Article: Power To Waste - Huber Frees The Salathe

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steelmnkey

climber

Vision man...ya gotta have vision...

Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 7, 2008 - 06:23pm PT

The second in the Tarbuster series...

Alex Huber on his route, La Rambla (8c+)

Climbing Magazine #154 – August/September 1995
Power To Waste
By Jeff Achey
Photos by Heinz Zac

Most Americans have never heard of Alex Huber. Here’s the story of this German’s quiet ascension to top limestone climber, and how he learned to climb cracks on his summer vacation, culminating with a free ascent of the Salathé Wall.

All too often, the exploits of talented German rock climbers go unnoticed in America. We'll hear about the latest British E8 or French 8c, but miss the 2500-foot 5.12s in the Dolomites, and anything that happens in the Frankenjura. One young German, however, a new name even on the Continent found his way into Climbing magazine earlier this year. Recently, Alex Huber went on a rampage unprecedented in modem sport climbing, establishing four 8c+ (5.14c) routes over a single one-year period. One poignant headline in the British magazine On the Edge commented of the 8c+ tally: "Ben Moon has done one. Jerry Moffatt hasn't done any, and German Alex Huber has done five." At age 26, Huber has already authored 30 first ascents of German grade X (5.13c) or harder, mostly at crags off the international beat And a few of those routes are 10 pitches or longer.

This spring, a few Americans got a glimpse of this up-and-coming rock star - if they had binoculars and knew where to look. He came to the States, but not to the sport venues of Smith Rock, Rifle, or the New River Gorge. Preparing for a trip to the 3000-foot southwest face of Latok 2 in Pakistan, Huber. a native of the limestone Alps, needed experience on granite. How to get it? Without fanfare and with only a loose string of partners lined up. he quietly appeared in Yosemite Valley to climb El Capitan. He had his eye on the famous Salathé Wall (VI 5.13b).

Huber on Gambit (8c+), Schleierwasserfall, Austria

Alex Huber was born in Trostberg, southeast Germany, the middle of three children. His sister, Karina, is five years younger, while Thomas, the oldest, is just two years ahead. Sons of a noted alpinist - whose accomplishments included the first one-day ascent of Chamonix's famed North Face of Le Droites, in 1966 – the two brothers were introduced to climbing at an early age. With their father or together, they climbed many of the 4000-meter peaks in the Alps, and grew to favor the steep limestone routes. In the Dolomites and the Bavarian Alps, they climbed long alpine walls, free climbing pitches bordering on 5.12 while still in their mid-teens. The Huber Baum soon gained some local notoriety. Thomas was the better climber in those days, and remains Alex's strongest partner. A top climber in his own right, Thomas has climbed 8c, and made the first redpoint of perhaps the hardest long free climb in the world, The End of Silence, a 14-pitch 8c (5.l4b) on the Feuerhorn, near Berchtesgaden, Germany (see Hot Flashes No. 152).

It was in 1985, at Karlstein, an area near their parents' home, when the boys first saw mysterious red dots painted at the base of climbs. These "redpoints" advertised a new focus on free climbing, and piqued the Hubers' interest. By the next year Alex had bolted a steep line of his own. He gave it his best, but couldn't do it, and handed the project over to the top local climber, Sepp Gschwendtner of Munich, who soon succeeded on the redpoint. Watching Gschwendtner on Cannabis, now rated 8a (5.13b), opened Alex's eyes, and gave him his first serious climbing goal. He trained for the route over the winter, ticking the second ascent in the spring, a few months after his 19th birthday. Success on Cannabis was a strong dose, and launched Alex into a cycle of goal-setting - and achieving - that is now pushing the world's free-climbing standards.

