some qualifiers and national-level events are still being held on structures that do not reflect what athletes face internationally. Lead walls are often missing the kind of steep terrain now standard at the top level. Bouldering walls can lack a real range of angles, “particularly true slab,” meaning low-angle, balance-heavy terrain. And speed climbing remains chronically underserved. On that front, access to four-lane speed walls is still “extremely limited,” which is a striking gap at a moment when the discipline is continuing to evolve worldwide. “It is not designed to serve the same purpose as a typical commercial gym” Danny Popowski, Chair USA Climbing Athletes' Commission What this intervention really shows is a clash between two very different readings of the same project. Where private operators see commercial overreach, athletes see a long-standing structural deficit. For them, the U.S. has simply been missing a true home base, one capable of absorbing the technical, logistical, and symbolic demands of elite performance over the long term. Built to produce champions That is also the argument athletes are using to push back against the private-sector revolt. Yes, the NTC will be open to the public. But calling it a standard commercial gym, they argue, misses the point by a mile. “The primary focus is on competition-style climbing,” the commission says. This is not a facility designed to maximize density or squeeze in as many members as possible. The terrain will be “more specialized, less dense, and frequently reset,” including entire areas that can be closed off for weeks at a time for national-team training or events. Their conclusion is blunt: “It is not designed to serve the same purpose as a typical commercial gym.” “As athletes, we just want to see the project handled in a way that builds trust across the sport” Danny Popowski, Chair USA Climbing Athletes' Commission The defense is straightforward. The NTC should not be seen as just a bigger gym backed by a national federation. It is meant to be a performance lab with a public-facing side. But the athletes are just as clear that they do not want it to become an ivory tower. “From our perspective, it’s important that this isn’t just a closed-off, national team facility,” the signers write. In a country where climbing grew through openness and broad access, they argue that a project of this scale needs to carry “that same standard of accessibility and openness in some capacity.” That goes beyond a political talking point. It gets at something deeper in the American sports model. Rather than an elite bunker, the center is being pitched as a hub, a place where young prospects, coaches, setters, para-climbing specialists, and recreational climbers could all cross paths. The letter points to a whole network of possible uses: talent ID sessions, coach education, and stronger development pathways across the sport. In that sense, the NTC is being sold as both a champion-building machine and a central node for the broader climbing community. It is also a much easier vision to defend politically when the price tag comes up. The elephant in the room But that is also where the athletes’ case runs into its clearest limit. Because the anger from private gym operators has never really been about whether the project would help athletes. The real issue is the hybrid business model, and whether a federation should be stepping into a space that private operators already occupy. On that question, the commission has very little to say. Asked where the line sits between financial sustainability and direct competition with commercial gyms, the athletes declined to engage, responding with a brief: “No comment.” That silence matters. It does not undercut the legitimacy of their sporting concerns. But it does confirm that athletes are not the ones trying to solve the financial side of this fight. The open letter says as much, acknowledging that the team is “not in a position to speak to business projections or operating models.” Their expertise, they argue, is narrower and more specific: whether the facility is the right tool for performance, development, and the competition calendar. In other words, everybody has their lane. The private-sector backlash is not dismissed, but the message is clear enough: do not sacrifice our training environment to settle somebody else’s business dispute. “From an athlete perspective, it feels more complementary than competitive” Danny Popowski, Chair USA Climbing Athletes' Commission On governance, the commission is a little more forthcoming, though still careful. Can USA Climbing be both regulator and market actor if it is involved in running a public-facing facility? Here the athletes point to Momentum. The fact that the private operator was chosen to run the NTC is, in their view, “an important step” toward easing concerns. Handing the keys to an experienced outside operator was, as they understand it, “the responsible way to bring the NTC to operational status.” It is a smart way to shift the argument. Outsourcing, in this framing, acts as a kind of firewall, though only if the process remains above reproach. “Transparency and continued engagement with the community are going to matter,” the athletes say, before landing on the key word of their entire intervention: “As athletes, we just want to see the project handled in a way that builds trust across the sport.” That is not a throwaway line. Trust is exactly what starts to erode when a federation moves from being a referee to becoming an economic player. Still, this is not a blank check. While support for the NTC is described as “strong” within the team, and feedback to the commission as “overwhelmingly positive,” concerns do