H is for Hawaii, Sarah Hueniken, Hips and Hula

I’ve got it! The connection between climbing and hula is (obviously) hip action!

Watching the hula in Honolulu this evening made a lot of people (yes, including me) pretty happy.

It only makes sense that one generally wants to keep those hips in close to the wall – there’s no point in shifting your centre of gravity way away from the rock face – that kind of thing will pull you off faster than you can say ‘take!!'[For non-climbers, that’s what you yell at your belayer when you need the slack to be taken out of the rope, generally yelled during a moment of panic and/or exhaustion, often just as you are beginning to fall.]

At the same time, it’s impossible to see where you are putting your feet if you keep your hips glued to the wall and never look down. Which is where the hip action comes in. This is particularly pronounced when ice climbing when you need to stick your backside waaaaaaaay out before you move your feet.

Hips in – that’s Joe climbing This House of Sky in the Ghost River Wilderness Area earlier this season…

Hips out – Fabio on This House of Sky

Pushing your backside out accomplishes two things – your arms stay straight (less tiring than keeping them flexed by pulling into the wall) and allows you to yank the points of your crampons out of the ice, move your feet up, and kick them back into new positions higher up. Once your feet are comfortably set, you push your hips in toward the ice before you pluck your ice tool free and swing it home again above you.

If you want to watch a short (and very cool) video about ice climbing by my friend Craig Hall (handy his last name starts with the letter H) about  Sarah Hueniken, here’s the link.

That’s all I’ve got – I’ll let the sun set on this blog entry…

Sunset – Waikiki – nothing in this photo has anything to do with the letter H. Sorry.