Earlier this month, Welsh climber Franco Cookson added yet another unbelievably bold pitch to the world of desperate trad climbing. Cookson made the first ascent of But Nothing Is Lost, a four-year project in northern Scotland, and suggested E12. This makes it the only route of its kind in the U.K., and just the second E12 worldwide.

The British E-grade system attempts to capture both difficulty and danger in its rating. Bon Voyage, the world’s other E12, in France, is quite a bit harder than this one at 5.14d, but not terribly dangerous—if you have a top-notch belayer. By comparison, But Nothing Is Lost entails numerous perilous sequences. The route opens with an unprotectable 25-foot V9 above a mess of sharp boulders. A singular steel skyhook, delicately crimped on a protrusion of granite, protects the crux sequence. Cookson told me that it “maybe wouldn’t feel so hard if you had a bolt there instead of a hook. But I was pretty scared. If the hook blew, you’d be dead.”

The 32-year-old Cookson is a frequent flyer in the uber-niche of dangerous, near-limit trad climbing. He has racked up a dream ticklist that would qualify as a nightmare for most climbers: Hold Fast, Hold True (E10 7a), Nothing Lasts (E11 7a), and the optimistically named Immortal (E11 7b), which was so bold and striking that BritRock Films made an entire film based around it.

Unsure how E-grades and American YDS grades match up? Check out our comparison chart for a (rough) idea

Cookson’s Instagram bio might cheekily read “Pro top roper,” but there is an obvious, alarming distinction between him and someone else who rarely ties into the sharp end. When he does finally pull the rope after working a route and commit to the lead, Cookson commits entirely. The routes he rehearses are ankle-breaking at best and lethal at worst. His toproping enables a level of mastery and commitment that few can—or should—imitate.

I recently called up Cookson to talk about his new route, why he spent the winter hanging out in India rather than training, the finer points of skyhook-protected trad, and why this style of dangerous climbing speaks to him so clearly.

Climbing’s interview with Franco Cookson

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Anthony Walsh: How did you first find out about this project?

Franco Cookson: Simon Nadin showed the crag to me before it had any routes. When finding the line, I realized it was sometimes easier to move sideways than go upwards. It took me more than two years of climbing on it until I actually found the line of the route. I would abseil down in different places, then link a sequence together, but then find myself marooned in the middle of the wall with nowhere to go. It was like piecing a jigsaw together.

I do think it’s a bit over the top when people describe new-routing as “artistic” or “creative,” but it’s about as close as you can get to that; the wall is so open to interpretation.

Difficulty wise, it was obvious straightaway that it was a similar difficulty to what I’m used to—except normally the routes I do only have five or 10 meters of hard climbing. Whereas this one is quite sustained for 35 meters. I knew this route would take me ages to do, since when you’re climbing something this dangerous you have to know the sequences quite well.

Walsh: So tell me about the crag. How is the rock?

Cookson: You do a rising right-to-left traverse on a rock called cyanite, which is like granite except it’s got no quartz in it. It’s incredibly well-weathered. I don’t know how old it is but it is the most bombproof granite you’ve ever seen—it’s better than Yosemite.

For protection, there’s the odd pocket where you get small cams, and there are cracks but most of them are vague seams that don’t have gear in them, or even handholds, really. So the route protects with the odd cam and lots of skyhooks.

 

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Walsh: Are you tensioning the skyhooks, or taping their necks with duct tape, to keep them in place?

Cookson: There’s actually been a bit of a revolution for hard, scary trad in the last few years. There’s a guy in Argentina who started making the Punky Hook, which are rated to 10-12 kilonewtons, meaning they can actually hold a big fall. Most of the hard climbing on this route is protected by Punky Hooks. Previously I’d used Black Diamond’s skyhooks, which are not rated to be fallen on, and when I have fallen on them they’ve just bent open. This route would be crazy without these new-school skyhooks.

Walsh: So the route opens with some very bold E10 climbing, right?

Cookson: Yeah, you’re mostly on your feet, and your handholds are just terrible—tiny, single-finger sidepulls, rubbish slopers, and stuff. If you’re talking about it in the grand scheme of really hard climbing, it’s not all that hard. [Laughs.] But it’s really dangerous. It’s like the ultimate of British trad climbing, where it becomes hard because it’s so bold.

Walsh: Did you ever fall off that opening section?

Cookson: No, no. You’d be fucked.

Walsh: Because you’re climbing a tenuous slab that you easily could fall off of, above a mess of jumbled boulders?

Cookson: The landing is laughable. You climbed seven, eight meters up these pinnacles, then stick your left foot up really high, and pull onto this crazy rockover. So as soon as you pull on you’re facing an eight-meter fall onto pinnacles below. You climb a few slabby moves until you slap to this pocket, where you can place a hook.

Walsh: So how does the route break down?

Cookson: Into seven sections, I suppose: the solo, about E10 [very dangerous V9] and then some decent gear; then a harder bit, but safer, with a rest after—which I need because I’m not very fit at the moment. Then you’ve got to run it out up a flake for a while, with sloping feet, facing a likely ground fall, which ends with a couple of moves where you are absolutely shitting yourself. You swing around onto this sloping ledge where you place a single skyhook, which is your only piece for another E10 section, which maybe wouldn’t feel so hard if you had a bolt there instead of a hook. But I was pretty scared—if the hook blew, you’d be dead.

Then you make a big reach to a pocket where you can place a cam that is not very good, and then a long section of steeper climbing which felt so pumpy to me. Just several deadpoint reaches between undercut pockets to a decent hold, where you can place a Black Totem cam. Then you do two more massive runouts separated by a bit of gear. And then finally a real crack to end.

Walsh: It must have been an ordeal finding a belayer for this sort of route. Did you have issues getting someone to hold your rope?

Cookson: Yeah, and the route is also in the middle of nowhere. It’s a two-hour drive from Inverness, then a two-hour walk from the road. So it’s difficult to get people up there at all. But Robbie Phillips ended up messaging me asking to come up. Simon Nadin, who I mentioned before, said he was willing to belay me, but not very keen on it. It’s pretty full-on belaying a route like that.

But it’s not the kind of route you want to give many lead attempts on. You only lead it once you think you can actually do it.

Walsh: You’ve mentioned you’re not feeling very fit at the moment. Looking at the videos, the sequences look very difficult to me.

Cookson: No, no. I’m really not one for false modesty. I see it sort of as a badge of honor, honestly: to be so weak. Especially as the years tick by, professional climbers are getting so good—I’ve climbed with Connor Herson and Seb Berthe, Jacopo Larcher and Babsi Zangerl. And it’s hilarious. I’m just so shit in comparison.

But it just doesn’t matter. What I’m doing with my climbing is a completely different thing. And I think it’s really nice in climbing when different people are doing different stuff. Even within trad climbing, lots of climbers are doing safe, hard routes. And when you’re like me, basically doing the opposite, there’s pretty much no one else doing these really dangerous routes at a high level. In one sense, it might be nice to have some competition; it would make me motivated to do routes more quickly. But it’s also cool to just be able to try whatever I want, whenever I want. For example, I was able to post really openly about this project because no one else would want to do it! [Laughs.] But if the route was a steep, safe thing, there’d be hundreds of people who could do it.

Walsh: What sport grade would you give this pitch?

Cookson: It’s hard to say since I’ve done so little sport climbing. I’ve only climbed two 8a’s [5.13b] and one 9a+ [5.15a]. I think the best comparisons are with other trad routes. The crux of this route is very similar in difficulty to Steve McClure’s GreatNess Wall, which is E10 7a [“safeish” and hard 5.14], whereas the bottom dangerous bit is like Hold Fast, Hold True [another E10, however 5.13 X]. Then there are the other five sections which are all quite difficult, too. But it really is hard for me to give an accurate grade to everything as I am in genuinely quite shit shape at the moment. I didn’t climb for three months over the winter—I was just hanging out in India.

Walsh: What prompted the trip to India?

Cookson: I’m really into sci-trance music so I did some partying, went to the Western Ghats range and looked for elephants, then up to Rajasthan, soaked in some culture, food, and dancing.

[A long pause…]

I’m not really a climber, is the best way to understand it. It’s difficult to describe. I use climbing as a trip to experience something.

This project, regardless of how hard it is, gave me a complete, maximal experience. I really scraped my way up it—balls to the wall, pretty scary. In a sense, that is the maximum experience I’m going to get on a trad route.

[Another long pause…]

But I have a project right by my house, in the Slate, that I’ve been trying for years and years—getting onto 10 years now. There’s a 9a sport route called The Meltdown, and this project climbs the 5.15a direct start to The Meltdown on trad gear. And it has a probable groundfall for the top third of the 30-meter pitch.

I’ve had a dream of climbing a route like that since I was a kid, and I’ve had more than a hundred sessions on it. I can link it and I know I can do it, but it’s really hard, and because it’s slate rock it’s very slippery. That route is ultimately why I ended up in India, really. I came to realize I didn’t want to do the route, but I couldn’t figure out why. It has always been my dream to do routes like this.

But I guess as I’ve gotten older I’ve become less bold, and in my thirties I had a bit of a crisis. Like, Why don’t I want to do this? I’ve based my whole life around doing routes like this—my job, my life, my finances. I knew I could physically do it, but I just didn’t want to push it so far. A big part of me doesn’t want to die.

Walsh: I know what you mean. At least for me, when I was 20, when I was thinking of trying a dangerous route, if I knew I could do it, I needed to do it. It was impulsive. I had to prove to myself I was the person I dreamed I could be.

Cookson: Yeah, yeah. I promised myself when I was young I wouldn’t become one of those old people lecturing about the “arrogance of youth,” but I’m letting myself down.

Walsh: So what is it about very dangerous climbs that appeal to you, in comparison to something that is safer and harder?

Cookson: It’s just more of an experience, isn’t it? It’s like comparing sport climbing to bouldering. Sport is just so much more involved. And being from Wales, this kind of trad is part of my culture, and I get pretty protective of that.

In one sense, trad is alive and kicking, with Herson or Pete Whittaker climbing these super hard yet safe routes. But if that’s all that trad becomes—not to put down those guys, it’s very cool—then I think something is lost.

The post Interview: Franco Cookson’s ‘But Nothing Is Lost’ (E12) Is One of the World’s Hardest Trad Routes appeared first on Climbing.

On January 25, 2026, Finnish climber Aku Aspila took one of the craziest ice climbing whippers I’ve ever seen. He was high on the second pitch of Sodoma (WI5) in Italy’s Valle d’Aosta, having just climbed smoothly through the crux pillar. Above the crux, as the angle eased off, Aspila relaxed and began to move more quickly, climbing several body lengths between screw placements.

When the video picks up, Aspila is fumbling between the upper grip of his ice tool and its shaft, essentially pulling his tool directly out from the ice. The ensuing fall was roughly 15 to 20 meters (50 to 65 feet)—longer than the pitch itself—and made longer by the fact that two of Aspila’s ice screws failed. By some miracle Aspila was merely bruised. I reached out to him to learn a bit more about the fall and what lessons he’s bringing forth from it.