remain. The biggest one is the risk of funneling too many resources into Salt Lake City at the expense of the rest of the country. That nuance matters. It keeps the commission from sounding like a simple mouthpiece for the federation. The athletes’ point is not that criticism should disappear. It is that criticism should push the project’s backers to think harder about governance and national relevance, not kill the center outright. As for the charge of unfair competition, the team answers with a kind of trickle-down sports argument. In their view, greater visibility for elite climbing will eventually benefit the base of the sport. “From an athlete perspective, it feels more complementary than competitive”, they say. The bet is clear enough: a high-profile NTC will attract major events, create exposure, bring more people into the sport, and eventually drive some of those newcomers into local gyms. It is an optimistic theory, but at least it makes the logic of the project explicit. In the end, this public intervention does not resolve the core conflict. What it does do is change the story around it. Where private operators had framed the NTC as an economic aberration, athletes are insisting that it is first and foremost a response to a sporting shortfall. That kind of ground-level legitimacy is something no federation FAQ could ever manufacture. These are climbers who came up grinding through borrowed wall time, improvised setups, and whatever resources they could scrape together. They do not want the next generation to have to do the same. The closing lines of their letter read like a handoff: “The National Training Center is that same kind of investment, made permanent by USA Climbing in ways we never could have believed growing up, and made available to every athlete who comes next.” Still, athlete testimony has its limits. It may now be harder to reduce the NTC to a simple real estate play, but their case does not answer the founding question at the heart of this fight: how does a federation build stronger infrastructure without draining the private ecosystem that helped make the sport what it is? That question remains unresolved. But what started as a two-sided clash between an ambitious federation and anxious gym operators has now become a three-way contest. On the same wall, management logic, market reality, and athlete needs are now colliding in full view. And as is often the case in fights like this, everybody is at least a little bit right, just not in the same place.

With urban gyms, a traveling van, some of climbing’s most recognizable athletes, and a deliberate return to the sport’s outdoor roots, La Sportiva’s 2026 Climb World Tour is trying to be more than another brand roadshow. For the family-owned company, founded in the Dolomites in 1928, the idea is clear enough: reconnect parts of climbing that the modern scene too often treats as separate worlds. © La Sportiva In climbing, “community” can sometimes feel like a convenient word. It gets thrown around easily, printed on event graphics, and then everyone goes home. La Sportiva is trying to build something more tangible. With the 2026 Climb World Tour, the Italian brand is bringing back its touring format with a van dressed in the project’s colors, a run of European stops, and a roster of athletes that includes Caroline Ciavaldini, James Pearson, Siebe Vanhee, Klaas Willems, and Lara Neumeier. The road is part of the story This tour did not come out of nowhere. For La Sportiva, the idea of moving beyond a simple product-customer relationship has been in the works for a while. In 2022, the company launched Climb Europe, a project that reached 14 countries and 71 gyms. La Sportiva now presents that first chapter as the template for what later became the Climb World Tour. So this is not just a matter of adding a few more dates to a busy calendar. The format itself matters. The travel, the venues, and the people met along the way are all part of what the tour is supposed to say. © La Sportiva That is also what stands out most about the 2026 edition. Turin, Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, Munich, Vienna: the route links major urban gyms across Europe while also leaving room, between stops, for more direct contact with the outdoor terrain that shaped the brand’s identity in the first place. On paper, it is a simple idea. But it says something real about where climbing is right now: the sport keeps growing indoors without fully wanting to cut itself off from rock. One culture, several scenes Of course, the tour is also a visibility play for the brand. It would be pointless to pretend otherwise. But what makes the project interesting is that it does not stop there. Product testing, technical challenges, climbing sessions, and athlete talks give the tour a broader purpose than a standard promo stop. The goal seems to be not just to show gear, but to create moments where different parts of the climbing world actually share the same space. That also comes through in the spotlight on the Skwama Lite. With its moderate downturn, roomier forefoot, and 4 mm FriXion® Black sole, the shoe is aimed at intermediate climbers, not only at the sharp end of performance. In other words, La Sportiva is not speaking only to the climbers chasing the hardest grades. It is also speaking to the much larger group of people who want to improve without turning every session into an exercise in foot pain. That may be where the Climb World Tour feels most on target: in the way it takes today’s broader, more mobile, more mixed climbing culture seriously, without giving up on the idea that the culture still has roots. Full tour details are available on La Sportiva’s official website. Sponsored by La Sportiva.

