UKC

Mårten Blixt reports on his Kvaløya News page that Markus Haid and Hansjörg Auer (of free-soloing-The-Fish fame) have succeded to free climb Arctandria on the infamous Blåmannen in a no-falls team-style in a 9 hours push. Arctandria has no fixed protection – and though Didier Berthod and Giovanni Quirici managed to free every pitch in 2005 – the route has never been freed in a single push.

The pitches are graded 7b+, 8b, 7c, 8a, 7b, 7c+, 7a, 6b+, 6c+.

http://www.blixt.no/plog/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=94&blog...

In 1981, at the time of the first ascent, Arctandria was one of Norway's most difficult aid-climb.

In reply to jwi:

Yikes. Good effort. Any pictures anywhere?

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:
http://www.blixt.no/images/pages/blaamann_ruter00_a.html

In reply to jwi:

Fabulous and very inspiring ...

In reply to jwi:

How does `ground up' work after `4 days of rehearsal'?

Anyway guessing it's a granite crack (Didier the Swiss crack bloke did it so that's probably not far wrong), that's E6, E8, E6, E7, E5, E7, E4, E2, E3 as an absolute minimum. You could probably add one to most of those grades too.

In reply to Paz: If you refer to the news-report on 8a.nu, I think they confused "ground-up" with "single push". It's OK, what they write is quite often hard to make sense of, regardless of language.

In reply to jwi:

Absolutely stunning

In reply to jwi:

Its good to hear of really hard big trad routes being done abroad.

We have a real tendancy to being parochial over here and think we have a monopoly on world class trad climbs and climbers.

In reply to GrahamD:

I guess it's the news we get to hear, to be honest I would put the states at the top of the pile for world class trad climbs and climbers, but I can't say how much that is because I read a lot of american news.

Fantastic looking climbing.

In reply to jwi:

Holy cow - I've just reread the initial post. Free soloing The Fish! That's quite something.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously: Yeah I quite agree. Since you missed it: http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=244394

In reply to Paz:

The article is confusing in that respect as what they did (by the sound of things) was redpoint the route, bottom to top in one push after practising it for four days. This is not how the term "ground up" is used here.

Bloody good effort, especially as it says there was no jumaring and the person seconding didn't fall either.

In reply to seagull:

Ground up means just that, surely? As long as they started from the ground every time. Agree they probably didn't, though; jumaring back up to the high point's not really 'ground up' even if you do start from the ground.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

sorry guys about the missunderstandings but that's how it worked out:

We checked the route out for almost 4 days and we allways went back to the ground without jumaring up to the point where we have been the previous day. On our 5 th day we did the red point with our own ethics. That is to say that we used no preplaced gear and we were both not allowed to fall even the one who is cleaning the route (we both changed leads). What was really not easy for us was the pressure to succeed both, because that was our objective. But I can tell you it is much nicer when two people are happy than just yourself In addition to that a report told us that Didier and Giovanni just pinkpointed 4 pitches but this has to be veryfied by them.
You would like the scenery up therr it is awesome.
Best greetings from Innsbruck

Markus