Chris McNamara is a big wall energiser bunny and when he teamed up with another big wall energiser bunny Ammon McNeely, things can happen quite fast (McNamara, recently cracked off the Nose on El Cap before lunch in November). Now as the days are even shorter and the temps considerably cooler he moved over to Zion National Park in Utah, home to many-a-classic big wall and free climb, to strut his stuff up and down the red and orange sandstone walls of this narrow canyon.

On the first day it was Desert Shield (5.11 C3, 9 pitches) in 2 hours 57 minutes. The second day Swoop Gimp (Or Be Dust) (5.10 C3, 10 pitches) in 3 hours 40 minutes and on the third day Cosmic Trauma (5.10 A3, 10 pitches), in 2 hours 54 minutes.

All these times are records but as McNamara says, " There are benefits to there only being about 5 comfortable climbing hours a day. Namely, you only have to climb for 5 hours a day. No full days of climbing El Cap style that then take a day or two to recover from. Instead, you put in your 3-4 hours on the rock, then spend about 20 hours eating, drinking, chilling, sleeping and, of course, spraying on the internet.”

If you want some late autumn motivation point your browser over to Supertopo (click here) for a full illustrated trip report of all three days.