In late 2016 Pete Whittaker made an 'all-free' rope solo ascent of Freerider on El Capitan. The route took him 20 hours and 6 minutes, smashing the previous fastest time of 4 days. Pete flashed the route in 2014, perhaps making it the ideal route for him to try alone. Pete documented his big day and the resulting film is a fascinating insight into what it takes to complete a climb of that magnitude.
Fri Night Vid Crack Climbing Gems in Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau isn't known for its crack climbing, but Pete Whittaker, Mari Salveson and Thomas Baxter spent a day seeking out the hardest and best cracks the forest had to offer. According to Pete, occasionally there's some 'real climbi...
Fri Night Vid Seb Bouin takes on Bibliographie 9b+
Seb Bouin is undeniably one of the world's strongest sport climbers. But the tiny crimps and pockets of Céüse—France's most iconic crag—are self-admittedly his anti-style. Yet, the strong Frenchman revels in the uncertain process of pushing...
Fri Night Vid Ethan Pringle on one of Portugal's Hardest Sport Climb
In this week's Friday Night Video, we follow Ethan Pringle to the 'not-yet-popular' but world-class sport crag of Meio Mango in Portugal. In the film, Ethan attempts one of the country's hardest lines, Filipinos, which was first...
Has anyone here got any experience of the silent partner set up? Is it reliable enough that it feels comparable to a human belayer or is it more that you don't plan on falling on it?
Almost two years later, I still find it almost unbelievable that he did this (obviously he did!) Back in the 1990s, two of the strongest guys I ever met got shut down on this route. (I think they made a film about it.) To rope-solo it in under 24 hours seems... beyond the beyond.
His final comments: perhaps it wasn't hard enough... Well, maybe. But to keep it together through so much hard climbing in such different styles, with so much brutal effort, fighting the 'I'm so f*cked, I don't know what I'm doing any longer' feeling...
Comments
Has anyone here got any experience of the silent partner set up? Is it reliable enough that it feels comparable to a human belayer or is it more that you don't plan on falling on it?
that was ridiculously good, more of pete please!
excellent little film
Superb!
Almost two years later, I still find it almost unbelievable that he did this (obviously he did!) Back in the 1990s, two of the strongest guys I ever met got shut down on this route. (I think they made a film about it.) To rope-solo it in under 24 hours seems... beyond the beyond.
His final comments: perhaps it wasn't hard enough... Well, maybe. But to keep it together through so much hard climbing in such different styles, with so much brutal effort, fighting the 'I'm so f*cked, I don't know what I'm doing any longer' feeling...
Something else. This really is something else.
Mick