The interview

Anthony Walsh: Why do you think your ice screws failed?

Aku Aspila: I don’t think it was a single failure, but rather a combination of factors. The protection wasn’t evenly distributed, as I placed most screws on the left side where the ice felt more solid.

After a tricky start, I reached easier ground and found a good flow, which led me to build a long distance to the last screw without really noticing it. So, it wasn’t just the screws themselves, it was the whole setup, and especially the spacing to the last protection, that increased the risk.

Walsh: How many lead falls have you taken ice climbing?

Aspila: This was the first one. I’ve been quite cautious on ice, especially when leading harder lines. That’s probably also why this one was such a strong experience.

Walsh: How many years have you been ice climbing?

Aspila: Around one year of focused ice and mixed climbing, with about 14 years of rock climbing and around three years of alpinism. The progression has been quite fast, especially during recent seasons in Chamonix.

Walsh: In hindsight, what would you have done differently on this climb?

Aspila: A few things: Place protection more consistently, even on “easier” terrain. Keep the system more balanced instead of protecting mostly one side, even if the ice quality varies. Pay more attention to spacing between screws. And probably the biggest one: not letting the feeling of “good flow” override awareness.

Walsh: How will this change (if at all) your approach to leading ice?

Aspila: It already has. Before, I could reach a strong flow state while ice or mixed climbing, similar to skiing or sport climbing, where movement feels natural and automatic. But this experience showed me that in this environment, that same mindset can suppress important decisions. After the fall, I haven’t really chased that flow again, and I’m not sure if I should.

Now there’s a much stronger awareness guiding each step: where I place protection, how I move above it, and how I read the terrain in real time. I take more time, break the rhythm when needed, and make decisions more consciously instead of just moving.

I don’t think the goal is to remove fear, but to work with it, using it to stay present and make better decisions rather than letting it or the flow take over.

Walsh: Is there anything else you want to share about this fall?

Aspila: That it wasn’t just the fall itself that was scary, it was what came after. Physically I was lucky, but mentally it took time. Getting back to leading, trusting placements again, and finding any kind of joy from climbing wasn’t immediate.

Recovery wasn’t one moment, there were many small, uncomfortable steps mixed with moments where the joy slowly came back. Luckily, I had supportive people around me who shared the rope with me during the season.

Happy Friday, and be safe out there this weekend. Got a whipper of your own? Please send us your Weekend Whipper videos using this form.

The post An Interview With the Guy Who Took the Luckiest Whipper of Recent Memory appeared first on Climbing.

On April 23, British climber Jesse Dufton was coming close to sending his spring project, a trad route called Bat Out of Hell in the Peak District of the United Kingdom. It was Dufton’s thirteenth lead attempt, and he was a little over halfway up the line, entering the crux.

He fixed his feet into a horizontal seam. Then he crouched down off a right sidepull and a poor left crimp on what he describes as a “rounded ball thing.” He prepared to fire up into a massive left dyno, slapping high for a sloping, horizontal seam.

The catch? Dufton had absolutely no idea where his hand was about to land, because he’s completely blind.

Mostly onsight, always nonsight

Forty-year-old Dufton was born with rod-cone dystrophy. This rare genetic eye disorder causes gradual vision loss. He’s been functionally blind since his early twenties. Today, he can tell if it’s daytime or nighttime, but that’s it.

But Dufton, who led his first gear route at the age of 11, never let his vision loss keep him off the wall. To date, he has onsighted (or, as he calls it, “nonsighted”) more than 2,000 traditional routes around the United Kingdom. His wife, Molly, is almost always on belay, verbally guiding him up the rock.

Dufton’s projecting, however, is much less ambitious. He’s projected a grand total of three routes in his entire career. “My ratio is a bit skewed,” he joked.

This is partly because of the stiff UK gritstone ethics he was raised on. But it’s also because he finds trying new lines infinitely more enjoyable than rehearsing routes. “Onsighting is more rewarding, because you’re forced to solve the puzzle on the fly,” he said. “Nothing else quite ticks that box for me.”

To date, Dufton’s hardest sport route is Namaste (5.11d) in Zion National Park’s Kolob Canyon. His hardest trad send is Howling Gale (E3 6a) in Pembrokeshire, Wales, which would translate to the 5.11 range. Bat Out of Hell, at Higgar Tor in the UK’s Peak District, is harder than both. It’s also the first route that Dufton has ever headpointed—worked on toprope before trying on lead. Dufton put only two sessions into the 65-foot gritstone line on toprope before deciding to work it on gear, simply because the route is quite steep, and it’s hard to get back on the wall if you swing out.

The route is graded E5 6a in the United Kingdom’s combined scale, which denotes both physical difficulty and danger. The first metric, the E-grade of E5, describes the overall commitment of a route. This grade incorporates technical difficulty, but also exposure, rock quality, and gear placements. The second metric (6a) denotes the hardest physical move on a route, regardless of how many or where they are.

A direct translation is impossible, but E5 6a equates roughly to 5.11+ or 5.12- in the Yosemite Decimal System. Dufton said the route is on the safer end of E5, but it’s steep and pumpy. The only gear placement after the crux sequence is marginal—a cam in a flared, shallow crack—so a groundfall is possible. In terms of raw difficulty, he said the climb doesn’t feel near-limit for him, but it has four dynamic moves, so rehearsing it was a necessity.

“I’d never go for a dynamic move onsight,” he said. “If you can’t see your target, your odds of catching it aren’t great. So with Bat Out of Hell … the accuracy of making the dynamic moves was the hard bit. It wasn’t a question of how hard I could pull or how long my arms would last for.”

When I first met Dufton in 2023, he’d told me dynoing was out of the question for a blind climber like him. But with Bat Out of Hell, and the help of a toprope to rehearse the moves, that’s changed.

So, how does a blind climber dyno?

Dufton says it’s all about proprioception. This term describes the human body’s ability to sense its own position, movement, and orientation. “You have to understand the three-dimensional positioning of your body in space, and then imagine where the holds are in relation to it,” Dufton explained.

Even though Dufton can’t see, he feels his dynos are more accurate if he pretends to see, pointing his head in the direction of where he thinks the hold is. “I can usually do the movement if I point my head in another direction, but my accuracy almost always goes down,” he said. “So I look to where I think the hold is, and imagine that I can see it before I move.”

Beyond visualization, to land the dyno, Dufton must stay mentally attuned to how his body feels. Most of the preparation for throwing for a big move, he told me, consists of recalling muscle memory. He conjures up past successful attempts, trying to replicate that feeling.

“You visualize a little bit, but mostly you’re thinking about the feeling of all the different body positions,” he said. “You’re trying to remember your previous attempts, and how you set up, remembering how much you needed to pull on each of your biceps or push off each of your legs, trying to remember if your feet feel the same as they did the last time.”

It’s a strange sensory puzzle. “I honestly don’t know if there’s the vocabulary to describe this kind of feeling,” Dufton said.

Sometimes, he also tries something that might surprise climbers without any visual impairment: He closes his eyes. “I generally don’t have my eyes closed when I climb, because it takes concentration to keep them closed,” Dufton said. “But when I was doing the first series of moves on Bat Out of Hell, I often did them with my eyes shut, because it actually helped me concentrate. It helped me get in the right mental state to remember all the little micro-adjustments that I needed to do.”

The Bat Out of Hell beta

The first of Bat Out of Hell’s four dynos awaits at the start of the route. “You have a sidepull with your right hand and your left in a crack,” Dufton explained. “Your left foot’s outside edge is on a big shelf, and you have to pull in and slap your left hand up high to a ledge.”

The move is high-consequence. “You don’t want to mess up, because underneath there’s a load of sharp, jaggedy boulders that you’d be falling back onto,” Dufton said. “It wouldn’t be pretty.”

From there, the climber jams up higher. You plug a couple of pieces of gear, before laybacking up a large flake, roughly 10 to 15 degrees overhung. “The holds are big, but it’s modestly steep,” Dufton said.

After that comes the first of two horizontal seams. For a sighted climber, this seam is a bomber spot to place gear. For Dufton, it’s a bit trickier. “There’s some really good gear on the right, but it’s quite hard to place, because there’s a little slot, which is only just wider than the head of the cam. You’ve got to be very accurate,” he explained.

The dynamic sequence beyond this seam is the crux for Dufton. “You reach up above your head to get a side pull, but it’s kind of undercut, because at this point, you’re underneath it,” he explained. “Then you build your feet up, pull pretty hard on this sidepull as you get feet into that horizontal break where your gear is. Then you grab an intermediate, a poor, rounded ball thing, with your left hand, sink down and get ready to slap for that horizontal break.”

The way Dufton describes preparing to make a dyno like this, without any vision, is evocative of the metronome mechanics found in many video games, where one has to calculate the exact amount of force to land a shot. It’s something of a dice roll. “If you put too much power in, you’ll miss the break because you go too high,” he said. “But if you’re too tired, or put too little power in, you might miss the break because you don’t go high enough.”

The move is also sketchy because of the threat of inadvertently snaking a foot behind the rope as you throw. “On my second lead attempt, I slapped for the break, missed, and got my foot tangled behind the rope, in one of the pieces of gear, as I fell,” Dufton said.

He flipped upside down during his fall, and smashed his head into the rock. “It was quite nasty,” he remarked. “Luckily, my right buttcheek took most of the impact, but it was a good advertisement for wearing a helmet.”

Throwing into darkness

Back on Jesse Dufton’s thirteenth attempt on Bat Out of Hell, he crouched, preparing to launch into the move. He locked into the muscle memory he’d built over previous attempts. Dialing in his power calculation, he aimed his head up at a hold he couldn’t see and threw.

His left hand found the sloping seam. From there, he brought his right hand up to match it in another big throw. “That sloper isn’t very good, you can’t go up off it static, and you’re quite spread out, with both feet in the lower break, both hands in the upper break,” he recalled.

Even after landing both hands in this shallow, slopey seam, the route doesn’t let up. The only gear in the higher seam, a gold DMM (#4), is marginal. “The break that you’re placing the cam into is really quite flared and shallow, so you can’t get it as deep as you’d like,” Dufton said. He noted that many climbers don’t place it, but then risk a groundfall in the final sequence.

“There’s a little three-finger ripple that you can hold, but you haven’t got any decent feet,” Dufton said, “so you put your feet on the sidepull, but you can’t really push down, you’ve got to push sideways.”

From there, he made another dynamic throw up to a ledge, trusting his gold DMM. Beyond that, he fired a few insecure jams and a few more easy moves to the top.

When Dufton successfully pulled over the lip, he’d secured not only the hardest send of his career, but perhaps his most mechanically complex. He told me the climb opened his mind to the possibilities of headpointing and projecting. Perhaps Bat Out of Hell will unlock new, harder climbs that he never would have been able to do without the ability to practice a route.

But for now, he wants to ditch the rehearsals. “Honestly, I really just want to go do some onsighting,” he said.

The post British Climber Jesse Dufton Pushes His Trad Limits, Sight Unseen appeared first on Climbing.

