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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Nov 23, 2016 - 11:05am PT
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There were five guys total counting Heinz Zak, although I'm not sure Heinz was on the final push. They fixed ropes a long way up. I don't know if they hired any local monkeys, but I didn't see any when we were there.
Their portaledge camp was set up there for a while, but for the most part, they did a sh#t-ton of jugging! These guys were jugging a thousand or fifteen hundred feet on a daily basis. They would return to the ground each night, then jug back up the next day to start working pitches.
A thousand or fifteen hundred feet of jugging is a walk in the park for a caver, more impressive that these pussy-ass sport climbers could do it. ;)
I joke, of course - these guys were all super strong and tough as nails.
Their rope rigging work left a little something to be desired, at least by soggy bailers like us poaching a ride down them to outrun the storm. The one traverse was rigged in a ridiculously not-enough-slack way, necessitating diagonal jugging. Do that wrong, and you fall to your death. But they knew what they were doing.
But what gave us the most problem was a midnight "deviation" crossing across a single green Camalot. A deviation is caver lingo where the diagonal rope is simply clipped through a draw, without it being a full-on "rebelay" whereby there is a knot in the carabiner. I passed this without much problem, riding a couple hundred pounds of piggage. It didn't seem too bad to me, with my experience, but I completely underestimated its difficulty when so much weight is with you! Anita did ok too with me talking her through it.
Ryan and Tom - those poor bastards - just about died up there in the dark, out of earshot above me, and getting stuck and hung up with their piggage. I did add a couple of our cams to back up what would have been a horror show had the single cam pulled, but I should have made it a full on rebelay.
Tom was cursing me, said we should have - once again - set up the tensioned diagonal rope to lower our pigs across the diagonal, but by this point it was so late, I really figured we could save the time and not done the whole "tramming" of pigs. It would have been ok without tramming had I simply tied a rebelay knot. Duh. Sorry, Tom. I thought I'd never see my two cams again, but Tom did get them out. With a bit of swearing, ahem.
With pigs, these maneuvers are extremely difficult. But the four guys would zip up and down these ropes all day and night with zero problem, on account of they would only be carrying small loads. What took us over six hours with pigs going down took them about thirty or forty minutes.
So pretty casual jugging for that lot.
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Mei
Trad climber
mxi2000.net
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Nov 23, 2016 - 11:48am PT
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By your very own over emotional remarks you yourself confirmed there is aid involved.
User sun, can you please spell out your own point? If I read between your lines correctly, you seem to think that nobody has free climbed the Dawn Wall. But if so, or if not, why not just speak clearly what is the point you are trying to make?
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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Nov 23, 2016 - 11:52am PT
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By your very own over emotional remarks you yourself confirmed there is aid involved.
Damn. I was getting all excited to think that Dawn Wall had been done free. Thank you for correcting everyone.
Curt
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Nov 23, 2016 - 11:54am PT
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^^ Of COURSE there was aid involved. How the hell do you think they got up there in the first place? Until someone makes the first onsight unroped free solo first nude winter ascent, walking in from sea level, some sort of aid will always be used.
This was a full-on siege project. First they aided the pitches to fix the ropes, then Adam rehearsed all the moves on toprope, then practised the pitches, and then ultimately free climbed all the pitches.
I can't say for sure, but I am willing to guess that the pitches had all the draws and cams and other gear preplaced prior to the final send? Certain we observed all of this gear preplaced during rehearsals. So I suppose this means ultimately Adam "pinkpointed" the pitches rather than "redpointed" them? Some sport climber will have to clarify these terms, as I never preplaced a piece in my [free climbing] life.
Isn't that how all the really hard free climbs are done these days? Back when I was free climbing 10's and 11's, I used to consider it cheating. Which is probably why I never climbed any harder than 5.11!
As for the initial "aid" ascent the very first time up the pitch, I didn't observe any of this - standing in aiders like a punter like me - although I am curious. I'm guessing Adam probably climbed each pitch first rather than his assistants, but the dude is so strong, he probably just free climbed and took hanging rests on whatever happened to be stuck in the rock.
Which wasn't all that much. He was making long ass runouts all over the place! Pretty ballsy, really, considering some of the "pro" was fixed heads.
I never saw Adam use his aiders, except for jugging. But his team photographed and filmed everything, so ultimately I guess we'll see exactly what style they used. Presumably virtually the same as Kevin and Tommy?
