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.
In this week's Friday Night Video, we follow Robbie Phillips and friends to Siurana, Catalunya, where he aims to regain some sport climbing fitness to tackle James Pearson's Le Voyage. It had been a decade since Robbie had been...
Fri Night Vid Michaela Kiersch on The Golden Ticket 5.14c / 8c+
In this week's Friday Night Video, we jump back to November 2016 when Michaela Kiersch became the first woman to climb The Golden Ticket, a testpiece 5.14c/8c+ in the Red River Gorge, Kentucky. Michaela's success revolved around...
Fri Night Vid The Traditionalist - More Trad with Jacopo Larcher
In this week's Friday Night Video(s), we're back with Jacopo Larcher as he makes his way around Europe in search of first ascents and desperate, established trad climbs. In the following videos, Jacopo visits the UK where he samples a...
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