Wetass Sport #365–Underwater Walking: I’m amazed someone didn’t think of this before. I mean you have underwater chess, underwater hockey, underwater, well, everything. But last month a resort in Malaysia staged The Ocean Race, the first-ever underwater walking competition. Sounds pretty simple, but there were rules (there are always rules…): hands must be placed behind backs, no leaping or, duh, swimming, 5 pound ankle weights must be worn. Oh yeah, competitors also had to wear dive booties in case they stepped on a deadly scorpion or stonefish. So, is it exciting? Here’s racer Graham Wood (from the UK, of course):

“When the hooter sounded, all I remembered was seeing the backs of other racers as they rushed ahead across the sandy surface. Even though the judges were finning normally, I could see they were scarcely able to keep up with the race leaders, who had put on an incredible turn of speed…The going got tougher as the seabed suddenly lurched uphill for the final straight to the finish line, but I managed to adapt and came home in eighth place.”

Umm, well, maybe there’s a reason no one has ever done this before. They all just decided to go scuba diving instead….



It’s Easy To Get Left In The Sand: “Hey, they jumped the gun! And isn’t that a 3-pound ankle weight I see? Ref?! Ref?!”

TWC Quick Hits…

Golf Follies 1–Golfer Who Beans Player Ahead Liable For $2.6 Million: Tried to convince judge he was such a bad golfer he couldn’t reasonably expect his ball to fly straight. Judge unmoved, suggests future savings with use of the word “Fore”…

Golf Follies 2–60-year Old Woman In Wetsuit Arrested For Poaching 1500 Golf Balls From Bottom Of Water Hazard: Pulled job off at night, but got so wrinkled she couldn’t walk away…

Shanghai Climber Who Forgot House Keys Dies After Trying To Abseil Off Roof Into His Apartment: “Why didn’t he just knock?” moans wife…



“Hey, I guess Mr. Chang in 45A forgot his keys, too. Oh shit, I just lost count of the floors…”

Annals of Achievement–Golden Piton: After months of arm wrestling, flying invective, and heated office debate, Climbing magazine’s editorial honchos have settled on their annual list of Golden Piton recipients. The Golden Pitons are entirely subjective, but they go to climbers across the entire range of climbing disciplines–from bouldering to high altitude mountaineering–who put up new routes, or knock off suicidally difficult lines with style, athleticism, and creativity. Click on the above link, and then on any of the faces staring out at you and you will read a catalogue of monster climbing feats. Patrick Berhault, who died last week, is there with Philippe Magnin for blazing through 16 of the most difficult routes on Mont Blanc…in winter. “Any self-respecting alpine climber would be happy to do half of those routes in his lifetime,” says American alpinist Mark Twight, who spent six years in Chamonix. “Americans just don’t realize how much better the European climbers are than us.”

You’ll also find the Benegas twins, Willie and Damian, who clawed their way up an unclimbed ice ribbon on the North Buttress of Nuptse (7861 meters). They climbed without a tent and hacked sleeping ledges into the ice every night, and crawled into sleeping bags that were frozen stiff. After six days they were low on food and fuel, and facing more snow and wind. They didn’t haven’t enough screws and anchors to rappel back down the 40-plus pitches, and 4,000 feet they had just climbed, so the only way out was up and over the top. Suddenly a brief break and the weather revealed the top of the buttress, and the two brothers sucked it up and knocked the bastard off. The twins had tough competition for the Golden Piton from Russian mad dogs Valeri Babanov and Yuri Koshelenko (now on the Everest North Face climb), who mastered Nuptse’s often attempted but never topped East Summit. It was an incredible climb, but the Russians lost style points because they couldn’t resist taking advantage of some fixed ropes early in the climb, left by a previously failed attempt. You have to climb pure to get a Golden Piton.

Or you could check out Ines Papert, a 29-year old German who mastered a mixed route near Courmayeur, Italy, known as Mission Impossible that two years ago was believed to be the hardest climb in the world. Papert almost nailed the climb sight unseen the first time she hit it, but fell near the final curtain of ice and went back for a –successful–second try.