Huber on La Rambla (8c+), Schleierwasserfall, Austria

That year, 1987, the Huber brothers took sport-climbing's project approach to long free climbs in the eastern Alps, a scattering of sub-ranges with conditions similar to Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, but with bigger walls, made of limestone. The first big success, which they completed in 1987 and redpointed the next year, swapping leads, was Vom Winde verweht (Gone with the Wind), a 10-pitch 8a (5.13b) on the Wartsteinwand, Berchtesgaden Alps. The brothers upped the ante in 1989, making - on successive days with different belayers, Thomas first - one-day ascents of their project Scaramouche, a sustained 8-pitch 8a on the west face of the Hoher Goll, also near Berchtesgaden. Huber now considers this style, where one climber redpoints every pitch, the standard for considering a free climb complete. Alex’s 1991 route Soulrider is the most demanding of his completed long climbs. After a 5.13c start, the next five pitches are mid-5.12 to low 5.13, then four easier pitch leads to the top - but the grades deceive, like calling the North Face of the Eiger 5.7. Except for the 8a+ (5.13c) first pitch, runouts are 30 to 50 feet. On the typical 5.12 section, you're looking at 40- to 80-foot fall potential.

Bolted on lead over a period of weeks, these alpine projects required extreme free-climbing ability and an iron willingness to run it out: the brothers were often on-sighting virgin 5.12 far above protection, hoping for hook pockets in the uncertain terrain ahead.

On Monstermagnet, Alex's unfinished (climbed, but not yet redpointed)l4-pitch piece de resistance on the Feuerhorn, the first pitch went at 5.12c, with only one bolt in 50 meters. Higher, there are runouts of 30 feet on 8c (5.l4b). The climbing photographer Heinz Zak, an Austrian, has photographed Alex in action on the route, and was appalled. Some of the distances between bolts were just plain huge, but the shorter, harder runouts impressed him most. Here, the extreme moves required total commitment, allowing no reserve for niceties like feet-first take-off on the huge falls. The view from some of the belays reveals rappel-bolt-only terrain, but all the Hubers' routes are led ground-up, with no pre-inspection. "You can't see anything, not anything" says Zak, who's done runout 5.13s of his own on this same limestone, his voice rising an octave. "I would say, no chance, not to even let a hand go for the next 60 feet. And Alex ... Alex just goes for it. He just starts climbing."

Huber's "home" sport-climbing area is the Schleierwasserfall near Kitcbuehel, Austria, and three of his five 8c+ routes are there: Gambit, Weiße Rose, and Black Power. The last two, both about 50 meters long, take neighboring lines up a staggering sweep of overhanging limestone. Zak, who has photographed the world's wildest crags from France to Yosemite, calls these lines, "the most impressive I've seen."

Huber on White Rose (8c+), Schleierwasserfall, Austria

The hardest of the Schleierwasserfall trio is probably Weiße Rose, a near-horizontal roof for over 60 feet of its length. The name of this climb is the only one Huber feels compelled to explain. Weiße Rose, or White Rose, was the name of a World War II resistance group, headed by a brother and sister who were arrested and later beheaded by the Nazis for their non-violent protest. One day, while walking the grounds of Munich University, Huber noticed terra cotta facsimiles of anti-Nazi documents, representations, he realized, of the flyers printed by the White Rose, who were teachers at the university. "For me these were really honest and really brave people," he says, frowning at the English words, which capture only half his meaning. It is a telling image, 23-year-old Huber wandering the campus, his head full of his own cause, his Schleierwasserfall project, inspired by these ceramic symbols of integrity, boldness, and willingness to sacrifice.

On pitch 30 of the Salathé Wall

In 1992 Alex journeyed south to an area with great potential for extreme climbs, Siurana, near Barcelona, Spain. The next year he bolted an outrageous line there, working on it just enough to learn it was hard. By the spring of 1994 he had cleared his plate of other projects, taken a break, and was ready for Siurana. For six weeks he stayed at the primitive refugio near the cliff, building back his endurance after a winter of power training for a three-week effort on the climb.

Consistently overhanging by about 30 degrees. La Rambla begins with a bouldery jamming/layback crux on an overhanging 15-meter 8b crack. "This section is so weird," he says, pronouncing ‘weird' with a ‘v’ and grinning. "I think it's funny to have this on this route." A desperate overhanging wall follows, which finally yields two good pockets at 35 meters. Then the last six meters is the crux.