The long-brewing saga of a small town climbing gym in Idaho entered a new chapter this week, when the Driggs City Council voted on May 19 to terminate the gym’s lease. Teton Rock Gym, a nonprofit, has long operated out of a city facility with below-market rent.

Conflict over the nonprofit gym has embroiled the small town of Driggs. The town’s 2,600-some residents have been divided between those who support the gym and its leadership and those who feel that it has been mismanaged for years.

This past Tuesday wasn’t the first time that the Driggs City Council faced the decision of whether to continue offering Teton Rock Gym space within a city building. The measure has come before the council several times over the past six months, since the gym’s lease expired and it moved to a month-to-month agreement. On November 18, 2025, the decision resulted in a tie. Mayor August Christensen broke the tie with a nay vote.

As the fight over Teton Rock Gym reaches a tipping point, the situation reflects a broader tension playing out across climbing. As the sport grows, questions emerge around the role that local climbing spaces serve in their communities. Should gyms act as an accessible entry point for beginners and kids to learn how to climb? Or should they be a place for youth and other performance-oriented climbers to train and compete? Could they function as a hub for the entire climbing community? Ideally, a small town gym might check all these boxes. However, when resources are limited, what’s the most important function of a small town gym?

How did the conflict over Idaho’s Teton Rock Gym start?

As we reported in December, the drama surrounding Teton Rock Gym largely dates back to a conflict between Jacob Yufa, the long-time executive director, and Brady Johnston, the gym’s founder and a former board member.

Personal tensions aside, the other root of the turmoil can be traced to differing perspectives around the role that the gym should play in the community. Johnston and many of his allies wanted the Teton Rock Gym to serve as a hub for the Driggs climbing community, with support for youth competition, a sharper focus on routesetting, and expanded hours, among other things. Meanwhile, Yufa and his supporters have led the gym with a more distinct focus on recreational indoor climbing and recreational youth programming.

Clashing visions for Teton Rock Gym ultimately led to the ban of six local residents from the facility. This in turn precipitated a petition for a tidal shift at the gym signed by over 100 members last April.

Allegations of a conflict of interest

Last fall, one of the members who was banned from Teton Rock Gym, Sarah Johnston—the wife of founder Brady Johnston—ran for Driggs City Council. She was sworn in on January 6, 2026. On May 19, Johnston, along with city council members Jason Popilsky and Miles Knowles, voted to terminate Teton Rock Gym’s lease. Council member Allison Michalski cast the only “nay” vote.

Michalski noted that she was concerned about Johnston harboring a conflict of interest in the vote. She called Johnston’s decision to vote an “abuse of power.”

However, in the May 19 meeting, the Driggs city attorney, Sam Angell, stated that after reviewing the facts provided to him regarding Johnston and the lease termination decision, he did not think she held a conflict of interest under Idaho law. “I do not believe there is a direct conflict of interest,” Angell stated in the meeting. “I think it’s close. My advice on close calls oftentimes is that one should recuse oneself, but that is up to the council member to decide.”

Yufa told Climbing that Sarah Johnston’s husband, Brady, has been involved in a new local climbing organization called Victor Rock Park. While Mayor Christensen told Climbing that she hadn’t heard of the Victor Rock Park, Yufa claims that the organization has “stood at city council and expressed interest in taking this space,” referring to the area where his gym currently operates. Records show that Victor Rock Park was incorporated as a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in February 2026.

Seth Weinert, one of the six people banned from Teton Rock Gym, told Climbing that he sees the decision as much broader than just one individual. “It felt more like the culmination of a long period of tension between how the facility was being operated and what many in the community believe a publicly supported recreation space should be,” Weinert said.

For Johnston’s part, in the meeting, she stated that neither she nor her husband “has any monetary gain or loss as a result of the city’s action.” She added that she did not “have any personal bias” that would obscure her judgment on the vote.

Will Driggs become an indoor climbing desert?

In the aftermath of the vote, some Driggs residents started a petition to save the Teton Rock Gym. The online petition calls for the appointment of local board members. Currently, the gym’s board is comprised of three members, two of whom live out of state. Nearly 300 individuals have signed the petition to date.

“I’ve heard concerns that two of the three board members live in a different state and ‘I can’t even get a hold of them,’” Mayor Christensen explains.

Weinert, one of the banned members, added that it’s become “increasingly clear” that “many people no longer view the TRG board and leadership as effective stewards of that vision.” He says the issue isn’t whether the community wants a gym, but whether the gym with its current leadership can effectively serve the community.

If Teton Rock Gym closes, Driggs loses its only climbing gym and along with it, access to youth programs, training equipment, and a popular spot for birthday parties. But as some see it, if the gym closes, they gain the long-term opportunity to create a new facility in its stead that better serves the needs of a variety of climbers in the area.

As residents organize to shift the gym’s leadership with the goal of saving the gym, Yufa is scrambling to find a new home within a month. He says he had worked with the city staff to request that if the lease were terminated, they would have at minimum six months to adequately wrap up operations and avoid cancelling programs for which youth are already enrolled.

While Yufa was not present at the May 19 meeting, the Driggs city administrator and Mayor Christensen passed along this timing request for consideration to the city council. The council opted to give the gym 30 days to conclude operations, though Mayor Christensen noted that additional time would be provided for Yufa to remove all equipment from and decommission the gym.

For his part, Yufa had anticipated that the city would renew the gym’s lease in the May 19 meeting. Yufa had put a staff report on the agenda, requesting an even longer lease term of upwards of 15 years. He told Climbing that he was “extremely surprised” by the vote—he had been working closely with the mayor and city staff on new policies.

Teton Rock Gym has until June 19 to find a new facility and avoid an interruption in service. Yufa says he is exploring every option possible to keep the gym open—though he doesn’t feel optimistic given the compressed timeline. He adds that he is not considering litigation at this time because it would be “a waste of everyone’s time and money.”

As Teton Rock Gym searches for new spaces in the community, Driggs likely faces at least temporary status as an indoor climbing desert, with the nearest gym over an hour away in Jackson Hole. The idea of a climbing gym desert may seem trivial—compared to a food desert, a healthcare desert, or a broadband desert, for example—but in a mountain town where people center their lives upon adventure, the lack of indoor climbing will be sorely felt.

“This is not a win for anybody to not have a rock gym,” Mayor Christensen says.

“I’m really, really sad for all the people who in our community who love Teton Rock Gym and are going to lose this resource,” adds City Council Member Michalski. “I’m grieving the loss for our community like so many other folks here in Driggs.”

As we reflected in December, the conflict illustrates the growing needs and divisions among climbers as the sport expands. The situation in Driggs begs the question: With limited resources, how can climbers come together across disciplines, priorities, and interests to find indoor climbing solutions that work for the whole community?

This is a developing story that will be updated as new information becomes available. 

The post The City of Driggs in Idaho Votes to Terminate the Lease of Teton Rock Gym appeared first on Climbing.

Patience turned to dread as the members of the joint British and Nepalese Army Everest Expedition waited for news from the summit. Two elite special-forces soldiers, Michael “Bronco” Lane and John “Brummie” Stokes, had departed for the peak early on May 16, 1976, but as light faded with no news of the pair’s return, everyone began to expect the worst.

Tension mounted with each passing second. When the sun rose on May 17 and they still failed to appear, their death was all but assured.

“Hope now begins to fade,” Meryon Bridges, one of the expedition members, wrote in his diary from Advanced Base Camp (ABC).

The 1976 British Army Mountaineering Association (AMA) expedition consisted of 35 climbers, mostly Brits and Gurkhas (a regiment in the British Army recruited from Nepal) and some members of the Nepalese Army. The AMA prided themselves on being one of the first expeditions to rely mostly on their own climbing ability, rather than high altitude Sherpas. (They still employed a few.) In the 1970s, the Nepalese government gave only one permit per season, so they were alone on the mountain.

“We were … like a football team,” said Roy Francis, whose job it was to maintain the route through the icefall and along the sheer Lhotse Face. “Two guys scored the goals—Brummie and Bronco,” but each team member was vital in their own way.

A second summit pair, John Scott and Pat Gunson, set out to reach the summit on May 17. En route, they hoped to find evidence of how Brummie and Bronco had died.

Tony Streather, the expedition leader, watched via telescope from ABC (at roughly 6,000 meters/19,685 feet). Earlier than expected, Scott and Gunson reappeared below the South Summit (at 8,749 meters/28,704 feet) coming down towards the South Col. There were two other dots in tow. Like a bolt of electricity, a crackle on the radio sent news down the mountain. Brummie and Bronco were alive.

“I don’t think anyone had a dry eye,”Jon Fleming, the second-in-command said. “We could hardly speak.”

Brummie and Bronco were in bad shape. Both were frostbitten. Brummie was snowblind.

And then the adventure began.

***

Brummie and Bronco had reached the summit at 3:15 p.m. on the 16th. Deep fresh snow had slowed their progress so it was long after their planned arrival time. Bronco later wrote their “desperate tiredness and anxiety removed any capacity for euphoria.”

A whiteout enveloped the pair on their descent around sunset, forcing them to dig a snowhole and hunker down for the night. They were just below the South Summit and firmly in “The Death Zone”: the layer of earth above 8,000 meters with a lethal lack of oxygen. Regardless of a climber’s fitness, physiology, or acclimatization, no human can survive there for long. Brummie and Bronco’s snowhole was around 8,700 meters.

The wind changed direction and blew directly into their makeshift cave, chilling them to their cores. They hit and rubbed each other to stave off frostbite. When one nodded off the other would slap them awake; both feared it was a sleep from which they might never emerge. They shared what little oxygen they had, passing the mouth piece back and forth.

By morning, both were miraculously alive. But only just. You can still see Bronco’s amputated finger tips in the National Army Museum.

Scott and Gunson found their corpse-like comrades, either in the snowhole or struggling down, depending on which account you read.

“But what about the summit?” Brummie said to Gunson.

“What about it? It’ll be there for a while yet,” Gunson said.

They led Brummie and Bronco down to the South Col at 7,906 meters/25,938 feet, where they met Phillip Neame and Steve Johnson. Neame and Johnson had been supporting Scott and Gunson’s summit bid, but now the mission had changed.

Brummie and Bronco drank water for the first time in 26 hours. Brummie was in a desperate state, and totally snow blind. He asked if he could rest and recover at the South Col but Streather, by radio, said no. More time at altitude could be fatal.

Scott, Gunson, Johnson, and Neame tied themselves to either side of Brummie, taking tension from above and leading him from below as he stumbled down the mountain.

Crispin Agnew, my father, and a Sherpa, whose name is regretfully lost to history, climbed up from Camp IV to meet the rescue party with bottled oxygen, a precious resource they had nearly depleted.

Then Phil West arrived from Camp IV and escorted Bronco down to ABC with relative ease. He was there in time to enjoy dinner with the rest of the expedition. Brummie was not so nimble.

Agnew took over leading Brummie, helping him place each foot as the other climbers took his weight on the rope. As Brummie struggled on, they moved at less than 100 meters an hour. Eventually they reached The Yellow Band—a horizontal strip of rock that requires moderate scrambling, roughly the equivalent of Alpine AD.

