Wings of Steel

Doesn't Martyr's Brigade also include some really contrived difficulty, like "hook" moves involving an ice tool attached to a cheat stick or something like that?

Martyr's Brigade is probably the hardest and most dangerous big-wall route on El Capitan

The seventeen-foot stickhook move on pitch 24 bypasses a super-thin flake, but has real bloodbath potential. The "dry tool" move on pitch 11 is unique. By topstepping a big hook, I was able to reach past a twenty-foot blank wall and "dry tool" (my ice axe taped to my twenty-two-foot stickclip) an out-of-sight block. As I jugged my 5.5-mil spectra cord up to the axe I was afraid that it would come off and impale me. When I reached the block I realized it was detached and resting on a narrow down-sloping ledge. I should have been more gripped.

. I drilled a lot of bolts, but chopped about an equal number on surrounding routes. Creating hard pitches, destroying pathetic bolt ladders (Early Morning Light)—it seemed to balance out in the end.

Part of we wonders if this maelstrom has finally spun itself out.

All I (and others) ever claimed was that Richard was a liar about the hole count since day one.

Now that another party has completed the upper pitches where the FA can't claim the drilled holes were due to someone else, the case is closed.

The bottom line has always been that the FA was basically incompetent and unprepared and the poor quality of their route is a testimony to that.