What really happened when the old Kilter app vanished at the end of March? Based on documents reviewed by Vertige Media  and direct exchanges with both Aurora and Kilter, this follow-up looks back at the sequence of events, the gray areas it left behind, and what it reveals about the structural fragility of connected training boards. The Block'Out Evry Kilter Board, near Paris © Vertige Media When we first investigated the conflict between Kilter and Aurora in the fall of 2025, the heart of the story was never just the legal fight. It came down to a more uncomfortable question for the entire connected-board ecosystem: what is a “smart” wall worth when part of its intelligence lives somewhere else? By late March 2026, that question was no longer theoretical. The old Kilter app was gone, training histories disappeared from the interface, and thousands of climbers realized that years of accumulated sessions could suddenly end up hanging on a dispute involving brands, code, hosting, and usage rights. The quickest explanations naturally took over. An app goes down. A third-party provider cuts access. A new app gets rushed out. But that version of events is too thin to explain what actually happened. Because behind the incident, a whole dependency structure suddenly came back into view. Not a Software Bug To understand what happened in late March, start with one basic point: the old Kilter app did not stop working because of a technical bug in the usual sense. It broke at the point where law, software, and infrastructure met. “On March 19, Kilter demanded that Aurora immediately stop using Kilter's trademarks and copyrights with the threat of legal action if Aurora did not comply” Peter Michaux, founder of Aurora Climbing On March 19, 2026, Kilter sent Aurora a cease-and-desist letter that Vertige Media  was able to review. In that document, the company demanded the immediate end of any use of its trademarks, along with certain visual elements tied to the “Kilter Board Design,” and threatened to add further claims if Aurora did not comply within five business days. By that point, this was no longer just a deteriorating business relationship. It was an IP takeover. Aurora, for its part, was very clear with us about how it read that sequence. Peter Michaux, founder of Aurora Climbing, said: “Yes, Kilter's cease and desist letter was the direct trigger for the app going offline.” He continued: “On March 19, Kilter demanded that Aurora immediately stop using Kilter's trademarks and copyrights with the threat of legal action if Aurora did not comply.” He then added: “On March 24 and 25 Aurora notified Kilter and their counsel that we understood the demand as requiring Aurora to stop offering or supporting the app, and for them to let us know if that was not what they meant to happen. Kilter did not respond directly, and their counsel left our counsel a voicemail advising that they required strict compliance with the demand.” That is also where its communication seems to rest on the gap between the letter and its effects Vertige Media  also reviewed the letter Aurora’s attorney sent to Kilter’s attorney on March 25. It states that “it is clear to Aurora that it cannot continue to offer for download or support the Aurora App,” then says the company would request that the app be removed from the Apple and Google stores, shut down the website, stop hosting, and end support. Put plainly, Aurora put in writing that it viewed the cease-and-desist as incompatible with continuing the service. We also reviewed the March 25 email Peter Michaux sent to Jackie Hueftle, head of Kilter, as well as text messages making the same point. In substance, Michaux said that if Kilter’s intent was not to force the app offline, it needed to say so clearly. That distinction matters, because it separates two things Kilter later tends to blur together, both in its written response to Vertige Media  and in its public communication around the new app. On one side, there is the lack of public notice to users. On the other, there were warnings sent to Kilter before the cutoff. Those are not the same thing. That is where Kilter’s position gets more interesting. In the written response it sent to Vertige Media , the company acknowledges that “Aurora indicated it did not see a path forward and intended to remove the app.” But it also says that “the app was ultimately removed without advance notice to Kilter or to users,” and adds that “Kilter was not given advance notice of the timing of the app’s removal, eliminating any opportunity to inform users or support a responsible transition.” The wording is careful. Kilter is not claiming there were no warning signs at all. It shifts the conversation from whether a warning existed to whether it was told the exact moment the cutoff would happen. That is also where its communication seems to rest on the gap between the letter and its effects. Kilter never explicitly says it asked for the app to be removed. But it also does not answer the