In November last year, James Kassay made the first ascent of his dream project, The wheel of life direct, ~8C+, in the Hollow Mountain Cave, Grampians, Australia. This is the video.
12 May 2004, Dai Koyamada managed to link through a bunch of existing problems in the Hollow Mountain Cave to create The wheel of life, for which he suggested a grade of 8C+. Such a long and unique problem of ~70 moves, is of course very difficult to compare to other problems i.e to grade, and Dai was the first to admit this.
Since then, it has been repeated by Chris Webb-Parsons, Ethan Pringle, James Kassay, Ben Cossey, Dave Graham and Ian Dory.
Some have used knee-pads and some haven't. Grades from 8B+ to 8C+ and 9a+ have been suggested.
For a long time James Kassay dreamed of climbing the line with a more direct finish. He didn't only dream about it, but also worked quite hard, and in November 2012 he was finally able to push through the final boulder crux and create The wheel of life direct, ~8C+.
Here is the video from Black Diamond. It's a perfect illustration to the word "dialed".
James Kassay is sponsored by: Black Diamond and Evolv
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