James talks about witnessing his friend Toby ‘Lucky Chance’ Benham m… American alpinists Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk have successfully climbed a direct new route via the Shark’s Fin on the NW face of Meru in India’s Garhwal Himalaya. There are only around 20 in the world if you include V15/16 grades. This week, one V16 was repeated and one V15 was upgraded to V16. Dave Graham, 37, sent Hypnotized Minds in Rocky Mountain National Park after attempting it for six years.
Incidentally just round the corner is Nursery Slab, V Diff in the 1985 guide, HVS 5a now. I did it in 1988 and found the starting slab tricky, but it’s basically a boulder problem with easier climbing above (S 5a?). I’m not so sure the grading is noticably harder for a crag now taking into account the unusual rock type .. Yes, Byne’s Crack was my mistake, mixed it up with Green Rib when checking back. My memory of Striker’s Rib is that I soloed the bottom rib then escaped leftwards into a crack.
Table of Contents
Who Climbed The First V16?
Cobra Crack immediately struck a cord, in part due the heinous finger-locks required to power through the crux, in part due to its innate beauty. Over the years some of the best crack specialists in the world have been drawn to the line and while it may have lost some of its original fearsome reputation, the climb is just as beautiful as ever. As America’s Mason Earle testaments after his June 2017 repeat. In this week’s ticklist, we cover ascents from the boulders of Rocky Mountain National…
Since then Sean Bailey was also out trying the route with a couple of others and managed to climb it in October of 2021. Sean has previously only climbed 9a+ routes so completely skipped 9b, and at 25 years old he’s also winning Gold medals at IFSC comps. If he were to dedicate his time to outdoors we’d expect more 9b+ routes from him. It is only 12 metres long and according to Ondra was 15 moves of around 8b / 5.13d to the incredibly difficult 8B+ / V14 boulder problem crux.
All the same, the fact that 5.15c and 5.15d ascents have remained elusive for all except two climbers is a testament to how difficult it is to push through these plateaus. Not only does it take exceptional athletes with exceptional drive, but it takes projects at just the right level, often in just the right style. These are rare cases, and generally climbers tend to be an honest bunch about FAs (let’s not talk about Cerro Torre). It’s much more likely that some of the proposed grades will shift. Most of these routes haven’t been repeated, and downgrading/upgrading is still relatively common at the upper edge of the sport. Where there is only one ascent, I included the climb at the grade proposed by the first ascentionist.
Just weeks after Sachi Amma claimed the second ascent, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit Malaysia and toppled the Donkey’s Ears formation. Sadly, this means that no one will ever attempt the route again. Lucie Hrozová used more than 65 ‘Yaniros’ moves in 50 minutes of climbing – taking more than twice as long as it took her to ascend the legendary Ironman (M14+) climb in Eptingen, Switzerland. The steep 80m pitch, with a 30m overhang, involved 28 bolts and travelled through “a maze of ice daggers and mushrooms” to end in an ice cave. Emmett described it as, “Possibly the ultimate winter climbing experience.”
Stefano Ghisolfi 9c Project
The route took many seasons of effort to climb, but Adam finally clipped the chains on September 03, 2017. The route famously features an awful, inverted roof crack that Adam climbs upside down, followed by many double digit boulder problems with little rest in between. The first part of the route is 20 meters of roughly 8b roof climbing with “okay” holds that is about endurance.
The route is at Sloup in the Czech Republic, and was the world’s third 9b+ / 5.15c. It also marked Ondra’s third 9b+ and sets him apart from other climber as the only person to have climbed three 9b+ routes. Climbing in also in many ways is all about persisting through failure.
It gets VS on here for the alternative finish but I climbed the original line the day after South Ridge Direct and thought it harder. Even before you consider the regression in traditional climbing techniques and skills in the general climbing population. Puttrell’s grading was fair enough for the time, both the mindset and the skill set have changed since. I think many of the lower grade Wharncliffe routes are still undergraded for now though, especially by comparison with the main eastern edges. Such cases are nearly always not the same line or had a major change in difficulty due to rockfall. Towering 100m above of the Irish sea, the Cnoc na Mara stack takes some climbing, not least because you have to paddle out to sea just to get to it.
The climb is one of the most epic we have ever done – it is extraordinarily challenging, very scenic and untouched by cycling wheels. Puffy, red-purple, and sometimes painful toes were one of the odder symptoms seen early in the pandemic. But experts are debating their cause—and whether COVID-19 is even to blame. Of the remaining climbs, all but five are in Canada or the USA. Those five are in Chile, Japan, Australia, and Malaysia, butTinipino longer exists, leaving just four 5.15s outside of North America and Europe.
When one of the most remarkable difficulties of the route is bearing the sharp and agonizing pain of it, well, that gets in the way of my oneness with nature. This is the third D16 route after Gordon McArthur’s 80m ‘Storm Giant’ in Canada and the previously mentioned ‘Oświecenie’. Tom Ballard’s ‘A Line Above the Sky’, a D15 in Tomorrow’s World cave, was the previous hardest. Darek Sokołowski 50 minutes of climbing, hanging from his tools at all times, to complete the climb. Two climbs on Utah’s Fisher Towers were once claimed to be tougher at A6 and A6+, but have since been downgraded.
The person with the highest point on the project at the end of the year also wins €1,000 until it is completed. There have been a few competition-style events where famous climbers come along to try it out and share beta. A year ago Hazel Findlay started to check out the route at the foot of the Vernal. She quickly realized that the route is indeed really difficult. The route runs along a thin crack and offers barely any footholds. But the beauty of the line convinced the XNUMX year old to choose it as project.
James has gone from climbing near his family home in the Peak District of England to exploring walls and mountains in exotic locations around the globe everywhere from Tazmania to Thailand. A few dozen men have “free-climbed” El Capitan, but only three – Tommy Caldwell, Honnold and the late Brad Gobright – have gone up the route Harrington achieved, known as Golden Gate. Harrington had climbed a particular route on the wall, called Golden Gate, many times, but never in one day. The granite cave in Flatanger, Norway is considered by many climbers as the world’s greatest climbing cliff and is a hotspot for climbers like Adam, but most only have dreams of completing it. The mountain has claimed more than 500 lives since 1865 and takes a few more each year. Everest’s glory has faded somewhat with the mountain’s commercialisation.
From sport routes to pure alpine, the debate over the best, toughest and most extreme climbing feats never stops. One thing is for certain, though, as climbing evolves, routes are getting harder. Given the unique beauty and importance of this plum line though, it wouldn’t surprise us if it were to receive a free ascent in the near future, this time without any pre-placed gear. Yet another Chris Sharma project that may be 9b+ or 9c with little info on it. Again it’s close enough that he might actually get enough time to complete it.
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