reverse question, which is the central one here: what, exactly, did it expect Aurora to do after receiving a cease-and-desist demanding the immediate end of any use of the Kilter name, logo, and visual elements that made up the app as it then existed? In other words, it all reads as if Kilter is trying to separate the letter from its real-world consequences: not writing “take down the app” in black and white, while leaving Aurora with an extremely narrow, if not impossible, set of options. We followed up with Kilter on that exact point, along with two other simple questions: yes or no, did it expect Aurora to stop operating the app after March 19, and what, point by point, was “factually inaccurate” in Aurora’s version of events? The reply we received was brief: “This is all we are able to send at this point.” Again, that partial silence does not erase Kilter’s position. But it does leave the most sensitive parts of its version unanswered. The Wall and Its Brain The most revealing part of this may not be in the lawyers’ letters, but in Kilter’s own public communication. In a post published March 31 on Climbing Business Journal , explicitly presented as a “press release,” Kilter says the new app was launched earlier than planned, that it was never meant to go out in that condition, and above all that, “for the first time,” the company now controls “the entire stack.” The site also notes that the “releases are written by the sponsor and do not represent the views of the Climbing Business Journal editorial team.” That phrase deserves a closer look. To say the company now finally controls the whole stack is to admit that it did not before. Put differently, the core issue is not just that an app disappeared. It is that for years, the industry treated as normal a product whose most critical pieces were split across multiple hands: the brand on one side, the code and infrastructure on the other, and the user experience in the middle, suspended on the strength of that arrangement. That is exactly what our first investigation had already brought into focus in the fall of 2025. Behind the apparent magic of connected boards, there is not just a panel, backlit holds, and a global community. There is governance. Who decides what lights up? Who manages versions? Who owns the memory of past sessions? Who decides compatibility between hardware, firmware, app, and data? As long as everything works, those questions stay invisible. The moment the agreement breaks down, they become central again. The Climbing  article adds an important piece of context here. It notes that the Kilter–Aurora relationship had already been deteriorating for several years and reports that Kilter had been quietly developing a new app since 2022. It also says that in March 2025, that new app was reportedly modified so it could potentially replace Aurora’s controller. That point matters. It does not prove that the March 26 shutdown was fully premeditated by Kilter. But it does rule out the idea that this was an entirely improvised scramble from start to finish. The separation was already underway before it became public. The cutoff just made it irreversible. One public clue points in the same direction: on Google Play , the listing for the new Kilter app shows an update dated March 16, 2026, three days before the cease-and-desist was sent to Aurora. That obviously does not tell us when development began. But it does confirm, at minimum, that an Android version of the new app already existed before the situation suddenly accelerated. On March 30, in an order reviewed by Vertige Media, a federal judge in Colorado dismissed Kilter’s lawsuit against Aurora without prejudice Here too, Kilter’s written response to Vertige Media  says a lot through what it leaves unsaid. Yes, the company acknowledges that a new platform was already in development. No, it does not say exactly since when, or how far testing had progressed by the time the old app was removed. And that timing matters. Because it tells us whether we are looking at a backup plan that got shoved forward, or a future that was already waiting in the wings. The Memory in the Holds There is one last thing this case reveals: what data means, and maybe more broadly what ownership means, in connected sports. In the days after the cutoff, a lot of people talked about “lost data.” That makes sense from the user side. It is less accurate if you try to look at what is actually at stake. Aurora says it has kept the data and is providing exports to users who request them. Kilter, for its part, says climbers “deserve their data,” says it is working on an official recovery solution, but acknowledges that access to older histories remains limited because the old app was operated by Aurora. In its public communication, Kilter also says it cannot promise recovery of users’ “logbooks” and “history,” while highlighting a process that allows some users to recover the problems they created. But it is important not to blur two different things