Each of the climb's "rests" - which at the 8c+ level just means a good hold - had to be exploited perfectly. Between rests were powerful, all-out sprints through long boulder-problem sequences. "That is maybe one specialty of me," Alex says, "Sometimes I just climb and don't clip." Harder to control than fear of falling are the other negative mental states that can booby-trap climbers' concentration. Confidence is hard to muster on a climb you've failed on for two weeks; after three weeks, a sense of progress becomes elusive, an act of will. Huber is not talking about patience when he says, "I think not everybody is able to spend 20 days on a route."

The redpoint of La Rambia took over 20 minutes, compared to the two-minute burn on a power 8c+ like Ben Moon's Hubble. "Ahhh," Huber says, rolling his eyes, "it's a long time.” For Huber, the beauty in hard climbing is in meeting natural puzzles and challenges. So, he's adamantly against manufactured holds, which plague most of the world's hardest sport pitches especially in the south of France. He cleans his routes, and glued back one broken hold on Resistance, an 8c at Schleierwasserfall but otherwise all of Huber's routes are natural, "no new potential for holds created," in his words. He jokes about who will do the first true redpoint of famous routes like La Rose et la Vampire, considering using chipped holds the same as grabbing carabiners. "It's nothing," he says. "I wouldn't be interested to make the Bronx [a manufactured route in Orgon, France] - I never would be interested to make a hard artificial route ... I think building up rocks we never can be as creative as the nature is."

His conviction survived the acid test on his hardest route, Om, at Endstal, near his home in Berchtesgaden. The 15-meter crux section begins at 22 meters (5.13a up to here), opening with one of the climb's three crux moves, on bad sidepulls and pockets. More unrelenting bouldering worked up to an undercling, then the holds ran out and the next stretch shut him down cold. It was a body-length blank section in the middle of 50 feet of continuous 5.12 and 5.13 moves. "I think if I would have had in my mind to make an artificial hold I would have made there one," Huber says. But he didn't add anything or give up, and after over two weeks on just this move, figured out the precise foot smears and body position that would allow him to use every centimeter of his arm span, and hit the next poor hold with an explosive undercling throw. "If you see this in action it is hard to believe," says Zak.

On the crux of his route Om (9a/5.14d).

No rest, bad holds, and 10 more moves led to the final crux, a high-step dyno between sloping edges. On redpoint, it was impossible for Huber to chalk or clip on the crux section. He waited for cool, dry conditions, and accepted the repeated 40-foot falls. Huber finally linked all this together in 1992, along with the final 12 meters of8a to the anchors and, after 30 days of work, redpointed Om. He's since done four other routes of 8c+, or German XI, and feels that Om is hard for the grade. The other German route of comparable difficulty is Wolfgang Giillich's Action Directe, done one year earlier, in 1991. The routes await confirmation, but Alex considers them both French 9a, or 5.l4d. The other route proposed at this grade is Frederic Nicole's Bain de Sang, in Switzerland, also unconfirmed.

Asked whether he's interested in the famous and still unrepeated Action Directe, Huber says, "sure," but quickly shies away from calling it a goal, a word reserved for objects of obsession, each one of which he pursues until he succeeds. "You cannot go to Action Directe and just say, yeah, lets try. It must be really the goal in your head and the only goal."

