UKC

James Pearson has made the second ascent of the trad climb 'Tribe' at Cadarese, Italy. Tribe was established by Jacopo Larcher in Spring 2019 (UKC News) and is widely regarded as the hardest trad route in the world. Jacopo believed it to be harder than anything he had done - a sentiment shared by James - and while Jacopo declined to grade the climb, the difficulty is likely to be somewhere in the 9a-9a+ region.

Nice to see this thing getting a second ascent, but we need to be careful with the "World's Hardest" tag. For example, comparing this to the hardest crack climbs is going to be pretty difficult. And although this is obviously physically harder, comparing it to something like Echo Wall (8c climbing with death fall potential) is also problematic. Until someone comes along having done the hardest at all three categories, it's all just going to be speculation.  

It's good to see James still doing impressive stuff! Is that crag gritstone? Looks really good. 

P.S. looks like granite on the photos from the news piece of the FA.

Great vid of the FA  youtube.com/watch?v=VTbWfPmsfg8&

Whatever the grade that line looks AMAZING!

Yes.

The rock looks utterly gorgeous. 

That is lovely Thank you.

Since when do climbers have agents! Sure it wasn't just his wife and it's a tax thing?  

Anyway, looks great that does.

The tax thing was a joke btw before some loon has a UKC induced fit and starts accusing me of libel. 

That was my first thought. No wish to knock James and his acent at all but 'hardest' in a trad sense isn't merely a measure of the physical difficulty of the climbing.

I suspect this will see a lot more repeats than Echo Wall and not just because of where Echo wall is.

Looks a bit like Heptonstall to me!

That's what I was thinking! It does have that quarried grit look on the macro scale. But if you look at the 'grain' patterns on the rock it does look more like granite, and if you look at the news article about the FA it shows some of the handholds which also look a lot like granite.

So what grade is it?

Asking for a freind.

E0

The tight banding and segregation between light and dark minerals would suggest gneiss to me.

True, albeit I would give another hard route the aestethics points to Privatväggen. It’s a line after all following a crack, where as Tribe links cracks/flakes to and airy areta.

https://stories.27crags.com/index/one-of-the-worlds-hardest-trad-routes-ope...

Aesthetics is of course more than just about the line, but in terms of the latter it's kind of hard to beat Cobra Crack.

That looks very good too! Knowing Finns it's prob a lot harder than 8c+ as well...

I thought it was Cratcliffe and grit! Ha!

Aye. But what's he done at Bowden Doors?

Yes. Privatväggen is actually highly similar, albeit less overhanging. 

Dave MacLeod E7 mate.