All you'd have to do is ask, and they'd tell you.
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Alexey
climber
San Jose, CA
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Nov 23, 2016 - 12:38pm PT
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sun wrote on pollard tread:
The election was heavily rigged to keep Hillary out of Washington.Her emails contained information on world wide pedophile ring involving her Clinton foundation
and many people in High places in Washington. Someone who spent years investigating her charity in Hati was assassinated recently. The Clinton charity was found linked to child trafficking.
Justice Scalia was assassinated for keeping all this knowledge under cover. Obama did not go to Scalia's funeral because he did not want to associate with a known pedophile enabler.
what do you expect from this new ST member ? Are you interested what he is writing about climbing?
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Srbphoto
climber
Kennewick wa
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Nov 23, 2016 - 01:48pm PT
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All climbers use aids, it is just a question of degree.
but not all climbers use aid.
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Srbphoto
climber
Kennewick wa
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Nov 23, 2016 - 02:47pm PT
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Naked chalkless and shoeless solo of FA walking distance from your home or BS.
read what I wrote.
aid has a meaning in climbing.
This whole "Naked chalkless and shoeless solo" or it's aid is bs.
Also, how far is walking distance from your home?
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splitclimber
climber
Sonoma County
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Nov 23, 2016 - 02:59pm PT
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CONGRATS Adam.
I believe purists think that stopping at the end of a pitch and resting/hanging at a belay anchor is A0.
But I think that is non-sense as is all the tired comments about shoes and chalk and clothing being aid. About as played out as Yer gonna die. ;)
I've been appreciating your posts kingtut.
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Nov 23, 2016 - 04:22pm PT
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You calling me out?
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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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Nov 23, 2016 - 04:48pm PT
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Darwin: regarding the summary that i posted. it is factual with the following caveats:
1. the day to day summaries were based on pavel's and adam's instagram posts and there are no questions regarding those except the following:
a. i used tommy and kevin's ratings, except for pitch 15 which tommy and kevin called 14d but ondra wrote he felt [and he said tommy felt as well] might be closer to 14c. so i called that 14c/d. there are other pitches that ondra felt were different [usually one grade plus or minus from what tommy and kevin thought], but i didn't worry about those and left the rest of the grades as they were.
b. on the final day, adam repeatedly said he had 11 pitches left. but based on what he had completed there were only 10 pitches left based on tommy and kevin's topo. so i'm not sure what the real deal was here... maybe one of the pitches was split in two... or maybe it was something else... for the time being i just relied on tommy and kevin's topo and called it ten pitches, even though adam said in a couple places that he was going to do 11 pitches that day.
2. not sure if by "downward dyno" pitch you are referring to the big sideways and up dyno that kevin did on the final push [pitch 16] or something else. if it's the huge sideways dyno, then no ondra didn't do that on the final push. he chose to go on the loop pitch that tommy used on his final push for reasons that he explained on facebook. this is the first 14a pitch that ondra did on day 6.
3. the only significant thing i'm not sure about is exactly how many days adam worked the route prior to sending... while i know there were 23 days from when he first stepped on it to when he started resting up for the final push, the 15 days i wrote in my post is based on an as-best-as-i-can-tell reading of the source data for pavel's instagram feed. in other words this could have been 13-17 days as there were a few days where i had to read between the lines. but i'd bet $20 or so on 15 days, so i'm pretty sure it is very close to that. the other 8 or so days were either stormed out, spent resting, or trying to on sight the nose.
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Nov 23, 2016 - 05:14pm PT
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Well yes, I am being silly. Party because it comes so naturally, partly because I don't want this celebratory thread to devole into a hopelessly negative diatribe on ethical judgments, and partly because, in my personal experience, pushing the limits is hard to pull off and should be taken on its own terms. The best you can ask for is honest reporting. The next team can do it better. On the other hand we could all just stop climbing and think about how cool it would be if we all climbed purely. No stepouts. No forgiveness. No striving. Just pure self righteous purity.
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Johannsolo
climber
Soul Cal
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Nov 23, 2016 - 05:36pm PT
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I can't say for sure, but I am willing to guess that the pitches had all the draws and cams and other gear preplaced prior to the final send? Certain we observed all of this gear preplaced during rehearsals.
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matty
Trad climber
under the sea
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Nov 23, 2016 - 06:11pm PT
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He is very forthcoming about the style used...
How does it work with protection in the route?
