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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 31, 2017 - 08:48pm PT
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In my opinion, speed climbing the Nose is a much different affair than sport or even trad climbing 5.14. Speed climbing rarely requires moves beyond hard 5.11 and the speed, per se, is accomplished via efficiently blasting up what to modern candidates is moderate going but requiring world class endurance and cardio to keep the hammer down for so long, basically full bore for going on two hours. Someone capable of climbing far harder cruxes does not necessarily blaze up moderate terrain, lest world cup champs at leading and bouldering would also win the speed comps, and they never do save for Claire B.
So you're 5.14 crushers would basically have to go to Yosemite and start getting the Nose wired, as well as all the specialized techniques of short-fixing and rope management and then, it's off to the races. But not before.
Modern speed climbing is an acquired art involving techniques and a mind set of little use to most all other modes of climbing. I've been wrong before, but these people setting speed records on El Cap have a skill set that took years to attain, and there's probably no way to short cut the learning curve no matter how hard a grade you might crank.
Also, as Quinn Brett unfortunately just showed, leader falls are likely to be catastrophic owing to the lack of pro placed. It's a wonder more Homeric whippers have not been logged - another testament to how good these people actually are.
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duncan
climber
London, UK
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Not in my experience. Once a person gets any climb ruthlessly wired, they climb MUCH more efficiently, and that translates to big savings of time.
Totally agree individual teams can improve their time enormously with repeated attempts. Incremental improvements referred to the (relatively) small time reductions in the Nose record more recently. Times dropped ~50% over two years in the early 90s as short fixing became popular. It has taken another 25 years so see a proportionally similar reduction.
Quinn Brett recovery fund: https://www.youcaring.com/quinnbrett-980578
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Spanky
Social climber
boulder co
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 2, 2017 - 06:49am PT
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The idea that stronger free climbers would be faster is silly because Brad is already climbing at that level. His Facebook feed had photos of him hiking a bunch of the hardest routes in tuolomne this fall. (like peace 13c/d?) And while I don't now Jim I'm certain he's probably a pretty similar caliber climber to Brad. Most of the people who have had the nose speed record over the last 20 years were some of the strongest granite free climbers of their generation. It was true when it was done for the first time by Largo et al and it continued to croft/bachar, Potter, and Alex Honnold. Most of the recent record holders have multiple free ascents on the captain already. So the reality is that many of the best granite climbers are already there.
I think it might eventually get faster but it will be really tough to get under 2 hours
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Just talking to Brad, and he thinks if he teamed with Honnold they could go sub 2:10 no problemo. Breaking 2:0 is gunna take a lot of freesoloing.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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It's interesting to speculate just what it will take to dick the Nose in sub two hours. First there was the introduction of short fixing and basically soloing the "easier" sections. That halved the elapsed times. If you look at the Huber's movie on setting the speed record (at the time), there was also a refinement process of getting the short fixing and team work dialed, becoming increasing fluent with the route and the whole shebang, and once more that halved their elapsed time.
At this point it seems like it will take all of these components - short fixing and running the rope liberally, fluency with the route and polished team work - boiling it all down to having the two fastest candidates climbing the route together, probably over and over till everything clicks that one magic ascent comes down and a time for the ages is logged.
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nopantsben
climber
europe
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Just talking to Brad, and he thinks if he teamed with Honnold they could go sub 2:10 no problemo. Breaking 2:0 is gunna take a lot of freesoloing.
That makes it sound like he was slowed down by Jim. Pretty sure if Jim teamed up with Honnold, sub 2:10 would also be no problemo ;-)
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snowhazed
Trad climber
Oaksterdam, CA
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largo wins with "homeric whippers"
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Gobi
Trad climber
Orange CA
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Hey everyone! It’s interesting reading all the comments and discussing strategies for this kind of stuff. It’s pretty neat! If Jim or I were to team up with Alex we would take the record down to 2:10 because someone like Alex could simul behind us the whole time. Jim and I simuled about 80% and short fixed the other 20. I think doing the whole thing simul could shave off about 10 minutes. Mega strong/bold free climbers could bring the time down to sub 2. This is my guess.
Brad Gobright
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brotherbbock
climber
Alta Loma, CA
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^^^^Gnarly!!!!
Well done Gobi...totally badass.
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Alexey
climber
San Jose, CA
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if leader place several micro-tractions on specific places on the fixed gear - can this make simul-climbing safer [ protect leader from fall of the follower] and increase % of simul-climbing vs % of short fixing ?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Glad Brad chimned in. And congrats on the new record.
It's fun to speculate on the possibility of simulclimbing the whole route. I suspect - more like a hunch - is that the way to simul climb the Nose with the most logistical ease, to avoid climbing in fits and starts - as one or the other either free climbs or French frees a bit as the other does the same - is to climb on a very short rope, perhaps as short as 50 or 60 feet, making sure that at least two good pieces of pro separated the climbers. If the second stopped and hung on pro in strategic pieces, the leader could dick the pendulums in the meantime and second could follow and lower out on tag lines you could just leave behind. Only way to keep the rack small would be to basically solo everything up to about low 5.12, which is really most of the route. But it would bound to get hairy somewhere.
Anyway, simulclimbing on a shorter (than 70 meters) line might be one way to think about it. The trick would be to figure out what would make it faster, and how, if indeed it would.
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BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
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I want to see somebody come up with a technique to truly simul-climb the King Swing:-)
BTW, I am heartened to see both Brad and Jim acknowledge how dangerous it really is to attempt the speed record. It's pretty cool that they climbed the route so quickly, but everyone should realize how big the risks are.