here. Recovering problems created under an account is not the same as restoring a full history of sends, attempts, projects, and progress. For climbers, then, the issue is not just whether the data still exists somewhere. It is whether that data can actually be retrieved, reviewed, and reused in the new app without a pile of friction. And on that front, things are still a long way from a full recovery. That asymmetry probably is not trivial. Individual training histories matter first to users. Community-created problems matter to users too, but they also matter to the board’s value itself. They feed the catalog, thicken the offering, sustain the network effect, and contribute in a very concrete way to the strength of an ecosystem like Kilter. That does not mean Kilter is indifferent to personal histories. But it does help explain why the recovery of user-created problems has such a visible place in its communication, while the full restoration of individual tracking remains, at this stage, much more uncertain. On March 30, in an order reviewed by Vertige Media , a federal judge in Colorado dismissed Kilter’s lawsuit against Aurora without prejudice. That does not mean Kilter lost on the merits. It means that, in the judge’s view, Colorado is not the place to decide the case. The dispute belongs in British Columbia, Canada, in part because the contract between the parties already designated British Columbia courts as the proper forum in the event of litigation. A court may later decide who was legally right. But one thing is already clear: at the end of March, connected indoor climbing got a look at its own fragility. Behind the promise of a product that seemed simple, seamless, almost transparent, there was a setup far less stable than it looked. And climbers were the first ones to pay for it.

Over the past few days, PFAS have come roaring back into the news, often through a name that, by itself, sums up decades of outdoor mythology: Gore-Tex. If the issue feels especially urgent right now, it is not because the harm tied to these chemicals has just been discovered. It is because the issue has entered a more concrete phase. Since January 1, 2026, France has already banned some consumer clothing, footwear, and waterproofing products that contain PFAS, while a broader restriction is still being reviewed at the European level. © Gore-Tex PFAS—short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances—refers to several thousand compounds used for their nonstick, water-repellent, and heat-resistant properties. ANSES, the French public agency that evaluates health risks tied in particular to food, the environment, and work, notes that these substances are extremely persistent in the environment, contaminate water, soil, air, sediment, and the food chain, and that some build up in living organisms, especially in humans. For some PFAS that have already been well studied, the agency also cites documented health effects. For a long time, this issue stayed in the realm of public-health and environmental warning signs: thoroughly documented, but still abstract for a large share of the public. The first textile bans change that. The issue is no longer just about the toxicity of highly persistent chemicals. It is also about manufacturing timelines, regulatory compliance, and the tradeoffs facing brands that built their reputation on the promise of performance. When the Shift Became Legal In France, the issue moved into a new phase with the law of February 27, 2025, aimed at protecting the public from risks linked to PFAS. Article L. 524-1 states that, as of January 1, 2026, consumer clothing, footwear, and waterproofing agents containing PFAS are banned. The same law, however, creates an exception for clothing and footwear designed to protect people and keep them safe, especially in the context of national defense or civil-security missions. Starting January 1, 2030, the ban is supposed to extend to all textile products containing PFAS, with exceptions for certain uses tied to national sovereignty and for some industrial technical textiles, including protective clothing and footwear used by the military or firefighters. That point matters because it changes how the whole issue reads. PFAS are not being phased out through one uniform, simultaneous, total erasure. The phaseout is happening in stages, by product category, with an exemption system that immediately shows some professional or strategic uses are still seen as harder to replace than consumer textiles. These exemptions are not some side detail of the regulation. They are a reminder that PFAS are not just a story of proven danger or of industry finally doing the right thing. They are also a matter of prioritization: which uses should be phased out first? Which sectors really have alternatives? Which performance levels are considered replaceable without major risk, and which ones are still treated as critical? At the European level, the issue is still moving forward, but it is not settled. In