It's raining (again) in Yosemite, and the interpretive slide show outside the Mountain Room Bar has been canceled. Looks like a grim night at Huber and Zak's camp - sleeping bags thrown out somewhere behind the Camp 4 parking lot - so it'll be a long evening at the bar. Outside, Japanese tourists huddle under the Yosemite Lodge cupola, while inside, Melinda Carillo serves up another pitcher of Michelob Dark. She and Alex have become friends. "He's pretty private," she says, a little at a loss as to how to describe him. She calls him very determined, ambitious, and with a good sense of humor. "He's nice. I like him." Does he always talk about climbing? "Mostly," she says. The topic at the table is the usual - the weather – and Alex, usually quiet, has begun a discourse on atmospheric mixing and the Antarctic ozone hole. Talking purposefully, just like he walks, the handsome young Bavarian is an unlikely scientist, leaning forward with his hands on the knees of tight black leather pants, his brown hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Although Huber makes his living partly by guiding, and, since last year, through sponsors' stipends, his studies at the University of Munich are in physics and meteorology. Some at the table rave about the hopeless unpredictability of the weather; others blame the near-daily downpours on demonic intervention. Alex, however, a scientist and a chess player, observes each day's clouds, examines the patterns, and constructs a framework of logic. He has approached the Salathé the same way: systematically, expecting a successful solution. That's remarkable, given the route's local reputation. The Salathé is unrepeated as a free climb since Paul Piana and Todd Skinner's ascent in 1988, and almost every Yosemite climber seems to doubt that ascent. Climbers who've been up there have called the route impossible, or at least 5.14. There's a lack of hard evidence against the climb, but plenty of talk. "Piana couldn't climb .13b to save his life," says one particularly drunk barfly. "Hatcher [the photographer who accompanied Piana and Skinner] was gonna spill the whole story," says another in the Camp 4 parking lot.

As the slander swirls around him, Huber keeps his focus on his own climbing, his resolve and sportsmanship standing out amidst the petty gossip like a White Rose pamphlet in Gestapo headquarters. "Until there is anti-proof, I believe the ascent," he says. "These f*#king rumors - I hate them." Over 18 actual climbing days and a month's worth of rain, Huber has managed to redpoint all the individual pitches of the Salathé. Now, as he sits in the bar, rain is falling, again, on his haul bags on Lung Ledge a third of the way up El Cap, but he has not lost his smile. His cheerful persistence is matched by a fierce ability to focus. "I don't try to make five goals; I try to make one goal, and I keep on," he says. With a soft-spoken but uncanny confidence, he says, "I always make the things I like."

Finishing the first headwall pitch (5.13b), Salathé Wall

Alex comes back to the table with a newspaper open to the weather page. It's a daily ritual. "BELOW NORMAL TEMPERATURES AND ABOVE NORMAL CHANCE OF RAIN," he reads aloud in his German baritone, mockingly articulating each word, his brown eyes rolling toward the water-streaked windows. It's been the same report since he arrived in late March, though it was snow - three feet of it - that fell the day after he arrived. The weather was bleak, but the social climate was warm. Huber was immediately welcomed by longtime locals such as Valley legend Ron Kauk; Jo Whitford, resident crack goddess and bartender at the Mountain Room Bar; and Mark Chapman, perhaps the Valleys most helpful ambassador. Chapman, who spent a lot of time with Huber, commented on his humility as well as his drive. "It was refreshing to meet a European climber who had a willingness to lower, at least for a very short period of time, his level of climbing, to learn how to do something new ... He seemed really motivated to learn Yosemite-style climbing.”

Huber and Zac on Heart Ledges, Salathé Wall.

Huber wanted to climb cracks – any cracks – and escaped the Yosemite snow to Joshua Tree with Chapman, Whitford, and the expatriot Brit Sean Myles. It was late when they arrived among the jumbled granite of Hidden Valley, but Huber begged Chapman to show him a crack. They went to a short 5.8 near the campground, where Chapman demonstrated the basic hand-jamming principles, soloing up and down the short crack. Myles did the same. "I tried it and I was scared," says Huber, who went to the car, got two Friends and the rope, and led the pitch. One day of crack climbing later, he threw himself at the 5.11c off-fingers crack Wangerbanger. "I was really fighting, but I did it," he says. A couple of days later - on lead – he flashed Equinox, Joshua Tree's mega-classic 5.12d fingercrack.

Back in the Valley, between rain and snow showers, Huber did the basic crack circuit - Arch Rock, the Cookie, Five and Dime, Reeds - until he "could do six or seven 5.11 b or c cracks without getting too pumped." In good sport-climber style, he laybacked a few classics as well, notably the notorious 5.10d flare 10.96 - and, later, on his first redpoint of the upper Salathé, the summit offwidth. Though new at cracks, Huber was undaunted by the Salathé's 5.13b grade. After all, that's six letter grades below his redpointing level. "Still, my technique maybe is not so good," he said innocently, "but if I can get my hand in there, I think it is OK, because I have power to waste."