“I was holding him and saying, put your foot down [here], put your foot down [there],” Agnew said. “It was quite an epic bringing him down.”

They arrived, finally, at Camp IV at 8 p.m. and slept like the dead.

The next day, as the bedraggled group reached Camp III, they were met by the icefall doctor, Roy Francis, who had prepared as much tea as he could.

The steep Lhotse face began to flatten. Agnew picked Brummie up and began to carry him. (My father does not remember carrying Brummie. But it’s in Fleming’s expedition diary and Fleming says he remembers it. Time plays havoc with memories.)

He carried Brummie until Fleming, Dick Hardie, Geordie Armstrong, and three Sherpas arrived from ABC with a stretcher. They began to tow Brummie, until he said he’d rather walk as he found the “oops and whoas” from the sledging team, as they pulled him over crevasses, unsettling. Finally, he spent another fitful night at ABC.

It was impossible for a helicopter to collect Brummie from ABC due to the altitude. They needed to get to Basecamp. But the worst was yet to come.

The icefall is a mangled frozen river. It is a mess of seracs and crevasses. Taking a blind, exhausted, frostbitten man through it was a nightmare. Aluminum ladders served as bridges across bottomless crevasses, but the team avoided as many as they could with wide detours. It was dangerous terrain for someone so compromised. Henry Day and Hardie led Brummie, with Agnew and Fleming on his side, Neame and Johnson at the rear all with taut ropes. They had to literally lift and place Brummie’s feet as he walked, to ensure he stepped on safe ground because he could neither feel his feet or see them.

Hardie was in bodily contact with Brummie throughout the ordeal, making sure he didn’t fall at the final hurdle. They met Peter Page and Brian Martindale, who were maintaining the route through the icefall, and they took some of the strain to Basecamp.

It had been three days since Brummie was found in the snowhole near the summit of the world. They were finally collected by helicopter and transported to a hospital in Kathmandu.

The amazing rescue was a testament to their skill as mountaineers and their organization as a military team. When the 1976 team met at Windsor Castle on May 16, 2026, to celebrate their 50th anniversary, through the speeches and congratulations it was clear the rescue was a testament to something more powerful too: “It’s a whole way of life: camaraderie, friends,” said Day.

Could that rescue happen in 2026?

Climbing Mount Everest is a different experience today. This year, a record 492 permits have been given by the Nepalese government. Most climbers have a Sherpa or two each, so there can be over a thousand people vying for the peak during a short weather window. Many of the guided climbers have limited mountain experience.

Every few years, an ugly controversy rears its head as climbers push past dying people on their way to the summit. As the members of the 1976 expedition meet for their 50 year anniversary, these stories of callous deaths provoke a consensus of visceral reactions.

“It’s disgraceful,” Day said

“There is no feeling,” said Gopal Raj Pokhrel, one of the Nepalese Army members.

“I think it’s appalling,” Agnew said.

Francis said his wife has to calm him down if he ever sees a story like this in the news.

“It’s horrible. Absolutely horrible,” Bridges said.

Sixteen years after this incredible rescue, in 1992, Bridges was climbing the West Ridge of Everest and could see a mass of tired climbers arriving at the South Col from his vantage point. On the South Col, one group departed for the summit leaving a dying climber, just 30 yards from their tent, waving pathetically at them. The leader had accepted a doctor’s advice over the radio that the climber was too far gone, without ever bothering to check himself, nor to comfort the climber in their final moments.

In 1996, three Japanese climbers and their Sherpas stopped to eat and drink in full view of two dying Indian climbers, having already passed one other Indian climber earlier.

That same year, an American climber was left for dead twice: once on the South Col, where he miraculously self-rescued to Camp III. There, he was made comfortable in anticipation of his death, only to survive again, eventually making it back to basecamp.

In 2006, dozens of climbers passed a dying Brit. In 2019, the queue for the summit was so dense that 11 people died and other climbers stepped over their bodies.

There are incidents of heroics, though. In 2016, Leslie Binns, who served in the British army for 13 years, abandoned his summit attempt to save an Indian climber. In May 2023, Nepali guide Gelje Sherpa saved a Malaysian climber by carrying him on his back.

“It never crossed our minds not to rescue them to the best of our ability,” Agnew said. “Because it’s a military ethos: you don’t leave people behind.”

But Agnew points out that it is not just an ethical issue. It’s also practical. Conducting a rescue might be impossible for today’s largely inexperienced climbers.

Compare them to the members of the 1976 AMA: collectively the soldiers had been on dozens of Himalayan expeditions. Most had mountain rescue experience. Agnew had organised the army mountain rescue operation for the Cairngorms mountain range in Scotland. Also, in 1976, they were a single team. Today, it would be far harder to co-ordinate a rescue between dozens of different groups.

Even with these mitigating factors, he thinks there is enough experience on Everest in 2026. If an inexperienced climber is with a Sherpa or guide, they should give up on their summit attempt to enable the Sherpa and guides to organise a rescue. And if it isn’t successful, at least they know they tried their best.

“[You must] help the best way you possibly can,” Fleming said. And if you can’t help, “I think you’ve still got to be there. Just being there with somebody who is incapacitated and dying [is important].”

Agnew acknowledged their own limits: “Let’s say [Brummie and Bronco] were so incapacitated that they had to be stretchered, I don’t think we had the capacity up there to stretcher them down to the South Col,” he said, “but we would have at least tried.”

So, the question of whether the rescue would happen today raises as many questions as it answers. There are epic rescues. There are also tragic incidents of death which are equal part callous and a product of practicalities. Leaving a climber to die unaccompanied, though, just to get to the summit, is inexcusable to at least some of the 1976 team.

***

In 1976, Prince Charles had been patron of the expedition and immediately telegrammed them congratulating the “superb achievement by a magnificent team.” In May 2026, the now King Charles congratulated them again, writing he “was touched to hear that you will be reuniting over lunch to remember those members since deceased and to commemorate your lasting achievement.”

But for each of them, mountaineering is about far more than getting to the top. “[It’s the] feeling of the texture of the rock on the fingers, the biting of the crampons in the ice going up an ice slope,” Fleming said. “You know when you are on a rope with somebody, a trusted person, that if anything happens, come hell or high water, he will save you. And it’s exactly the same in reverse.”

The post My Father Was Part of Everest’s First Death-Zone Rescue. The Little-Known Story Is One of Unwavering Grit. appeared first on Climbing.

After scrambling 800 feet of loose debris up the Southeast Gully of Tiger Tower, I remembered the Snickers bar I’d left behind in my tent. It was 6 a.m. and we’d started the approach from our campsite in Wyoming’s Cirque of the Towers in the dark.

“Damn it, I hope Priscilla leaves us alone,” I said to Rita.

Priscilla was the large black bear who trawled for campsite snacks in the Cirque. The Wind River Range is vast and largely empty—unless you’re climbing in the Cirque of the Towers. This alpine amphitheater is home to more classic climbs than most states can boast. My wife Rita and I were here on a brief weather window between early September storms to climb, among other things, the East Ridge of Wolf’s Head.

Why is East Ridge my favorite 5.6 in the U.S.?

Rita and I took the summer of 2018 to drive across the American West, sampling all the crags we’d read about in magazines like this. I’d pored over Steck and Roper’s 50 Classic Climbs of North America and created a ticklist for the trip. The 10-pitch East Ridge sat at the very top.

After a week waiting out the snow with some climbing in Lander (or more accurately, hanging at the Lander Bar while climbing a little), we found ourselves driving the 78 miles on back roads. From there, we undertook the simple nine-mile approach to the Cirque.

Placing my feet carefully, trying not to knock loose blocks onto my wife, as she soloed the low-fifth-class gully beneath me, I gained the ridgeline and the start of the route proper.

That’s where the fun begins. Wolf’s Head is a striking ridgeline that can be seen from far down the valley. Its jagged granite fins jut high into the alpine like the liberty spikes of an `80s punk. If you squint, I suppose the name derives from a wolf’s spiky mane. The peak stands above 12,000 feet. In a cirque filled with aesthetically arresting peaks, Wolf’s Head stands alone in awe-factor.

If you’re looking for an onsight, you may want to stop reading here. I can’t defend my claim that this climb is the best 5.6 in the nation without giving you a bit of play-by-play.

The beta for this Wyoming ridgeline

Once atop the ridge of Wolf’s Head, you realize just how wafer-thin this feature really is. The first crux of the day is a mental one, about third class, really. We roped up (foolishly, in retrospect) to approach the Sidewalk—a feature so named because you could easily walk up it, if it weren’t for the 1,000 feet of air beneath your feet in either direction.

Exposure is the name of the game on this climb—love it or leave it. The movement, while largely casual until the final tower traverses, comes with a yawning maw of exposure on all sides. Climb the sidewalk and scamper up some easy slabs until you approach the first of the tower pitches.

Navigating around the liberty spikes is what makes this route so classic. A few options exist for hand or foot traversing, and no pitch remotely resembles any that come before it. Exposure hounds will adore the “piton pitch,” a narrow foot traverse that involves reaching down hands-free to clip pins that feel old enough to make you wonder if they were hammered in on the first descent over five decades ago. It’s a balancing act that may make you regret skipping that yoga class.

The mark of a true classic, in my opinion, is active debate over which pitch reigns superlative. On the East Ridge, no one can agree on which tower pitch is the best. Some favor the lieback hand traverse of the third tower. But the standout for me? The very last tower traverse. You begin under a feature that looks exactly like Darth Vader’s helmet, then step out using a large hand traverse protected by large cams.

From there, the crack thins and the feet disappear, all except for a few widely spaced diorite knobs, affectionately known as the “black nubbins.” You have to make wide stemming foot moves between the nubbins, while traversing your hands toward a beautiful bomb-bay chimney, looking down over 1,000 feet to the earth below. You climb through the chimney until you see a little portal to the other side of the ridge. Burrow your way through to freedom—and another few hundred feet of low-fifth romping—to the summit.

After replacing much tat and getting stumped more than a few times on the rappels, we strolled back to camp late in the evening. Priscilla had given us grace today, so we returned to an untorn tent and a glorious Snickers bar. A perfect end to a perfect day.

So it’s a great 5.6. What makes it best in the country?

First climbed in 1959 by prolific local route developers Bill Buckingham and Bill Plummer (aka, “the Bills”), the East Ridge of Wolf’s Head is the best 5.6 in the U.S., according to me, a connoisseur on the subject.

I’ve been climbing for around 20 years and have never really progressed much pushing grades. You won’t see me new-routing on remote Alaskan peaks or pushing my grade much clipping bolts. But you can find me far and wide sampling the best moderate trad and alpine peaks this continent has to offer. I’ve climbed classic 5.6s from Cathedral Ledge to the Cochise Stronghold, from the Linville Gorge to the Enchantments.

So what are the criteria for a classic 5.6? Aside from active debate about which pitch or section of the climb is best, I have a few more non-negotiables.