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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Careful, your car's airbag could kill you.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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This graph is 99% the same as the ones del cross and duncan already posted.
I tried to label the ascents where the record dropped the most, relative to the elapsed time since the past record.
Edit: more labels added.
Note: The time for the Westbay-Bridwell-Long record was listed as 17:40 on the 2010 version of Hans' page; it is listed as "just under 15 hours" now. I checked the story on p.82-83 of Yosemite Climber. (or see http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/2146490/Team-Machine-Billy-Westbay-NIAD-PO-Wall-Yosemite-Climber ). They started climbing at 4am and were on the summit of El Cap at 7pm, which is 15 hours. Since the summit of El Cap is several minutes hike above the classic tree (end of roped climbing), their time on the route was under 15 hours. It was 17 hours from the 4am start back to the Valley floor.
Why did Shultz and Croft drop the record by so much?
duncan's graph indicates that short-fixing was started at this time.
But you also have 2 guys who had both free soloed The Rostrum, and Croft had free soloed Astroman as well.
So these guys could climb safely on runout 5.10 and 5.11.
Peter could be the best person to ask!
The answers may be in Hans' book:
https://www.amazon.com/Nose-Lifelong-Obsession-Yosemites-Iconic/dp/1493024981
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le_bruce
climber
Oakland, CA
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Clint who are those first two drops - the only two to shave off > 100 minutes while taking the record, if I'm reading right?
Schultz and Croft almost dropped 100 minutes from previous record, and then the promptly dropped > 100 more from their last effort. How??? What did they change? They changed the game, but what did they change in their strategy?
What a killer graph.
Good to hear from BG - respect to you and your partner
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looking sketchy there...
Social climber
Lassitude 33
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This is not only a superb climbing achievement, requiring incredible commitment and skills, but a truly impressive athletic achievement as well.
Congratulations.
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WBraun
climber
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Two super good free soloists can destroy the record .....
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SilverSnurfer
Mountain climber
SLC, UT.
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I remember an interview with Hans Florine where he said he thought the Huber brothers were capable of an under 2 hour time if they spent more time in the valley.
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WBraun
climber
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Or maybe die for nothing...
No one dies for nothing.
Everyone gets another chance.
Some have gone thru thousands of lifetimes .....
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Del Cross, thanks for remembering our winter solstice ascent. I was pretty psyched that Dave and I did it in a day, all daylight, starting in the cold dawn and topping out in the winter dusk.
When we climbed it, we actually got to Camp 4 in a little over 3 hours. But the whole upper part was dripping wet so we had to aid a lot of stuff that we would normally be firing up at 5.10/11.
I always thought we had the Nose record, because at the time of Duncan’s ascent the summer preceding our winter Solctice ascent, I recall there being fixed ropes on the first 4 pitches, and thought they had used them, but Duncan later told me (many years later in a chance meeting in Joshua Tree) that he didn’t use the fixed ropes, so he and Roman had the record at the time. I saw Duncan that day around mid afternoon in Camp 4, he told me he had just climbed the Nose, I was way impressed, as it was an early one day ascent (I think at the time it had only been climbed in a day about a half dozen times, but most of those had used fixed ropes for the first four). They didn’t have a watch, but he estimated 8 hours. I never asked them about the fixed ropes, but back then, a lot of routes were starting to be done in a day, but with the first few pitches fixed. Rick Cashner was the vocal critic of using fixed ropes, so I followed his lead and didn’t use fixed ropes for my first one-days ascents of Lost Arrow, Liberty Cap, some other speed records at the time on routes like the West Face of El Cap, all three free routes on Sentinel, Half Dome, Prow, and a few others. Dave Shultz and Hideataka Suzuki were my main speed climbing partners at the time, though I did a few with other partners, as well as fastest multi-day ascents of harder El Cap nailing routes. Rick Cashner and I were the leading advocates of first one day ascents at the time, recording actual times more accurately, and eschewing fixed ropes . A few years later, of course, the whole speed climbing game got a lot bigger and more publicized, especially after Hans got into the game! (I recall topping out on the Cosmos with Jimmy Dunn after one of the worst storms I had ever experienced on El Cap, Hans had just topped out on the Salathe on the clearing day after the storm—he didn’t know anyone else was up there and he screamed to the void, “I’m the fastest man in the world!” I think he was a bit embarrassed when we yelled over only a few hundred feet away. Later on the summit he thanked me for writing my Nose-in-a-day tips and topo article in Climbing, which he credited for getting him started in speed climbing).
I was really interested in climbing nailing routes on El Cap in a day in the mid-80’s, but frankly no one really thought it was possible and it was hard to find partners. I did talk Corbett into trying Shield in a day (but with fixed ropes to Heart as an initial foray), but we didn’t quite make it due to headlamp failure after we made it to Chickenhead in 18 hours or so. He didn’t really enjoy the suffering of it, and was done with speed climbs after that (although he also did some pioneering climbs with Cashner up to that point). I knew that Zodiac could be climbed in a day, but really couldn’t find anyone who wanted to try it. It wasn’t until 1989 that Werner climbed Zodiac in a day that the aid routes started to fall to one day ascents, and then Gerberding became the maestro, but by that time I was getting more interested in remote walls and was focused more on training for my big one, Great Trango Tower,and was looking into doing as many walls in different wilder areas as possible (Zion, Mt. Hooker, Black Canyon, El Trono, etc).
Apologies for tooting my own horn, here. I find the evolution interesting having had a strong interest in climbing fast and light on big stones in my youth, and am fascinated by how the perceptions have changed from my time to today.
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