early March 2026, the European Chemicals Agency’s Committee for Risk Assessment (ECHA) adopted its final opinion on the proposed broad PFAS restriction, while the Committee for Socio-economic Analysis finalized its draft opinion a few days later. A new public consultation on that draft is now open through May 25, 2026. So the European framework is getting clearer, but the core questions—uses, timelines, and exemptions—are still very much in play. A “PFAS-Free” Membrane Does Not Make the Issue Go Away In that context, Gore-Tex occupies a special place. For years, the brand stood in for a kind of technical gold standard in the outdoor world, and it is now promoting its ePE membrane as the foundation of its new generation of products. On its website, Gore-Tex describes that membrane as “PFAS-free,” then immediately adds a note explaining that these products are made without intentionally added PFAS and may still contain trace amounts. That wording is not just legal caution. It also reflects an industrial reality: no longer adding PFAS on purpose is not the same thing as guaranteeing the total absence of any trace. Patagonia uses very similar language. The brand says that, since the Spring 2025 season, all of its new products have been made without intentionally added PFAS—that is, without adding fluorinated compounds to achieve a technical function. It presents that shift as the result of long-term work: first moving away from C8 treatments, among the oldest and most criticized PFAS; then rethinking C6 alternatives, which also relied on fluorinated chemistry; then rolling out its first PFAS-free durable water repellent finishes in 2019; and finally phasing those changes into membranes and finishes until the announced 2025 transition. Patagonia also benefits from a more favorable position in this moment. Where Gore-Tex draws most of the scrutiny as the embodiment of fluorinated technical apparel, the California brand is more often associated with getting ahead of the transition—even though it, too, relied on PFAS for years. This industrial shift has an important consequence: it makes technical tradeoffs that long stayed in the background much more visible. Gore-Tex itself says that its PFAS-free water-repellent finishes require more frequent care. In its FAQ, the brand explains that these finishes are generally less resistant to oils, need regular maintenance to work at their best, and that when the outer fabric’s water repellency stops doing its job, the garment remains waterproof but may become less comfortable to wear. The recommendation is straightforward: wash it, dry it, reactivate it with heat, and, if needed, reapply a waterproofing treatment. In other words, moving away from PFAS is not just an invisible swap of molecules from the end user’s point of view. It also changes the user’s relationship with the product. Technical apparel is still being sold as waterproof, breathable, and durable, but its performance now depends more on upkeep, on preserving surface water repellency, and on a more explicit acceptance of use-related constraints. Gore-Tex says as much itself: without an effective surface treatment, the membrane still keeps water out, but the outer fabric can wet out, leaving the garment colder and less comfortable. A New Phase for the Outdoor Industry For outdoor brands, this opens a new communication challenge. For years, the pitch around technical performance could stay pretty simple: a high-performing membrane, a promise of waterproof protection, a reputation for reliability. The transition away from PFAS now forces brands to talk about more complex materials, more carefully worded formulations, and products whose performance can be more conditional. Patagonia stresses the time and resources it invested to maintain performance while removing intentionally added PFAS. Gore-Tex, for its part, highlights a lighter, thinner membrane with a lower carbon footprint, while also acknowledging that non-fluorinated water-repellent finishes require more maintenance. So this is not a story of industrial absolution, and it is not just a matter of changing the vocabulary. The real question is more concrete: how good is the proposed tradeoff over time? How will brands actually inform customers about the limits of PFAS-free water repellency? And how far will consumers accept a less automatic, more demanding kind of technical performance in exchange for reduced chemical impact? Right now, those questions matter at least as much as the headline announcement that PFAS are being phased out of consumer textiles. At bottom, the PFAS moment is not just about the end of a chemistry whose health and environmental costs are becoming impossible to ignore. It is also about the outdoor industry entering a less comfortable era—one in which performance has to be renegotiated, exceptions have to be justified, and tradeoffs have to be made visible. For a sector that spent years selling the idea of protection with almost no downside, that is a major shift.