In mid-April, with his boyhood climbing partner Gottfried Wallner, Huber started up the Salathé for the first time, climbing the Free Blast and fixing down from Heart Ledge, like most parties do. The next day they spent the night on El Cap Spire, one of the Valley's classic bivies, but rappelled the next morning to escape an impending storm, which covered the wall in snow and ice and saw four people rescued off the Nose.

Alex returned a week later and did the Free Blast with his waitress friend Melinda, and again fixed down from Heart Ledge. He and Wallner jugged their lines the next day and bivied on the Spire. They headed for the top, mostly free the first day and mostly aiding the last, checking out the airy Headwall pitches and enjoying their first trip up the great Captain. On the 24th pitch, Huber climbed Skinner's notorious stemming corner variation, confirming its 5.12d grade, but found a drier alternative by rejoining the original Salathé. Huber left ropes on the East Ledges descent, the only feasible way back up with the rim trail still lost under 10 feet of snow. Wallner returned to Germany, and a few days later, Huber walked back up alone to explore the Headwall. "I was totally wet when I arrived there, and I had no tent," he says. He tried an alcove under a boulder, but ice water was soon pouring in; another, same result. Nearly hypothermia, he finally crawled back into an evil, claustrophobic cave, removing a mummified bird to make room. When the weather broke, 36 hours later, he crawled out of the pit, trudged through the slush, rappelled off the top of El Capitan, and spent two days working the Headwall cracks.

Observers in the meadow marveled at his self-belayed antics, complete with wild pendulums, 3000 feet above. After his lone ordeal, and another solo visit with better bivouac gear, Huber recruited Chapman to hike up and belay for a redpoint attempt on the Headwall. Alex had placed two bolts at a natural stance at the start of the Headwall, and wanted to combine the next two 5.13 pitches into one 40-meter lead to a rest alcove, bypassing an unneeded hanging belay.

Things went well on Huber's first go; he passed the lower technical cruxes and neared the belay. Chapman recalls, "He clipped the last fixed wired nut up there and started going for the anchors, and there was another fixed pin that he wanted to clip, but he was too pumped so he just bypassed it." "He's a bold climber," Chapman continues, "and his rationale is that there's nothing to hit up there." If he'd fallen, he would have gone 50 feet. Huber redpointed the next 5.13 pitch to Long Ledge, and climbed the remaining three pitches, with some 5.11, to the top. It was late in the afternoon of a pretty good day by most people's standards. Chapman had brought up a few 24-oz Budweisers, and they had a little celebration. "Being German and a beer drinker," says Chapman, "the one beer didn't faze him too much ... we parted ways after this and he rapped back down onto the Headwall to start checking out some of the pitches below the roof."

It is mid-afternoon, the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. The weather and the crowd warnings in the city newspapers have kept the tourist hordes at bay, leaving a few empty parking spaces below El Cap. A few scopes are set up in the meadow, none of them trained on the Salathé. It has barely rained in almost two days, and though the sky is dark to the west, it looks like the weather will hold. Beginning late the morning before, Huber and Zak had jumared six fixed lines to Lung Ledge, just before the Salathé's first 5.12 section, the traverse into Hollow Flake. They spent that night on top of the Block, having climbed 13 pitches above their fixed lines, two of those 5.12, one 5.13a. Zak carried the haulbag as he jumared. Now, on the water-streaked tapestry of El Cap's southwest face, another party is struggling with the bomb-bay chimney of the Ear, pitch 18 of the Salathé, which looks soaking wet, like much of the rest of the route. El Capitan is in bad shape for free climbing, and Huber had described some desperate slimy passages - rated only 5.8.