Criterion 1: Length

For one, a classic climb at this grade should involve more than one pitch. There are a few classic 5.6 sport climbs, but they have to be really interesting to even be considered. Eureka at the Red River Gorge is a good example, because it has steepness, position, and aesthetic movement. But it’s just too damn short to qualify as a classic.

Criterion 2: Position

Position is also vital: The Southeast Buttress on Cathedral Peak in Tuolumne Meadows is iconic for its position. The peak’s refrigerator block is probably the best alpine summit of its kind anywhere. But Cathedral doesn’t win on movement, the next category. The chimney is cool, and the first pitch hand crack is great—for 20 feet.

Criterion 3: Movement

High Exposure in the Gunks could probably win on movement alone, as could Madame G and The Ceiling (née Shockley’s, once named for the famous climber/physicist/eugenicist). But I contend that these routes lack the positioning of the very best 5.6 routes, perched only 150 feet above the leafy deciduous canopy.

The West Ridge of Mount Conness—also in Tuolumne—probably comes closest of all, but it’s only 5.6 for about two early pitches, before a fourth-class frolic to the summit.

How does East Ridge of Wolf’s Head stack up?

Many of the routes I referenced above also earned recognition in Steck and Roper’s 50 Classic Climbs of North America. But I contend that move for move, position for position, and for sheer steepness, the East Ridge of Wolf’s Head is the best 5.6 this nation has to offer.

“For climbers who love clean, solid, intriguing granite, the kind that invites one to gymnastic revelry under a warm sun, Wolf’s Head is an absolute delight,” Steck and Roper wrote in the first edition of 50 Classic Climbs. Even the Mountain Project comments are filled with superlatives. “Best 5.6 ever? I won’t argue with that one,” wrote Mike McL of South Lake Tahoe. “Continuously exposed. Lots of exhilarating moves with all the exposure.”

It’s a rowdy, rollicking rollercoaster of a ridgeline—the kind that holds your attention at every moment. The East Ridge is a true pleasure, even when the difficulties let off (because the exposure never does). Guidebook author Joe Kelsey calls the route “unique and ethereal… [and] clean, picturesque, and surprising.”

The fact that this jagged cockscomb of a ridgeline even goes at the humble grade of 5.6 is nothing short of a miracle—and that’s what makes it the best 5.6 in the US of A.

Fast stats: East Ride of Wolf’s Head (the best 5.6 in the U.S.)

First ascent: 1959

Length: 1,000 feet (305m)

Approach: 10 miles on foot, an 80-mile drive on dirt roads from Lander, WY

Pitches: ~10, but you can simul many

Estimated time: A full day, including the approach

Rack and protection: Standard alpine rack

Pro tips: Bring lots of double-length runners. Doubles to #2, and one #3. Consider bringing a tagline for faster rappels. Don’t leave your Snickers bar in your tent.

Find more beta on Mountain Project or in the Cirque of the Towers guidebook.

The post Why ‘East Ridge’ of Wolf’s Head Is the Best 5.6 In America appeared first on Climbing.

In early April, Jesse Franklin, a 28-year-old who works remotely as an accountant, stood below a vertical wall of limestone edges in Rifle Mountain Park’s Zone of Silence. He made a few high-tech, hard moves to the first bolt, which had a red tag—a small red piece of webbing—affixed to it. After committing to a hard toe hook sequence at the third bolt and then a slab dyno above, he punched it through the remaining 60 feet of sustained, pumpy climbing. He fought to the anchor and barely pulled off the first ascent of the route, creating a bit of controversy in the process.

What is red tagging? And how has the practice played out in Rifle?

In 2018, Darek ”Mayor of Rifle” Krol bolted a hard line to the right of his classic Effigy for a Silent King (5.12d). As he established other routes on the vertical panel, he put in work on the project, trying it with friends, including long-time local Stevie Damboise, pro climber Jonathan Siegrist, and Scott Franklin, the first American to send 5.14.

When Darek passed in 2020, the line sat dormant, though the 2021 edition of the Rifle guidebook listed it as a project, neither open nor closed. Then the controversy started. That year, 50-year-old Stevie moved a bolt on the line, cleaned some holds, red-tagged the route, and started working on connecting the crimps.

Developers often red-tag routes, placing a literal red tag—a piece of red cord or webbing—for two reasons. The red tag signifies that the route needs further construction, cleaning, and/or that the developer is reserving the right of the first ascent. In this case, Stevie red-tagged a route that he hadn’t truly developed.

Over the past six years, Stevie has continued to try the Zone of Silence route, attempting it when fickle conditions allowed. He needed it to be warm enough that he wouldn’t numb out, but cold enough that he could hang from the minuscule edges. He worked it with some strong climbers, including Sam Rothstein, who got close—until Stevie asked him not to climb on it anymore.

An avid chess player, Stevie often played with Scott Franklin’s son Jesse in fairly even matches. Stevie described the project to Jesse, speaking of the difficult moves to the first bolt, the delicate body positions, and hand-foot matches. Jesse’s climbing career got off to an early start. At three years old, he made the first free ascent of Rocker, a 15-foot Rifle route at the Project Wall, climbing low fifth-class terrain to the first bolt of Mouse Trap (5.12c). Four years later, he led his first Rifle route, Funny Face, a 5.7 in the Ice Caves area. In the decades since, he’s completed more area classics like Waka Flocka (5.14b), Zulu (5.14a), and Simply Read (5.13d).

Jesse also spent some time under the wing of former Vermonter and now Rifle local Pete Clark, who let him project some of his lines. He climbed on The Right to Bear Arms (5.13a), a line near Feline (5.11a) in Rifle that Pete had obtained the permit for, cleaned, and bolted. So Pete could still claim the first ascent, he sent, but stopped before clipping the anchor. Under Pete’s tutelage, Jesse also put in the first bolt of what became Michaela Kiersch’s Mad Lib (5.14d) at Lone Rock Point in Vermont. All in all, he has minimal development experience.

New gen vs. old guard

Though Jesse has now put in 25 years of climbing in Rifle, his resume of first ascents pales compared to Stevie’s larger contribution to the park.

“In terms of pure power, he is likely the strongest—and certainly the most ripped and muscly—climber of his age in the country,” wrote Dave Pegg of Stevie Damboise in the 2016 Rifle guidebook, cementing his status as a local legend. Starting in the 1990s, Stevie has established more than two dozen sport routes in Rifle, including Marry Me (5.13b), Foxhole Conversion (5.13b), and Never Enough (5.14a). A prolific first ascensionist, Stevie has gone through the arduous process of finding lines, applying for bolting permits, developing the lines, and cleaning them many times. However, despite his chiseled physique, he’s not nearly as strong as Jesse, who’s half his age.

Late this past fall, Jesse tried the unnamed Zone of Silence line. He one-hung the route, falling at the low crux over a roof and then linking through the consistent climbing above. He offered to belay Stevie on it whenever he wanted, excited to climb on it with him. Finally, at a party in the spring, Jesse asked Stevie if he could redpoint the route.

“He wasn’t super psyched,” Jesse admitted to me in an interview. Stevie had fallen two bolts from the anchor, but struggled to regain his high point with the conditions, especially while having to commute from the Front Range. Living in nearby New Castle, Jesse climbed more on the route, linking the compy crux into the sustained climbing above. “If you develop a route you can have the first burn,” says Jesse, believing routes should be open after that.

On April 9, Jesse made the first free ascent of the route, posting it on 8a.nu. He named it En Passant (5.13c)—a reference to chess, his other hobby. French for “in passing,” en passant describes a move that prevents pawns from jumping past an opponent’s threatening pawn.

Jesse later texted Stevie, “I’m sorry I swooped your route.” The text message suggested that his actions merited an apology and that the route belonged to Stevie’s—both contested concepts. The ascent set off drama across Colorado’s normally quiet Western Slope.

Some Front Range climbers feel like Jesse had stolen the route, neglecting to put in any of the work necessary to develop it. Western Slope locals seem apathetic to a New Castle climber on a dead man’s project, noting that Stevie shouldn’t have red-tagged Darek Krol’s line in the first place. Still others feel like red tags shouldn’t exist at all, believing that bolted routes should be immediately given to the community to try.

The ascent has sparked talk about the rules in the park. Some climbers suggest creating a statute of limitations dictating how long a route can be red-tagged. Rifle already has a permitting process, which requires developers to submit a proposal to a crew of climbers and legislators before the route can even be established. Other areas—like the Flatirons and Eldorado State Park in Boulder, and Staunton State Park in the South Platte—enforce similar bolting regulations.

With these rules in place, the person who gets the permit also usually makes the first ascent.  Concerns have also surfaced that this bickering among climbers could cause unwanted attention from City Park officials.

The fine print of red-tagging

“Red tags are legit,” said Jonathan Siegrist, who established Shadow Boxing (5.14d) in Rifle, when I asked him about the subject. “But only if you bolted the route yourself and are actively trying it.” The crux of this statement comes in defining “active.”

Staying off red-tagged routes is in part about addressing safety concerns—the developer may still be cleaning and bolting a line. But the act of red tagging also belies a certain respect for the significant investment that developers make. “We should respect each other as climbers,” says Lee Sheftel, a board member of the Rifle Climbing Coalition.

Several notable examples of climbers bypassing red tags to get first ascents exist—with mixed results. During the second wave of development at Jailhouse in Sonora, California, in 2006, sport climber and coach Justen Sjong repeated most of the hard sport routes. Two steep lines bore faded red tags. When he asked around about who had tagged them, he learned that the developer hadn’t climbed there in years. So he got on the blocky basalt routes, quickly sending Gas Chamber (5.13b/c) and Enemy Combatant (5.13d). No drama emerged surrounding these ascents. The developer had moved on.

It’s not uncommon for the developer to drift off and another party to take over. At the Dungeon at Staunton State Park in Colorado, Dave Montgomery bolted a steep compression line in the middle of the wall. The line felt out of his league, so he told his friend Matt Samet that he could climb it. Then two other climbers asked Montgomery if they could try it as well. Feeling the heat on his heels, Samet put down the route in 2019, calling it Big Poppa (5.13c). The red tag came off with little issue.

Many more examples exist. At the vertical White Wall of Mount Potosi’s 5G area, active developer Nate Resnick bolted an amazing line of crimps. But two years and a knee injury later, he stopped working on the route and told Alex Honnold he could climb on it. The next day, Honnold made the first free ascent.

However, problems occur when the developer is still active on the line.

In late December in Las Vegas, a few locals, who wished to remain anonymous, went to New World, a recently developed limestone crag out in La Madre. One of the climbers had been to the crag before and sent a classic 12a, stopping below the red-tagged extension. He suggested his friend try the route, though the red tag now appeared on the first bolt. The leader started up the climb, intending to lower before the extension. That’s when the developer walked up to the crag, obviously upset at seeing people on the route.

“There’s a red tag,” the developer said. “You shouldn’t climb on it.” The leader backed off the route, but a physical exchange arose. The developer and a party member rolled down the hill in a tussle.

What does the debate over red-tagging look like today?

“What is your motivation—do you want to have done the route or do you wanna do the route? If you wanna do the route, it’s still there. You can still climb it,” says Jesse’s father, Scott.