In climbing, fluidity often gets lumped under “style,” as if it were mostly an aesthetic bonus. But a 2025 study published in the Journal of Neurophysiology  offers a much sturdier way to think about that intuition. In more experienced climbers, the next move starts leaving its mark on the move already in progress. What we call style may have less to do with some vague notion of grace than with a deeper kind of motor organization, where the body is already setting up what comes next before it fully appears. © Hugo Perez At the base of a boulder, the comments come fast: “That looked a little forced.” “You sent it—the successful ascent—but it wasn’t super clean.” “That went up with plenty in reserve.” The language can sound fuzzy, but it is often pointing to something real: the difference between climbing that treats each hold like a separate problem and climbing that already seems to contain the next sequence in the way the climber settles, pivots, or loads a foothold. The study published by Antonella Maselli and her colleagues takes that intuition seriously. In the most experienced climbers, the next move shows up earlier inside the current one. The right word The key term in the study is coarticulation. It sounds a little dry, but the idea is easy enough to grasp. In a sequence of movements, the move you are making in the present does not stand alone; it already carries the imprint of the one coming next. The future does not simply follow the present. It starts shaping it. Applied to climbing, that becomes immediately legible. A hip position is not just about staying close to the wall; it is already preparing a transfer. A hand is not just gripping the current hold; it is also positioning itself for what it will need to allow a second later. A shoulder opens, a foot takes load differently, the torso turns slightly, and suddenly it becomes easier to understand why some ascents do not feel built hold by hold. That is a good reminder that in climbing, movement starts a little earlier—in route reading, in visualization, in the way the body begins organizing what comes next before the climber even leaves the ground. That is where this becomes genuinely interesting for climbing. Style stops looking like a decorative layer added on top of performance once everything else is already in place. It starts to look like the visible effect of a different way of preparing movement—earlier, more distributed across the body, and almost certainly more economical. To test that idea, the authors built a controlled protocol that still stayed close enough to the real logic of climbing for the question to matter. The sample included 21 participants, six of them women. The researchers divided them into three groups in pragmatic fashion: non-climbers, beginners, and experts. They also acknowledge that this classification is imperfect, since real experience sits more on a continuum than in neat boxes. © Whole body coarticulation reflects expertise in sport climbing de Antonella Maselli, Lisa Musculus, Riccardo Moretti, Andrea d’Avella, Markus Raab et Giovanni Pezzulo Participants had to complete 80 trials on an experimental wall, with 10 repetitions for each of the eight routes in the protocol. The task was intentionally simple. The first two foot moves stayed the same, while the next two hand moves varied across several configurations. The goal was to create a sequence stable enough to observe how the body prepares what is about to happen. One detail in the protocol matters a lot: before each trial, participants had to rehearse the upcoming sequence without actually doing it. That is a good reminder that in climbing, movement starts a little earlier—in route reading, in visualization, in the way the body begins organizing what comes next before the climber even leaves the ground. To capture the movements, the researchers used 10 cameras and 25 markers placed on the main joints. They then reduced the trajectories using spatiotemporal component analysis, and used LDA classifiers to measure how much the body was already revealing the upcoming movement—especially which hand would move next or what final target would be reached. The body gets there early The study’s answer is fairly consistent. Coarticulation shows up in most participants, but it does not appear at the same moment or in the same way across levels of experience. In non-climbers, that preparation tends to emerge closer to the onset of the next move. In experts, anticipation appears earlier and involves more joints. So the difference is not just whether the move succeeds in the end. It is also about when the next step starts existing in the body. Another result points the same way. Information related to the target often showed up more clearly than information