But despite the conditions, at the belay above the long Headwall pitch waits Alex, looking placid and remote through the intruding eye of the scope. Above him lies one last 5.13 pitch to Long Ledge. Within the hour that pitch, too, will be behind him, and he and Heinz will tell the story of the Headwall tonight in the Mountain Room Bar. Huber began the first Headwall pitch strongly, but fell (when a foothold snapped, a detail Alex doesn't bother to mention, but Zak fills in later) on the technical 5.13 face climbing 15 feet off the belay. He caught nothing but air, and the fall calmed him. Still fresh, he pulled his rope, then fired through the technical moves to the better finger cracks on the 100-degree wall, and started motoring, skipping the occasional fixed piece to save energy. Nearing the top, the rope now heavy to pull and his arms in slow but steady fade, Alex skipped the wired nut he had run it out on with Chapman, gunning for a slightly better position at the last fixed pin. He reached the pin, fingers and feet torqued in the flared, overhanging crack. To clip would take time, and add strenuous moves. A decision point. To know Alex Huber is to know how unhesitantly he looked up and reached for the next jam. When he clipped the belay, he was 35 feet above his last piece of protection.

Out of his two-month investment in Yosemite, Huber got the granite experience he wanted, and became the first single person to free climb the Salathé Wall, often called the finest rock climb in the world. He redpointed every pitch, without preplacing gear. His final push, squeezed in between near-constant rain showers, used fixed ropes, but these avoided only the Free Blast and one 5.11 pitch above Heart Ledge, jamming 24 pitches and all the hard climbing (plus six ropelengths of jumaring) into the two-day summit push. Huber has the breadth of experience to compare the endurance tests of free walls with the hardest sport climbs. Though they're very different, he says, the Salathé project was, overall, less demanding and time-consuming than his harder crag efforts.

"Maybe a one-day ascent…" he muses, but Huber’s window of weather and time is over. A polite international visitor, he made no comparison with the long limestone free routes in the Alps, but confided privately to Zak that the Salathé was far easier. He commented that without the existing pin scars, the final Headwall pitch might have been impossible. In his mind, perhaps, considering this and the flagrantly chipped Jardine Traverse on the Nose, El Capitan was still awaiting a true free ascent. Calling from a crackly Yosemite payphone, Huber says he's happy to leave for Latok with a level head, having accomplished a major and highly visible ascent. As a newly sponsored climber, he's glad his livelihood won't rest on an outcome among the objective hazards of Pakistan. He says he looks forward to returning to Yosemite, and evades mischievously when asked about future projects there.

Huber's achievements, and his boundless positive energy, have inspired many. American rock stars Scott Franklin and Dave Shultz were last seen working the Salathé Headwall for their own free blast. After seeing the On the Edge headline, Ben Moon got so pissed, then so motivated, that he has since done two more 8c+ routes, and is close to success on his own 9a. Even if the number 5.15 conjures the same feelings of progress run amok as George Orwell's book 1984, it must help to know that one of the climbers most likely to usher in that grade is a stranger to rock gyms, and began his career hiking and climbing with his father in the Alps.

More likely to be found "comp drinking" than comp climbing, Alex Huber is a genius redpoint climber, but at heart he's a mountaineer and an adventurer. His dreams of extreme rock moves have floated up high into the Alps, onto unprotectable swells of flawless limestone. And in the years to come, if his dreams do linger in the lowlands and Alex climbs 5.15, you'll know just what to expect - the wall will be impressive, the clips will be spaced, and the moves will be exactly as nature designed them.

Jeff Achey is the photo and copy editor at Climbing.

SIDEBAR -- Training in German

Alex Huber follows a scientific training program that borrows from the theories of his friend and Berchtesgaden physiotherapist Rudi Klausner. He claims his natural endurance is fine, and best honed by just climbing, so he focuses his program on "max power," usually for a three- to four-month period each year. He trains two days on, one day off, the same rhythm he's used to in his climbing. Each period starts, with longer duration and lower resistance exercises, which increase in intensity over the course of the training months.

He trains mostly at home, on a small "system wall," a steeply inclined plywood wall with lines of pocket and edge holds spaced at regular intervals. The wall develops much better power for climbing than hangboard routines, Huber says, since the feet stay on the overhanging wall, keeping tension not just on the arms, but through the chest, abdomen, and legs. "It's not always only this muscle," he says, pointing to his forearm.