As it turns out, climbing past red tag runs in the Franklin family. In the late `80s and `90s, Scott Franklin made the first ascent of Simply Read, a classic line of steep sidepull-wrestling out the belly of Rifle’s Project Wall. He named it after the red tag dilemma, suggesting that when climbers put red tags on a route, their intentions are “simply read.”

“He wasn’t active at all,” Scott told me of Erik Fedor, who had bolted the line, but hadn’t been climbing in the park in the past few years. A few locals told Scott he should try the route, so he began working it with Salt Lake City climber Jeff Webb. The pair went burn for burn; Scott did it first, naming it to make a moot point.

“Opening the routes and doing the first ascent don’t have to be the same person. Just because you put the bolts in, doesn’t give you a divine right or deed of trust to the route,” says Scott, espousing the popular “the rock isn’t anyone’s property” concept.

Scott, who bolted and sent Scarface (5.14a) at Smith Rock and Mango Tango (5.14a) at the New River Gorge, suggests that red tags should only exist on routes for safety reasons. Once properly equipped, the routes should be open. “First ascents are only meaningful if you do them before anyone else if you’re better,” Scott explains. It should be noted that both Franklins have done little development.

Yet that sentiment pushes towards a more competitive nature in climbing, ignoring the reward of a first ascent granted to developers for their efforts. If developers view the first ascent as a prize for their efforts and that prize becomes increasingly elusive, will the already dwindling number of developers continue to invest the time, money, and energy that benefits us all? Or will anti-red taggers go against the historical evidence and actually begin to develop routes?

As for Stevie, he plans to go for a repeat soon. “I’d hoped to name the route after Darek,” he says of the line. This summer, after finishing up more of his Clear Creek Canyon first ascents, he’ll head back to Rifle, hang his draws back up at the Zone of Silence, and continue working on the route.

James Lucas is the co-author of a guidebook to Yosemite bouldering and the author of a Bishop bouldering guidebook. He spends half his time inside obsessing over climbing and the other half outside obsessing about climbing. After his first trip to Rifle in 2004, he became an addict and has spent weekends driving from the Front Range, summer months staying in the campground, and seasons living on the Western Slope. Though he loves the blocky style of Rifle, the grey streak of The Eighth Day (5.13a) remains his favorite route. 

The post Red Tagging in Rifle: The Debate Over ‘En Passant’ appeared first on Climbing.

Could your rock shoes use a resole—or is it too late for that and you need a new pair altogether? Need to expand your quiver for a newfound interest in cracks or slab? Are your approach shoes duct-taped together and slipping off the scree fields as the traction wanes to the status of supermarket flip flop? Were you supposed to retire your rope two seasons ago? Or are you just newer to climbing and looking to gear up for a gym-to-crag transition?

REI Anniversary Sale beta for climbers

Whatever your needs this spring, the deals on climbing gear at the REI Anniversary Sale are great for climbers of all types. The sale, which kicked off last week and runs through May 25, is the co-op’s biggest of the year.

The deals are decidedly mega. REI is offering 25% off all REI Co-op clothing and gear, so it’s a good time to stock up on baseline layers like sun hoodies for summer groveling, wool baselayers to push the season into the early days of winter, and basic camping gear if you can’t afford the premium stuff. REI Co-op members also get 20% off one full-price item during the sale (though some exclusions apply). Save that deal for a new piece of gear that’s not marked down.

More Memorial Day sales climbers should check out

As usual, two of the biggest outdoor online retailers are offering similarly steep discounts this time of year. Backcountry’s Memorial Day Sale is offering up to 30% off thousands of climbing products, from trad gear to rock shoes and training equipment. Black Diamond is offering massive discounts of up to 40% off during its Memorial Day Sale.

If you’re looking for climbing apparel, prAna is offering 25% off at its Summer Kick-off Sale. For headlamps and lighting, check out BioLite’s Memorial Day Sale, with up to 40% off. And if you need portable power, check out Goal Zero’s Memorial Day Sale, with 25% off its solar-powered generators, power banks, and power stations.

Discounts on climbing brands and gear at Memorial Day sales

These are the climbing deals we have our eyes on:

• 25% off select Black Diamond gear at REI, with more discounts available directly from BD. This includes our favorite crag pack the Creek 50, crash pads, harnesses, helmets, carabiners, ATC devices, quickdraws, our favorite all-around helmet, and more.
• 25% off all La Sportiva climbing shoes—you read that right). Save on some of our 2026 favorites like the Ondra Comp, the Skwama, the Skwama Vegan, the Solution Comp, the Miura, the Tarantulace, and the Mythos Eco
• 20-25% off Mammut climbing gear. Snag ropes we’ve tested and love, like the Alpine Core Protect and the brand’s Crag Recycled Dry Rope
• 25% off all Evolv climbing shoes. Try out the Zenist (the pro version is one of our favorite training shoes of the year), and the Defy (great for beginners).
• 25% off all C.A.M.P. climbing gear. Stock up on a variety of quickdraws, carabiners, and ice gear.
• 25% off BioLite headlamps, solar lanterns, and power banks. Upgrade your light and power for backcountry camping trips, alpine quests, and big wall missions.

Below are a few of our favorite REI climbing deals on editor-tested and editor-favorite rock climbing shoes, ropes, purpose-built pants, and more gear.

Editor-tested Memorial Day deals for climbers

The post These 10 Climbing Deals at Memorial Day Sales Are Too Good to Pass Up appeared first on Climbing.

Two years ago, when I first heard that Brad Gobright earned extra cash selling his Yosemite Lodge parking spot to tourists, I questioned whether that would work today. Parking in Yosemite was sometimes crowded, yes, but there was always some spot you could find a few minutes’ walk away.

Now, I think Gobright was a genius. For the first time since 2020—excluding 2023—Yosemite National Park has dropped all reservations for the entire season, following a mandate from the Interior Secretary to keep national parks “open and accessible.” So this season, the park is allowing unlimited entry, despite more than 300 staff members publicly speaking out against it.

The result has been chaos. On the first Saturday in May, the Camp 4 overflow lot was choked for hours by dozens of cars circling endlessly in search of parking spots. As I walked through the lot, five separate drivers stopped me to ask if I was leaving (“No, sorry”). Tourists had squeezed their vehicles between trees, into ditches, and into odd corners. Three tow trucks were trying to clear the pathway for the Yosemite shuttle bus. When I finally hopped on the shuttle, I saw a 1.8-mile line of cars between Camp 4 and El Cap Picnic Area; before that day, I’d only seen one or two cars there in total.

Thankfully, the impossible parking situation is currently confined to Saturdays and thus avoidable for most climbers. However, Yosemite staff members let me know that they are expecting the situation to spiral into a daily junk show come June. I have some tips on how climbers can navigate a more crowded park, but first, here’s a quick primer on the backstory behind this fiasco.

A short history of reservations in Yosemite

The reservation system was first introduced in Yosemite in 2020 as a Covid containment policy, but later grew into a way to contain the record-breaking visitation numbers, which included 4.2 million in 2019. Reservations continued in various forms in 2021 and 2022, then paused in 2023, to the collective dismay of park staff.

“I was here in 2023, and it was a shit show,” said one Aramark employee, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

A 224-page National Park Service (NPS) report on park visitation described 2023 as a year characterized by “long lines at entrance stations and increased strain on the park’s employees, resources, and infrastructure.” As a result, the park re-instituted the reservation system in 2024. Reservations were once again required daily in the crowded summer, but only on weekends in the spring and fall. The system continued in 2025.

Then, on February 18 of this year, Yosemite Superintendent Ray McPadden announced that Yosemite was dropping the reservation system, despite a vast majority of park employees wanting to keep it to manage crowds.

At this point, every park employee who’s spoken to me—all requesting anonymity—are anticipating that the long lines and full lots will get much worse, as Yosemite’s monthly visitation tends to double between May and July.

How climbers can still enjoy Yosemite

From my perspective on the Valley floor, here’s what visiting climbers should do in order to preserve their Yosemite season, in spite of the crowds.

1. Bring a bike. Seriously.

Not only is biking around Yosemite the most fairytale and dramatic way to experience it—zooming over bridges and across waterfalls, the wind in your hair—but it’s also the only way to maintain autonomy while avoiding the parking fiasco.

I bought my bike a few years ago for $98 at Walmart, shoved it into the back of my 4Runner, and never looked back. But you can also get a secondhand bike on Facebook Marketplace for half that price and a used bike rack for as low as $20.

For those coming from abroad, you can also rent a bike or e-bike at Curry Village, Yosemite Village, or the Lodge, but be warned: They’re first come, first served, and you can’t pre-reserve them online. Most bike rentals sell out in the first hour on weekends, so make sure you’re up early to beat the crowds. Rentals also cost up to $48 per day and must be returned by 6:45 p.m.

Most of the interior loop of Yosemite Valley has dedicated sidewalks and paved bike trails, and nearly every building has a nearby bike rack. The one part of the Valley’s interior loop that requires biking on the road—unless you have a mountain bike and can manage the rocky Valley Loop Trail—is the stretch between Camp 4 and El Cap Meadow. For this part of the park, it’s easiest to get the bus, which does not allow bikes but stops at each main Yosemite attraction about every 15-20 minutes.

And yes, I’ve gotten my bike stolen in the Village before, so I’d recommend bringing even a five-dollar lock to dissuade potential thieves (or a better lock if you have a nice bike).

2. Avoid Saturdays like they’re an X-marked jug

On Saturdays, if you leave your parking spot, you might never find another. So far in 2026, Saturdays are the only days I’ve seen Valley law enforcement overrun by the sheer amount of illegally parked cars.

However, as someone who recently left the park and returned on a Saturday at 10 p.m., I can confirm that by nighttime, the park returns to normal again, with plenty of space to ditch your car without incurring a fine—at least, for now.

Can’t avoid arriving on a Saturday? Unless you’ll make it to the kiosk by 5 a.m., I’d wait until at least after 6 p.m. to drive in. The later, the better.

The good thing about evenings in Yosemite is that people will leave the parking lots. Employees head back home, and many tourists depart after a final meal. So if you find yourself in the worst possible situation, circling endlessly, I’d honestly recommend driving the hour out to Mariposa. Grab a sandwich, take a nap, and return to peace, quiet, and open parking when it’s dark.

3. Book your campsites and lodging early

You don’t want to arrive in the Valley just to realize you have no place to sleep. Yosemite has four main campgrounds:

• The tent-only Camp 4, which hosts Climbers Coffee every Sunday morning and includes an eponymous bouldering field, and
• Three car-friendly campgrounds (Upper Pines, Lower Pines, and North Pines) closer to Yosemite Village.

They’re all centrally located and gorgeous places to sleep, so don’t stress about choosing one over the other; just focus on what you can get.

The Pines campgrounds can be reserved five months in advance, so at this point, spots are only available for the second half of September and onward. Each spot holds up to two cars and is capped at six total people, which means the $36 nightly fee can become just $6 per night if you have a solid crew. If you’re heading here in the fall, I’d nab those spots now; you’ll have five whole months to recruit people to split the fee with you.