I could go on, because the stories are incredible. But read them yourself. I can’t do justice to them in a short space…



Human Fly Ines Papert: “Pitons? I don’t need no stinking pitons….”

(Photo: Rainer Eder)

Everest Mystery–The Search For Irvine’s Camera: The Russian’s on the North Wall are doing the most interesting climbing. But over on the south side, there is an Everest expedition worth following. Sponsored by EverestNews.Com, a team of climbers will search for the body of Sandy Irvine, who died on the mountain with famed British climber George Mallory in 1924. Mallory and Irvine were spotted high on the mountain before they disappeared, and whether they reached the summit almost 30 years before Hillary has been THE great unsolved mystery of mountain climbing. Mallory’s body was found in 1999, dead of a head injury consistent with a fall, but no conclusive evidence one way or the other regarding the summit was evident. Irvine, however, was carrying a pocket camera. If that could be found, and the film is still good, it could reveal once and for all whether Mallory and Irvine got to the top of the world first. Most experts believe they did not, but since there is a sliver of doubt, it would be fascinating to find the camera. The expedition web site has all the history, as well as news updates from the team, who are at advanced base camp. Outside Online also has good background. Stay tuned…



Irvine and Mallory: “I’m game to go for the summit, George, but don’t you think you should at least put on a scarf…?

Arctic Ocean Update–Ben Saunders, Alone Again, Naturally: Brit Ben was one of five expeditions heading to the North Pole (and the only one who planned to continue on across the Arctic Ocean to Canada once he reached it). All the other expeditions have either been aborted or completed, so Ben is all by his lonesome in the Great White North. Is he lonely or depressed? Not at all. In fact, he is downright giddy, and playing air guitar (according to Explorer’s Web this pose has become a staple of adventuring; last year the annual air guitar photo came in from Stephen Koch’s attempt to snowboard Everest). Anyhow, Ben sent the following list in over the weekend:

Reasons to be cheerful… – Saturday, 1st May 2004 #

1) Decent ice, a few flat pans and no open water.

2) The knowledge that I’ve skied 379 nautical miles (700km) so far.

3) Blue skies and sunshine, 24 hours a day.

4) My sledge didn’t try to run me over today.

5) The fact that I’m now ‘inside’ 88 degrees north – less than two degrees (120 nautical miles) to the Pole.

6) Sun block – the stuff I put on my lips has a mouth-wateringly delicious coconut smell. I don’t know how I’ve avoided eating it…

7) Polyphonic Spree – ‘Reach for the Sun’.

8) I’ve found out where the brown stains are coming from. The what?! Well, I was reluctant to discuss this before, but I’ve been finding huge brown stains on my trousers recently. It turns out there was a fugitive chocolate bar hiding in my sleeping bag. Naturally I ate it, once I’d cleaned the fluff off.

9) My beard. It cracks me up every time I catch a glimpse of it (reflected in the screen of my iPAQ, for example). It’s huge. Hilariously big. I feel like some crazy old fisherman, and I’m going to start losing things in it if I’m not careful.

10) The photo you’ve all been waiting for. Can anyone name that tune?

Phew. Glad the brown stains issue was sorted out and that Ben still has his sense of humor after more than two months on the ice…



“Now there’s no one here but me and the polar bears, I can do whatever the hell I want. And I’ve got plans for that chocolate I scraped off my pants…”

(Photo: via Explorer’s Web)

Have A Wetass Weekend…

JV Wrapup–Peyron Throws Down The Gauntlet: Yes, Olivier De Kersauson set a new Jules Verne Record (63 Days, 13 Hours, 59 Minutes). No, he didn’t hand over the Jules Verne Trophy to Steve Fossett, the outright record holder who was about 5 days faster. So what next? Well, until the Jules Verne Trophy is in the hands of the outright record holder it is pretty much meaningless. And reuniting the two records is exactly what Bruno Peyron, one of the founders of the Jules Verne Association and the first to circle the globe in under 80 days, plans to do. He has just relaunched his maxi-cat Orange II, and will certainly spend the rest of the year working the boat up (so it doesn’t fall apart again), making record attempts across the Atlantic and in the Med, and preparing for another round-the-world shot next winter. To spice things up, Peyron has challenged any of the other maxi-multihulls to race him on a course of their choice, either in Northern Europe between June 1 and August 15, or in the Med in September. It would be nice to see any of these big boats line up bow to bow, but we’ll see whether anyone wants to go play with Bruno…



