Dani completing his project
From the first moment that I stumbled under the arch and
pretty much fell over at the scale I’ve wanted to climb a multi-pitch. The
challenge is pretty obvious, to climb all the way up, the short hard routes on
the side being hard, but relatively, short! Though not exactly short at all, it’s
just this place is ridiculous! The Petzl heroes have put in an insane effort to
put up a bunch of multi-pitch routes through the most ridiculous terrain, the
two that stand out being Dani’s project, and Arnaud and Stephanie’s. Dani’s
took 11 days to bolt, Arnaud about seven. That’s a lot of effort, but worth it
because these are world classics.
Obviously Dani’s was out, it not even completed yet, but
even if it had been, with pitches at around 8a+/8b/7c+/7b/8b+/8c/8a/8a+ it was
probably slightly out of my league for a last day effort. Added to that I was
hanging out in an effort to expel all nasty stuff from my body via frequent
high velocity sprints to the bathroom. Multi pitching with an added layer of
fear! Arnaud’s route goes at 7b+/7c+/8a+/8a, not exactly a path, but a hell of
a lot easier than the terrain looks to yield. I climbed it with Cody Roth,
amazing. One of the best routes I’ve ever done. To make it even better we had a
view all the way up of Dani redpointing each of the pitches on his route, one
after the other over about five hours. A fantastic last day, and I didn’t even
need a bung!