For spring and summer climbers, your only legal option is Camp 4, which opens up reservations for camp spots one week in advance at 7 a.m. Pacific Time. Reservations are per person, not per spot, and they cost $10 each night with a seven-day limit per recreation.gov account. Camp 4 spots usually sell out year-round on weekends, so I’d aim for weekdays and be ready to hit “Reserve” at 7 a.m. sharp.

Climbers who have more cash to burn—or simply don’t like camping—can check out Curry Village tent cabins ($223 per night), rooms at the Yosemite Lodge ($408 per night), or nicer rooms at the Ahwahnee Hotel ($578 per night).

4. Take the free bus

Many people arrive in the Valley each season with no car, and they get around just fine. Yosemite’s in-park shuttle system is free, and the Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System (YARTS) heads in all directions—south to Fresno, east to Bishop, north to Sonoma, and west to Merced—with one-way tickets costing around $20.

The downsides: The in-park bus only runs til 10 p.m. each night, so if you stay cragging longer than that, make sure you’re ready to walk back to camp or hitch a ride from a friend. It also only begins at 7 a.m., so it won’t be an option for alpine starts. If you’ve followed my rule #1, you’ll hopefully have a bike ready to get you to the crag before dawn; otherwise, you’ll have to walk.

If you load the bus dressed like a climber—carrying, for example, a haul bag—be prepared to answer questions from tourists about what you just climbed.

5. Cook your own food

Last week, Boulder-based climber Sam Ruderman summited Half Dome; from the top, he headed straight to Curry Village for some pizza. But it was a Saturday night, and it took him over an hour to get a slice. Lines snaked out the door from every establishment. “I’d never seen this many people in my life,” he told me. Ruderman estimates “hundreds” were crowding the deck.

To avoid waiting in endless lines with a pager, plan to cook your breakfasts and dinners at camp. You can stock up before you arrive or at the Village Store, which offers most basic options, as well as ice, environmentally friendly utensils, and firewood. I prefer to make bigger meals at camp, but for simpler snacks, I pack a backpack and head over to the meadow across from Yosemite Falls or El Cap. Both have stunning views, and you can always find your own space away from the hoards of people.

Make sure to observe proper food storage and keep all food and cooking equipment in your campsite bear box, not your car. If you bring a cooler, it must also fit in a bear box, which measures 35 inches deep, 43 inches wide, and 28 inches high.

The post Yes, Yosemite Will Be Overrun This Year. Here’s How Climbers Can Outsmart the Crowds. appeared first on Climbing.

Last year, we rounded up some of the best climbing hostels around the world, sparking a wave of more recommendations from climbers. These are spots passed along through friends, shared in comments, and remembered from past trips, from Patagonia to Southeast Asia.

So, we decided to create a “part two” to our list of hostels with those suggestions and more places we’ve learned about in the past year. These are the places climbers return to, consistently recommend, and build their trips around—not just for proximity to the crags, but for the communities that form around them.

There’s also a new climber-owned hostel to add to the list. Highball queen Nina Williams recently stepped into the hostel world in Bishop, California, continuing a long tradition of climbers creating spaces for other climbers.

Here’s where to stay on your next climbing trip.

The Best Climber Hostels in the World: Part II

These are some of the most recommended climber hostels, from Bishop to Brazil. For more recommendations, check out our Part I list of climber hostels here. 

The Hostel California

Bishop, CA

Set in the high desert of California’s Eastern Sierra, The Hostel California sits at the center of Bishop’s year-round climbing scene. With the Buttermilks and Happy/Sad Boulders just a short drive away, this hostel offers straightforward access to some of the country’s most established bouldering.

Recently purchased by professional climber Nina Williams, the hostel continues a long-standing connection to the climbing community in the area. Shared kitchens and outdoor spaces create natural meeting points, where climbers gather to talk conditions, swap beta, and make plans for the next day. Climber-friendly amenities include free crash pads and dirtbag-friendly rates starting at $30 per night for a bed in a dorm room.

 

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The Crash Pad: An Uncommon Hostel

Chattanooga, TN

Built by climbers for climbers, The Crash Pad has become a cornerstone of the Southeast scene and a central basecamp in downtown Chattanooga. Just minutes from the Tennessee Wall and Little Rock City, it offers easy access to some of the region’s most established climbing, along with biking, running, and paddling just a short drive away.

The space is designed around what actually matters to most climbers—gear storage, guidebooks, and shared areas that make it easy to meet partners. True to their name, they also rent out Organic Climbing pads, starting at $10 per day.

Squamish Adventure Inn & Hostel 

Squamish, British Columbia

Between ocean air and granite walls, Squamish Adventure Inn offers a budget-friendly basecamp in one of North America’s most iconic climbing destinations. Set along the Sea-to-Sky corridor, it’s an easy ride or drive to the Stawamus Chief and surrounding crags, making early starts simple.

The hostel draws a mix of climbers, hikers, and seasonal travelers, creating a lively summer atmosphere. A large communal kitchen, relaxed lounge spaces, and secure gear storage make it easy to settle in, while extras like cruiser bikes and a waterfront patio help extend time outside. Squamish Adventure Inn also rents out crash pads and offers gear storage lockers.

Rancho Grande Hostel

El Chaltén, Patagonia

Rancho Grande sits along the main avenue in El Chaltén, Patagonia’s climbing capital. This hostel has long served as a central meeting point for climbers chasing weather windows. Located near trailheads leading into the Fitz Roy massif, it’s a natural base between attempts.

Open late and often buzzing, the restaurant-bar fills with route talk, shared meals, and plans that shift with the forecast. Dorms and private rooms, a communal kitchen, and on-site laundry keep things practical, while multilingual staff help with logistics, conditions, and onward travel.

Refugio La Roca

Mesa de los Santos, Colombia

At Refugio La Roca, climbing isn’t something you travel to—it’s right outside your door. It sits on Colombia’s Mesa de los Santos, where sandstone walls rise directly above the property and climbing is a five-minute walk from your door. Set outside Bucaramanga along the road to Los Santos, this hostel offers easy access to hundreds of routes in La Mojarra’s canyon.

Days follow a simple rhythm—early climbing, long breaks with coffee and views, then evening sessions as the heat fades. The setup is intentionally minimal, with rustic, eco-built rooms and shared meals that keep the focus on the landscape. It’s a place to slow down, settle in, and let climbing shape the day. Gear rentals and guides are available through the refugio, too.

Sítio Trad Friends Climbers Ranch

Itatim, Brazil

Climbers Ranch offers a quieter, more off-the-radar experience in Brazil’s growing climbing scene. Set near limestone crags that climbers are still developing, Sítio Trad Friends provides quick access to routes without the crowds found in more established destinations. The atmosphere is relaxed and communal, with shared meals, open spaces, and time to slow down between sessions. It’s the kind of place where days feel unstructured in the best way—climb, rest, repeat—while connections with other climbers happen naturally.

Finca La Campana

El Chorro, Málaga, Spain

Finca La Campana sits just outside the village of El Chorro, one of the world’s most established sport climbing destinations. Here you’ll find nearly 2,000 limestone routes, ranging from easy slabs to steep tufa lines. Set on a hillside overlooking olive groves and Guadalhorce Canyon, the hostel offers quick access to the crags and the iconic Caminito del Rey.

Accommodations range from apartments and dorms to camping, with shared kitchens and communal spaces that draw climbers together each evening. A pool and relaxed setting balance long climbing days, while decades of local knowledge make it easy to find the right routes. Finca La Campana also offers a variety of climbing courses.

The Orange House

Finestrat, Spain

A go-to winter destination for climbers chasing sun and limestone, The Orange House is designed for longer stays. The multi-level building offers a mix of private rooms, shared spaces, and a small garden cabin, all centered around a large self-catering kitchen and communal areas.

Easy access to a wide range of sport crags keeps days full, while evenings settle into shared meals, time on the terrace, or a dip in the pool. With a steady flow of experienced climbers and a relaxed, independent setup, the Orange House serves as an ideal base for consistent days on the rock. Owned by Welsh climber and guide Rich Mayfield, this hostel also offers climbing courses and guiding.

Chill Out Bar and Bungalows

Tonsai, Bay, Thailand

Tonsai has long been a rite of passage for traveling climbers, and Chill Out Bar and Bungalows exists at the center of it. Set in the jungle just above the beach, this hostel is a short walk to the steep limestone routes that define the area. Days start on the rock and often end barefoot in the sand, with a steady mix of climbers passing through.

The Chill Out setup is simple—fan rooms, limited electricity, and shared spaces—but that’s part of the draw. Communal hangouts, the on-site bar, and easy access to climbing partners make it less about comfort and more about experience. And with rates starting at $17 a night, this is a solid spot for climbers on a budget.

Hangdog Camp: The Climbers Camp

Takaka, New Zealand

Hangdog Camp sits just a 10-minute walk from Paines Ford, one of New Zealand’s premier sport climbing areas, with over 300 bolted routes on steep limestone. You’ll also find deep water soloing boulder problems by the Sea Cliffs area.

Family-run since the late ’90s, it’s a long-standing basecamp for climbers making the trip to Golden Bay. The setup is intentionally simple—low-cost camping, minimal facilities, and a focus on time spent outside. Days revolve around the crag and the nearby swimming hole, while evenings bring a mix of shared meals and easy social energy. Accommodations include campsites as well as a bunkhouse.

The post 10 More of the World’s Best Climbing Hostels, From Squamish to Brazil appeared first on Climbing.

At 22, Chris Deuto from Boulder, Colorado, is now the youngest person in history to complete the Yosemite Triple Crown, a link-up first accomplished by Dean Potter and Timmy O’Neill in 2001.

Just past midnight on Saturday, May 9, I trudged back to the base of Half Dome after a 16-hour ascent and looked up at two headlamps on the wall. The tiny dots bouncing up the blackened silhouette were my friend Chris Deuto and his climbing partner, Erik Andersen. But for them, Half Dome was not just a singular mission; it was their second monolith of three in a 24-hour push to climb the Yosemite Triple Crown. My climbing partner and I shouted up monkey noises in encouragement.

Less than 12 hours later, Deuto and Andersen stood on top of El Capitan, having climbed Yosemite’s three biggest formations—Mount Watkins, Half Dome, and El Cap—in 22 hours and 16 minutes. Deuto’s best friend, Ben Sotero, was dancing to EDM music at the historic top-out tree. And Deuto’s girlfriend, Katie Kelble, had rappelled into the final pitches of the Nose (5.9 C2; 3,000ft) to cheer them on.

Only 11 teams, plus Alex Honnold solo, have completed the feat. The previous record for youngest Triple Crown climber belonged to Cheyne Lempe, who was 23 when he and Dave Allfrey climbed it on June 23, 2014.

