UKC

Robert Jasper - First Ascent - Ironman (M/D14 +)

© Frank Kretschmann
Robert Jasper has redpointed the first ascent of a dry tooling route at his local climbing area of Eptingen in Switzerland. The route, now called Iron Man, is a 40 metre endurance climb, a link-up of existing routes at this very steep mixed climbing venue.

photo
Robert Jasper climbing his new dry-tool route Iron Man (M/D14+)
© Frank Kretschmann

Jasper has been at the forefront of mixed climbing for well over a decade, back in 1997 he established Trait de lune (M8 +) which became the first route of the grade in Europe. Robert continued to add new mixed-lines in Eptingen. In 2003 he climbed Batman (M12) and in 2009 he added Superman (M13 +), which exits the super-steep rock section via a free hanging icicle..

However, Jasper was thwarted in his search for icy conditions on his new route Iron Man, and instead opted to climb it as a pure dry-tool route, choosing to give it a M/D grade, meaning Mixed/Dry.

He commented:

"Part of dealing with climate change and more and more unpredictable weather conditions is about being more creative. A grade like 'M / D' for 'Mixed Dry' makes probably more sense than constantly flying around the world in search of ice. I look at dry-tooling as the ideal winter-training and it also makes a lot of fun."


Robert Jasper is sponsored by: Marmot, Adidas Eyewear, GORE-TEX, Petzl, Natur Energie, Weick Executive Search , Red Chili, Leki, Krah, Beal


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14 Feb, 2012
Looks like Malham ;-) Cool looking crag. Jim
14 Feb, 2012
In Eptingen sport routes and mixed/dry tooling routes co-exist, although they are mutually exclusive (i.e no tooling of existing sport routes). Mixed/dry tooling routes have been established there since the 1990's. It is not the new evil phenomenum that some people believe it to be. Some more pics here: http://www.planetmountain.com/english/News/shownews1.lasso?l=2&keyid=39129 Jim
14 Feb, 2012
I drytool, mainly to keep fit for winter. Its hard to make a judgement on a crag from a few photos, if you look at other photos you can see a waterfall not too far. On the video on another route in this crag you can see the ice drops coming down. Its hard to judge from here. And no, no ones proposes to go and ruing crags with tools. If you dont like Dry tooling fine, just dont bother the rest of us that doo.
14 Feb, 2012
But isn't that on chalk? In which case it doesn't count because its clearly just as silly, if not more so than climbing ice. ;-) In fact perhaps it needs a name separate from drytooling, like warmicing or something!
14 Feb, 2012
Who was bothering you?
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