UKC

Back in January, Italian climber Alessandro Zeni made the first ascent of Cryptography at Saint Loup in Switzerland. The route links Bain de Sang (9a) and Bimbaluna (9a/9a+), avoiding the rests on both routes and essentially link the cruxes together. Zeni has graded the route 9b and if confirmed, would make it the hardest slab in the world.

Looks nails, interesting to see something of that standard that isn't over-hanging or even vert.

However the music did make me wonder if he was gonna have an epic fight scene with his belayer at the end!

ma cosa ha mai fatto sulla grinta ?

Steve

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed he didn't slay a dragon when he got to the belay.

That looks definitely like a wall not a slab as the draw is swinging free. I have always wondered what is the hardest true slab route as there seems to be a fine line between a slab being climbable and impossible. I would define a slab as being where you can stand at some point in balance without using your hands.

He is Italian though, and every Italian guidebook I've read will call a wall a slab .

Swanage- home of British slab climbing!

It's a good name for the route but link-ups like that always seem a bit dispiriting to me - great if you're piecing together a natural line that the existing routes evaded, not so much when it's just zigzagging between cruxes so you can claim something harder. 

Still, it was obviously very dramatic

 I agree, there's not way that is a slab! Could the world's hardest slab be Meltdown? Even if it isn't the highest grade maybe the lowest proportion of climbers could do it as slate is so unusual? Or maybe that huge 8c+ multipitch slab in Madagascar? 

That's not a very convincing definition, since you can do that on overhanging routes which have a positively-angled section at some point. Ondra's Disbelief, he also called a slab even though some draws were swinging free too. And Italy sometimes talks about overhanging slabs. So yeah, it's a bit of a mishmash.

So is it not just a mistranslation of a cllmbing term. What do Italian guidebooks call what we call slabs?

As far as I can tell the word Dalle in France simply means a smooth plate of rock, and says nothing about its angle, albeit that it's commonly applied to non-overhanging rock. Only in English has 'slab' been appropriated by climbers to have a specific low-angle meaning. Does make me wonder to what extent the same is true in other latin languages.

I've always thought that  the French 'dalle' means slab in the non-climbing sense, ie a uniform block of rock regardless of angle

Yes, I think that is true, but a guidebook translator's job is to get the correct meaning across in a given context, so if they always translate "dalle" as "slab" they are not going their job correctly. 

How do the French differentiate between our "slab" and "wall"?

Parete, I think.

Been thinking about this. I'm not sure that, in the climbing sense, "slab" or at least "slab climbing" is simply a function of angle. To me "slab climbing" means predominantly depending on pure friction for the feet with the hands only used for balance. Something at the same angle which depends on standing on and pulling on small edges is not really, to me, slab climbing; it is probably better described as "off vertical" climbing. So I would argue that most off vertical slate climbing is not "slab climbing" (even though it might take place on a "slab"). Slab climbing is really just a subset of off-vertical climbing.

Anyway watched the film - I'm not sure it gave a very good impression of what the climbing is actually like (apart, obviously, from being desperate).

A smooth bit of rock, well off vertical, may not give pure slab climbing but will nonetheless be a slab.

That music was dreadful.

Your description was exactly what I was trying to convey and it always struck me that friction slabs were climbable up to a technical difficulty of 5c/6a level. Beyond this level progress seems to become impossible and very weather dependant. I was thinking of routes like Bald Pate & Blackball at Ilkley climbed totally on friction. I had to have a little laugh when re-reading the 1982 Ilkley guide by Iain Edwards where Bald Pate was graded VS 5a back then a 60ft unprotected route and Blackball HVS 5c. Now graded E1 5a and E3 5c and still not well protected. I wonder how many epics there were on Bald Pate. I have seen a few on Doris route back then graded Diff.