Compared to other Triple Crown teams, Deuto and Andersen’s journey to speed climbing was surprisingly accelerated; the two only practiced each formation once before going for the Triple. Deuto first met Andersen, 31, in the Camp 4 parking lot last May. Chris asked, more or less on the spot, if he wanted to climb the Nose the next morning. Andersen said yes. Their first time climbing together, they completed the Nose, which takes most big wall teams three to five days, in roughly 13 hours. That same season, the duo successfully completed the Yosemite Double: the Regular Northwest Face (5.9 C1; 2,200ft) of Half Dome and the Nose of El Cap in a single day. The Triple Crown was the natural next step.

Most Triple teams climb Mount Watkins, then the Nose, then Half Dome. But because Deuto and Andersen wanted to travel between formations on foot and by bicycle, they opted to climb Watkins and Half Dome first, then end on the Nose. They set personal records on both El Cap (6 hours, 55 minutes) and Mount Watkins (3 hours, 24 minutes).

Deuto grew up just west of Denver, Colorado, started climbing at age eight, and was competing nationally by age 13. As a teenager, he bouldered V12 outdoors, and ticked 5.14c and V14. But the competition circuit started to feel like diminishing returns. He walked away from it at age 16, and pointed himself toward the mountains. In the past year and a half, Deuto has climbed the hardest free wall in Brazil with Ben Sotero, completed the Southeast Ridge of Cerro Torre in Patagonia, made the first free rope-solo winter ascent of the Casual Route (5.10a; 800ft) on the Diamond at Longs Peak, and now this.

The morning after the Triple Crown, sitting in the Yosemite Lodge parking lot with Andersen, Deuto was still processing. “The experience changed me,” he said. “There’s sort of a disassociation from the accomplishment itself and the experience that made that accomplishment. The action of doing the thing is transcendent of anything else.”

A conversation with Chris Deuto and Erik Andersen

The following interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Sam Ruderman: The Triple Crown involves more than 71 pitches of climbing. How did it start for you?

Chris Deuto: The most emotionally intense part was getting started, honestly. Everyone was like, “Good luck, good luck,” while you’re trying to plan and think and make last-minute preparations. We drove over to Curry Village, and there’s so many people, it took so long to park. I was like, “Oh, God. We’re on a schedule already.”

Erik Andersen: I woke up around 7:30. Got breakfast. It felt chill, actually—no alpine start, which was the plan. I just started building the psych, listening to music on my speaker. But before we started walking, I was kind of tweaking out. Which is usually the case for me before a big adventure. It’s like going into a battle. You know it’s going to be hard.

Deuto: We hiked in slow, took our time, we got to chill for two hours in the shade at the base of Watkins. We racked up around 3:30 p.m., went up the fixed lines to the base, and went.

Ruderman: Right before you started on Watkins, what were you thinking about?

Deuto: I was just thinking about Dean [Potter] a lot on that approach. His energy. And I was like, “Dude, we’ve got to be like Dean and Timmy. Be humble with what we’re trying to do.” Because there are stories about them waking up and making up reasons to bail because they were so intimidated. I can relate to that so much. I’ve been there. That’s so real.

Andersen: Dean was the guy for me when I got into climbing. Even before that, I’d seen him wingsuiting as a kid on early YouTube. He was just a different kind of character, charting his own path, staying true to his art. And Jim Reynolds—he and Brad Gobright doing the Triple so fast [18 hour 14 minutes]. That was stuff that really inspired me when I was first starting to climb in Yosemite. It’s another really sad thing that Brad passed away. But it is cool to follow in their footsteps.

Ruderman: The order—Watkins first—was a last-minute change. How did that come about?

Deuto: I had a rest day where I biked from the Manure Pile [at the base of El Cap] to Mirror Lake [at the base of Half Dome] and walked the approach from the Death Slabs [on Half Dome] to Snow Creek, just to time it. And I was running the math in my head. I was like, wait: It would be an hour and a half shorter if we start on Watkins and don’t do the East Ledges. Because no matter which order you go, you still have to go up and down the Death Slabs. That doesn’t change. So I was like, “Oh, we don’t have to do the East Ledges if we start on Watkins.”

Andersen: When Chris first suggested it, I was like, “Ooh, I don’t know.” In my mind, I was really looking forward to getting El Cap done first. It’s a mental hurdle. But when we did the math, if we went the other way, we’d just have to go a lot faster everywhere to hit the margin. And it also meant we’d finish on El Cap, which felt right. Top out at the tree. The classic finish.

Deuto: And it made the time-of-day strategy more efficient. Watkins in the shade, Half Dome overnight, El Cap in the morning when it’s not blazing hot. I was like, “This is just logical.” Don’t let the stigma of the order get in the way of the math.

Ruderman: When I was at my bivy on Half Dome watching you guys go up, I heard some sounds of frustration. Did you have any low points on your ascent where you thought you wouldn’t make it?

Andersen: On Half Dome, my legs were cramping. A lot of those pitches are high steps and mantles, blocky terrain, and it’s the middle of the night. I almost fell on a 5.5. Just lost my balance and caught myself. Then on the bolt ladders, my headlamp ran out of batteries. I had spares, but I hadn’t thought about how to change them with no light. I ended up just swapping them out by feel, one at a time, figuring that if the lamp came back on it meant they were oriented right.

Deuto: The whole time from when Erik almost fell [at pitch TK] to the bolt ladders, I could feel the vibes dropping. He was like, “Yeah, man, I’m not doing that great.” And I started to be like, “Fuck, I’m pretty tired, too.” And we were so far from done. That negative energy is so contagious. It felt like trying to eat the elephant all at once. We were like, “And now we have to go climb El Cap? What the hell?”

Andersen: Chris was like, “Are you okay? Are we still doing this? Are we still in?” And I was like, “Well, I’ve got these cramps. And he was like, “Let me know if you want me to take over.” I just felt like I wanted to finish. I said, “I’m going to Big Sandy [a bivy ledge 6 pitches from the top of Half Dome].”

Deuto: Then he climbed that corner pitch way faster the second time than the first. I could tell because he was already at the bolt when I got on belay. And I was like, “Fuck yeah. We’re in it, baby.”

Ruderman: When you both thought about giving up on Half Dome, what turned it around?

Deuto: Just getting back into the groove. Once Erik finished his block and I started leading, I just turned it on as hard as I could. By the top of El Cap — 70 pitches in — I could put my foot on anything. I was just getting in the corners and going. Ben and I have this saying from our climbs together: start like a cat, finish like a lion. You start graceful and slow and then you evolve into full beast mode. Leave nothing.

Andersen: Chugging pickle juice after Half Dome, honestly. Anti-cramping remedy. I don’t know. I think it worked.

Ruderman: What was the moment you knew you had it?

Deuto: I looked at my timer when Erik was jugging the last pitch on Half Dome and it said 3 hours and 58 minutes. I was like, oh, bet. We’re doing it. We’re doing it. That was the moment.

Andersen: Later on the Nose, We saw Noah Fox up at the Great Roof; he told us we had five hours when we got there. So I kind of knew. But you still don’t fully believe it until you’re standing at the tree.

Deuto: And then Ben was just dancing at the tree, music going.

Ruderman: Chris, you didn’t know you would be the youngest ever to complete the Triple until I told you just before the climb. How does it feel now to hold that title?

Deuto: It’s cool. Honestly, it still hasn’t really set in. It’s weird. It’s hard to explain. Like, now you’re the youngest person to do it, and I’m like, yeah, also pretty cool. [laughs] But I think the idea of “firsts” is a bit oversaturated in climbing in general. It becomes convoluted. First free solo, first ascent, first in a day, rope solo, youngest in a day, rope solo. Like, huh?

If it had been done 150 times in every manner and shape of badassery you could imagine, I would still just want to do the thing, just for the sake of doing it. It’s the same reason I want to climb the Nose. You look at it and you want to climb it. It’s sick: “Look at that stone. Are you kidding?”

Andersen: If Chris were trying to do it for some super external reason, I probably wouldn’t be that psyched to climb with him. We share values on that.

Ruderman: What does it mean to be part of the lineage of Triple Crown climbers, including Potter, O’Neill, Honnold, and Gobright?

Deuto: I didn’t realize until we started trying it that all of the ascents of the Triple—11 of them—were done by people I really admire. Childhood heroes. Just to be in that ballpark is cool as fuck. That’s the thing that actually gets me, if I’m honest. Not the record, just those people. And now we’re in that group.

Andersen: When you’re climbing these classic routes, you’re thinking about all the history. You’re interacting with it. It’s like sharing something across time, across decades. I thought about Dean and Timmy basically the whole day.

Deuto: I’ll always come into the Valley and be like, “Man, it was so cool when we did the Triple. Like, we did that. That’s so cool.” It’ll be like that for the rest of my life.

Ruderman: It’s still early May, the beginning of many Yosemite climbers’ spring seasons. Now that you’ve completed the Triple Crown, what’s next for you?

Deuto: Honestly? Free climbing. I want to pull on holds. Nothing big. This was the spring goal. At least for now, I just want to go climbing.

Andersen: [laughing] Yeah. I think we’ve earned that.

The post This 22-Year-Old Just Became the Youngest to Complete the Yosemite Triple Crown appeared first on Climbing.

Last week, climber Max Rausch was making steady progress up Yosemite’s El Capitan, when a large flake ripped off the wall, sending him on a 20-foot free fall.

In regular free climbing, you usually get a warning sign before you fall off the rock. Maybe your forearms start burning. Your hands go numb. You lose your balance, miss a key hold, or simply feel your muscles power out. Either way, there’s a split-second where you can mentally prepare yourself to plummet.

Aid climbing does not offer this luxury. When you’re standing on a piece of metal and it pops—or the rock itself breaks—you’re in the air before you realize what’s happening.

Rausch experienced this type of fall on Virginia (5.8 A3), a seven-pitch, alternate start to Tangerine Trip (5.9+ C3+) on El Cap. Rausch was standing in his ladder at the crux of pitch six, his weight resting on a hook over an upward-facing, well-used flake. Then he tightened up on his tethers to get closer to the hook.

“[The] flake decided it was done being part of the wall,” he later wrote on Instagram.

This force of tightening up broke off a plate-sized chunk of granite from the flake. Rausch flew backward. The hook came off, too, nailing him in the tooth as he fell for 20 feet, landing below the belay in loops of extra rope.

A rivet just above the belay caught Rausch’s fall. Due to the lack of slack, however, it was nearly a factor-2: the harshest, most forceful type of fall that a lead climber can take.

“That was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me,” Rausch told his brother, Drew, moments after the fall.

Although his teeth survived, Rausch suffered severe bruising on his hips from the force of the fall. Still, he was able to recover and keep leading, hooking on placements around the broken rock. The two brothers managed to summit within four days at what Max called a “very casual pace.”

The lesson here? Avoid pulling on thin and brittle rock, even if it’s a convenient spot. It’s also worth bounce testing even the most bomber of hook placements; you never know if the rock itself is ready to snap.

At the end of the day, however, it’s A3; the options for gear placements can be quite limited.

Happy Friday, and be safe out there this weekend. Got a whipper of your own? Please send us your Weekend Whipper videos using this form.

The post El Cap Aid Climber Survives Near Factor-2 Fall Caused by Broken Flake appeared first on Climbing.