"This muscle keeps continuing to your toe." The workouts are monotonous compared to the various plastic-bouldering games favored by American climbers, but make it less tempting to avoid your weaknesses out of vanity. "If you [boulder] with somebody, you normally prefer to do your strength," Huber says, "but on the system wall, even if your friend is better it doesn't bother you because it's no boulder, it's nothing, it's just training."

Huber works in sets of five repetitions. Various reach moves target different goals: some are for contact strength, on one- and two-finger pockets or small edges; another involves long lockoffs on larger edges with feet kept very high. Huber also does some campus-board training, and trains one-arm pull-ups (he can do 10 on the right and eight on the left when he's in peak form). He says he doesn't work on his flexibility - he doesn't have to, since he can do a full split. His sessions are about three hours in the evening, usually at home or at a friend's house, and then he walks across the street to one of the beergartens.

Huber has entered some competitions, but feels that to do well a person must train almost exclusively indoors, working on the endurance needed for mid-5.13 on-sighting instead of max power, and learning indoor tricks like recognizing all the different brands and models of plastic holds. Asked why the French climbers dominate the competitions, Huber guesses it's the attention paid them by the French media. "They really focus on it," he says, "and this doesn't (apply to] any other nation." The heroes of the German climbing magazines are known for hard redpoints or wild climbs abroad, and an up-and-coming German competition climber would be at a loss for role models. Significantly, there are almost no indoor climbing walls in Germany, and Huber has only climbed on plastic a handful of times. "In Munich, for example,"
Huber says, "which has more than one million people living in it, there is no rock gym, can you imagine?"

Typically, Huber says he would not be satisfied to do competition climbing unless he was doing everything possible to be the very best. And to one who draws his inspiration from wild places, an indoor focus is anathema. So Huber sticks to his system wall, feels content with his few 8a on-sights, and trains for his loves - maximum difficulty, long runouts, and the natural challenges of unaltered stone.

From HOT FLASHES – Same Issue

Foreign raider
German climber frees Salathé Wall

In early June, the Salathé Wall (VI 5.13b) on El Capitan finally saw its second free ascent. In 1988, the Wyoming team of Todd Skinner and Paul Piana made the first of the sustained 3300-foot route. A handful of subsequent free attempts on the route failed, and the Wyoming climbers' ascent was followed by years of doubt and controversy.

Enter Alex Huber, a German limestone specialist with no crack-climbing experience but plenty of gumption. In Europe, Huber is known for his 8c+ sport climbs and multi-pitch testpieces on alpine limestone, up to 5.14 (see profile on page 70).

Ignoring both the specter of the controversy and the tangibly atrocious weather, Huber learned to crack climb, and worked the Salathé during his two-month visit. Then, intending to do the route in a single assault, Huber climbed the 12 moderate pitches of the Free Blast, plus the two pitches above, where he was hammered by another rainstorm.

He and his partner Heinz Zak left their two ropes fixed down to Heart Ledges, and descended other fixed ropes from there to the ground. Two days later, when the weather cleared, Huber and Zak jugged to the high point, and Huber climbed the 13 pitches to the Block, where they bivied. Below the Alcove, Huber accessed a long 5.11 a offwidth via a 5.12a undercling/face traverse to skirt a 5.13a thin crack.

Higher, two pitches above El Cap Spire, lies Skinners bizarre 5.12d body-stemming corner, which Huber free climbed on his initial recon but avoided on the redpoint ascent via a face/thin-crack variation to the right, rejoining the original aid line lower. These pitches to the Block - the climb's middle section - are characterized by steep, sustained crack climbing, with one 5.13 and a couple of 5.12 face-climbing cruxes. The hardest climbing on the Salathé comes on the final steep and exposed third of the route. Several 5.11 pitches lead to a desperate, round-edged stemming layback corner with sketchy pro, called 5.12b on the first free ascent but given 5.12c/d by Huber. A 5.12a tiered roof follows.