The pitches with bolts are 14 and 15 and some others of the grade about 8b. Otherwise it is mostly about fix pro. There are some pegs, beaks and copperheads. I decided for the same way as Tommy Caldwell with Kevin Jorgeson – I had prepared the quickdraws in situ. In the most difficult pitches they had been hanging there while in the easier ones I put them in myself. All up to 7c is purely on your own anchors but I finally chose the way that I only used the fixed pro and in between I climbed over it of my own accord. It doesn´t mean that belaying is not possible but I just didn´t feel like using it. In the first 20 pitches I mounted a friend or nut about 10 times.
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Alexey
climber
San Jose, CA
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Nov 26, 2016 - 04:23pm PT
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One more thing ... [expected?] in the end of Adam's trip
pavelblazekIt's hard to believe but our stay here in the valley is slowly coming to an end. We have four more days before Adam, Heinz and Christian are flying back to Europe. Adam and I are taking two days rest, Heinz and Christian will take down the ropes from the top to the Wino Tower. If the weather permits we might go up to film the pitch 14 & 15 on Monday. There are no plans for Tuesday yet but few ideas - some of them a bit crazy - are floating around. Certainly stay tuned as nothing is over y
https://www.instagram.com/p/BNR9kqqhzTU/?taken-by=pavelblazek
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GDavis
Social climber
SOL CAL
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Nov 26, 2016 - 06:41pm PT
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I plan on finding some semantics I can nit pick to take his accomplishments down a few pegs. I'll feel a little bit better about myself knowing that failure, something I thrive on, is common and there are no heroes.
God is dead.
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Nov 26, 2016 - 06:49pm PT
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Naked chalkless and shoeless solo of FA walking distance from your home or BS.
Actually, if you are powered by food you didn't grow and fertilize with your own feces, and carry the water from the nearest naturally flowing stream, then it is still aid. And you better have obtained those seeds for planting the food on foot.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 26, 2016 - 11:59pm PT
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Adam about Tommy's and Kevin's ascent
Adam, let's start with those who paved the way, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson. You've already commended their ascent, but is there anything else you wish to add?
It takes a lot courage and dedication to find a free route on El Cap, especially in that part as it looks so blank and steep. And the chance of encountering one section of total blankness is high. But Tommy just went for it and did not care. He spent a couple of years before he actually found the climbable link between the lower part of Mescalito and the higher section of Wall of Early Morning Light. This link is actually pitch 14 and 15, the crux traverses. Tommy and Kevin put so much effort into the climb and faced so many question marks and logistical problems that I cannot really compare my effort to theirs. I had it prepared, had all the knowledge. I knew it was possible. That was the most important thing! They demonstrated dedication and vision. Thank you Tommy and Kevin for this route, it is a true masterpiece.
... and then about some of the learning taking place:
El Capitan's granite slabs and cracks are very different to what you've been used to. How much did you have to change and adapt your style of climbing?
I expected Yosemite climbing to be different. I expected to struggle for the first days, mostly when crack climbing. But in the end I discovered that the cracks are kind of the same everywhere. What is really unique and weird through are the laybacks and face climbing, due to the friction and the footwork they require. Laybacks are incredibly strenuous (especially if you're not climbing them right) and require incredible body tension - due to the slippery and non-existing footholds. Let's say if some of the 8b+ laybacks were on sticky sandstone instead of slick glacier-polished granite, they would be easy 7a's. I really struggled on the laybacks in the beginning. They felt so insecure I thought I'd slip every second. I wasn't able to relax and I was scared.
So what about the face climbing
Footwork was the real struggle. I thought my footwork was quite good, I'm used to standing on terrible footholds, but the Yosemite footholds are on a different level. let me explain this better: if a route is even only slightly overhanging, you don't place all your weight on your feet, and 99% of 9a's are overhanging. Here though, almost all the time you're placing your entire weight on tiny razorblades. And this is crucial, because the holds are simply too poor to hang on. And most importantly, you do so for HOURS. The pressure of these razorblades onto the few millimeters of rubber on your rock shoes is incredible - it can literally tear them apart. Actually, every shoe feels too soft on the Dawn Wall. After trying numerous shoes, Katana Laces were the only ones which fit perfectly. Nevertheless, I had to resort to using razorblades and sandpaper to sharpen the edges of my shoes after a couple of tries.
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Loco de Pedra
Mountain climber
Around the World
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Not bad for a sport climber first trip
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SuperTopo on the Web
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