Geronimo Finally Has Some Fun: “Hey, Olivier, Bruno is on the phone.” “Tell him to f*ck off. We’ve got a lot of champagne to drink before we even thing about racing his yard sale of a multihull…”

Climbing Can Kill–Patrick Berhault: Regular TWC readers are familiar with Patrick Berhault and Philippe Magnin, the two French climbers who were well into a supreme challenge: climbing all 82 4,000 meter peaks in the Alps in 82 days. Unfortunately, the supreme challenge exacted a supreme price. Here’s the preliminary report. On Wednesday, as Magnin and Berhault were headed up the Taschorn (4491 meters), their 66th peak, a cornice collapsed at 4400 meters and knocked Berhault off the mountain (Explorer’s Web has the accident happening on the Dom). Magnin and Berhault were not roped together at the time, and Berhault fell about 600 meters. In severe weather, Magnin lost sight of Berhault and was later helicoptered off the mountain. A search was launched first thing Thursday, and Berhault’s body was found at 3800 meters. So no jokes, no funny pictures. Just a silent salute to a good climber, who died doing what he loved to do, and was close to knocking off one of the most creative and demanding Alpine climbing challenges ever devised. Should Magnin continue in Berhault’s honor? TWC says “yes”…



Patrick Berhault, 47 years: “Go for it, Philippe. Finish what we set out to do….”

Annals Of Achievement–Sort Of…: We’ve been pretty much ignoring our old friend Olivier De Kersauson and his trimaran Geronimo, because they are outside the world record time of Steve Fossett and his crew on Cheyenne. But The Admiral is not one to go quietly. So while TWC has been preoccupied with out-of-their-heads Russian climbers and human catapults (see yesterday’s posts), De Kersauson has been sailing hard and is set to finish today after some 63 days and 15 hours at sea. That’s good enough for a new Jules Verne record, but not a new world record (Fossett, who has now retired from sailing, refused to pay the Jules Verne entry fee, so he owns the world record but not the Jules Verne record). What does this mean? Not much. The only people who care about the Jules Verne record now that it is not the world record have French accents and are mostly limited to a small region of the Brittany coast. But TWC would like to give De Kersauson an official Wetass salute (not sure what that would look like yet; suggestions accepted). He has stoically endured unbelievably bad weather, both this year and last year. During this current voyage he has hardly sailed downwind at all since before Cape Horn. Still, he has exhibited superb seamanship, he has put up the second fastest time ever, and TWC has no doubt that he’ll be out there again next year. But here’s how he should cap off his grueling voyage with a little glory: instead of accepting the Jules Verne Trophy, he should say it rightfully belongs to Fossett, and hand it over. It would be a headline-grabbing, sportsmanlike gesture, and it would once again unify the JV trophy with the world record, restoring its value and relevance. De Kersauson has always been unpredictable. So come on, Olivier. Do the right thing….



“Alright, Fossett, you cheap bastard, the Jules Verne Trophy is yours. But I swear on Napoleon’s grave that I’m going to win the damned thing back next year….”

TWC Quick Hits…:

Dead Clay Pigeon Shooter Has Remains Blasted All Over World: “So I took the lead out of 50 cartridges, put Tony’s ashes into them and recrimped them, and now every ground I go to I fire one off.” Here’s a shocker: these guys are Irish…

Teenager Punches Out Bear Who Invades Tent: A half dozen left jabs to the muzzle, followed by a solid uppercut sends Smokey packing. Lesson: never wake up a 15-year old…

Britney Spears Has Close Encounter With Shark: Predator turns away, looking for more wholesome meal….



“It was the oddest thing. He tried to pull my suit UP…”