Huber's main contribution to the free Salathé was eliminating a hanging belay used by Skinner and Piana in the middle of the first Headwall pitch to give a long sustained 5.13b pitch (instead of two shorter 5.13a pitches). This unrelenting crack pitch is followed by yet another of the same difficulty. Above, a 5.11c face pitch leads to two pitches of easier climbing and the summit.

Huber redpointed every pitch himself, without pre-placed gear, beating the pump on the Headwall pitches by running it out and risking big falls. By European standards, says Zak, Huber's would count as the first free ascent, since he climbed every pitch. Skinner and Piana had swapped leads, and in conventional wall style jugged the pitches they didn't lead, so neither actually free climbed the whole route.

Skinner and Pianas effort has been called into question, but unlike other recent controversial ascents - Lydia Bradey's first female oxygenless ascent of Everest (see Climbing No. 150) and Tomo Cesen's solo first ascent of the South Face of Lhotse (see Climbing No. 142) - the climb by Skinner and Piana had an eye witness, the photographer Bill Hatcher. Asked if he witnessed a free ascent of the route. Hatcher
answers an unequivocal yes. "It was brilliant and inspirational to see them climbing it," says Hatcher, "with such intense commitment and concentration."

Both Skinner and Piana redpointed most of their leads; on pitches where they fell, says Hatcher, they returned to the belay and pulled the rope each time. Many agree with Zak that a free ascent is one person (or two) freeing every pitch, and at that Huber's ascent is an improvement over the first. But Hatcher's comments may help put to rest a longstanding debate.

Upon hearing of Huber's ascent, Skinner called to offer his congratulations.

HighDesertDJ

Trad climber

Arid-zona

Sep 7, 2008 - 07:44pm PT

I remember reading this article in early college and about shitting myself. One of the great feats in climbing in my opinion. The part where he is too pumped to clip a cam on the headwall and so just punches it for an insane runout just blew me away.

MisterE

Trad climber

One Place or Another

Feb 25, 2009 - 07:14pm PT

bump!

bmacd

Trad climber

Beautiful, BC

Apr 27, 2010 - 10:56pm PT

Headwall bump for Team Canada's current project ...

Salathe Free timeline of ascents - click here - compiled by Clint Cummins

bmacd

Trad climber

Beautiful, BC

Apr 29, 2010 - 01:45pm PT

On another thread Mighty Hiker said:

What?! You mean someone has freed El Cap? On sight, no falls, rests, pre-inspection, or other trickery? Wow - amazing. Who did it? There hasn't been any spray about it at all, although some attempts seem to have come close.

http://www.stanford.edu/~clint/yos/longhf.htm#salathe

Salathe Wall free:

4th FA - Yuji Hirayama, 9/97
used Alex Huber's variations.
originally tried to onsight the Teflon Corner. He fell, worked it some, then bailed and flashed Huber's variation.
2 days for an almost entirely flashed ascent.
flashed most pitches; only 4 falls and a little work on headwall pitches. (Not counting falls on the Teflon Corner which he ultimately did not use).
onsight style; his belayers did not provide any beta on the moves. They sometimes gave him an idea on protection, but no exact beta was given on that.
pinkpointed the 2 headwall pitches, instead of redpointing, to save time.
no fixed ropes were used, except to provide a brief rest and rewarming on Long Ledge, before his final attempt on the 2nd Headwall pitch.
time: 37:30
Climbing #172, 173
Climb - Australia New Zealand #5 -- many details
interview translated from Grimper (French) #?
On The Edge #79
partners: Hans Florine, Hidetaka Suzuki

atokasandstone

Trad climber

Harrison, AR

Apr 29, 2010 - 02:12pm PT

Thanks for sharing.

Talk about sacking up!

the brothers were often on-sighting virgin 5.12 far above protection, hoping for hook pockets in the uncertain terrain ahead.

tom woods

Gym climber

Bishop, CA

Apr 29, 2010 - 03:37pm PT

I remember that article- Huber walked into Yosemite and became a legend his first go. His photog and brother are no slouches either.

Anybody still doubt Skinner and co?

Why was there so much doubt on their ascent?