tied only to hand choice. That confirms a very concrete intuition: the next move rarely announces itself in the hand alone. It shows up in a broader set of signals—a pelvis that gets into place, a chest that turns, a foot that takes load, a center of mass already starting to go. The figures in the paper also tell a story about timing. They show distinct temporal profiles, with beginners moving more slowly through certain events. That points less to raw speed than to continuity. In other words, what sets more experienced climbers apart is not simply moving faster or succeeding more often. It is that the next move gets written into the current one earlier. Whole-body kinematics reconstructed from actual spatiotemporal principal components © Whole body coarticulation reflects expertise in sport climbing de Antonella Maselli, Lisa Musculus, Riccardo Moretti, Andrea d’Avella, Markus Raab and Giovanni Pezzulo Maselli’s study does not arrive out of nowhere. It resonates with several earlier pieces of research on expert coordination in climbing. A 2016 systematic review by Dominic Orth, Keith Davids, and Ludovic Seifert had already described climbing expertise through very concrete signs: fewer prolonged pauses, relatively simple movement paths on the route, and smoother transitions between moves. From that angle, style stops looking like an ineffable extra and starts looking like a more efficient way of organizing continuity. Seifert’s work on ice climbing adds an equally useful nuance. It suggests that expertise is not about rigidly repeating an ideal pattern, but about using variability more functionally—with less unnecessary exploration and better calibration to the environment. That matters because it helps avoid a common misunderstanding: a strong climber is not necessarily the one who varies the least, but often the one who varies better. On the perceptual side, research by Vicente Luis-del Campo and colleagues on eye-tracking during route reading rounds out the picture. Holds fixated during pre-planning are more likely to be used later, and experience is associated with more relevant fixations as well as faster climbing. Once again, research lines up with a very ordinary scene from everyday climbing. Reading a route is not a ritual that sits outside movement. It is already part of the movement. What Maselli and her colleagues add is a clearer link between that preparation and the material reality of the move itself. It is no longer just a matter of saying experienced climbers look better. It is a matter of showing that this organization of the future gets written earlier into the body—even into segments still occupied with the previous move. What that changes As with most good studies, part of the value lies in what it does not  let us conclude too quickly. The authors list several important limitations: short and relatively simple routes, a small sample, and an imperfect distinction between beginners and experts. Those caveats do not undo the result, but they do keep it from turning into some final truth about style. The study does not prove that training “style” would automatically produce these coarticulation signatures. It also does not say there is one correct way to climb—a smooth, continuous, canonical form every body should resemble. What it shows is narrower, and probably more useful: expertise changes the way the body distributes anticipation through time. That is already a lot. It gives us a new way to read a very familiar climbing moment: the point when a sequence finally starts to flow after several burns—attempts—because it has stopped feeling like a string of separate problems. The body is no longer treating the route as a series of local negotiations. It has already started organizing the whole thing. In climbing, style often gets trapped between two thin meanings. Sometimes it means looking good, as if it were just an aesthetic bonus. Other times it gets reduced to a kind of flourish, tolerated as long as it does not get in the way of performance. The value of the work published by Maselli and her colleagues is that it nudges us out of that trap. The study does not take anything away from the felt dimension of a beautiful ascent, and it does not reduce fluidity to a number. It simply shows that behind that impression of continuity, there is a deeper bodily organization at work. An expert climber is not just someone who can hold on or pick the right beta—the sequence solution. It is also someone for whom the next hold has already begun. At that point, the word style  starts to shift. It no longer refers only to what the eye admires. It also refers to what the body has already understood. For the full study, see Whole body coarticulation reflects expertise in sport climbing .