New (and Big) 5.12 in Alaska’s Cathedral Spires; Drew Ruana Ticks 3 V15s, 2 V14s in a Week
This article originally appeared on Climbing
In an attempt to make space for the newsworthy ascents that occur with ever-increasing regularity, our weekly news roundup tries to celebrate a few outstanding climbs (or interesting events) that for one reason or another caught our attention. We hope you enjoy it. --The editors
Drew Ruana has yet another "best week ever"
We started this weekly news roundup a few months ago in part to address the fact that certain people were sending stuff too fast for us to keep up. Case and point: In last week's roundup I wrote about how Drew Ruana's stated goal of sending every V14 and harder in Colorado was interesting to me because it forced him to slug away at climbs that don't suit him--climbs like Railway, a shouldery crimpfest first climbed by Aidan Roberts in 2019, which Ruana had just sent. Now, just a week later, I'm back to report that his ascent of Railway (on Friday, June 9) was the opening salvo of what turned out to be Ruana's "best week ever." On Saturday, June 10, he did the first ascent of Hummingbird (V15). On Tuesday, June 13, he did Daniel Woods's Lincoln Lake classic Let the Right One In (V14), which he says "felt impossible for my height for a couple of seasons [but] went down with ease first time back on it." And on Thursday he sent both Aggressive Behavior Sit (V14) at Area A in Mount Bluesky, and Church Channel Sit (V15), presumably also at Bluesky. That's three V15s (two of them first ascents) and two V14s in a seven day period. Speaking to 8a.nu, Ruana noted that he'd worked on all of these climbs previously, but that they just happened to come together at the same time. Of course, Ruana notes that he doesn't think he'll ever have a better week of climbing--but I don't trust him. After all, last October I wrote an article entitled "Drew Ruana Just Had the Best Three Climbing Days of His Life," during which he knocked down a V16, a V15 FA, and a V14 FA in three consecutive days. Sending sprees like this are evidently not all that rare for him.
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Big 5.12 established in Alaska's Kichatna Mountains
In 1967, in an article for the American Alpine Journal, David Roberts wrote: "The Cathedral Spires, hidden in a southwestern corner of the Alaska Range, are probably North America's closest equivalent to the towers of Patagonia. No other area combines heavy glaciation, remoteness, and bad weather with such an abundance of vertical walls, pinnacles, and obelisks."
It was with this article in mind that news from Cemetery Spire (7,600ft), nestled among the Cathedral Spires, caught my attention: a first ascent by Italians Silvia Loreggian and Stefano Ragazzo, who, on their first trip to the Alaska Range, established Gold Rush (5.12a A1+; 1,970ft) from June 4-6.
Loreggian and Ragazzo camped for two weeks in the remote range, waiting out long storms while the Kichatnas lived up to their reputation for infamous weather. The steady snowfall subsided after a week--though the high winds remained--and they prepared to launch up the relatively snow-free south west face. "The game was clear," Ragazzo later wrote, "climb as free as possible until the end of the rope." The duo climbed 10 pitches of steep granite, only two of them less than 160 feet, often on "perfect gold cracks."
They bivied once on the ascent and again, briefly, on the way down, exhausted from climbing and dealing with ropes in the high winds. They eventually abandoned 100 feet of their rope when it became irretrievably stuck. All told, the climbers left just rappel stations in situ, including seven hand-drilled bolts, two pitons, and two nuts. --Anthony Walsh
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Katie Lamb sends Chocolate Jesus (V13)--a probable first female ascent
For the last three years, Katie Lamb has been among the world's most prolific women boulderers, sieging and sending numerous V13s and V14s and impressing at least one pundit (me) with her rather unorthodox method of all-in projecting. When she was working on The Swarm in 2020, for instance, she spent the entire month of December in Bishop but, for skin reasons, climbed for only six days--all of them on her project, which she eventually sent. She needed a bit less time (two climbing days) to do what I believe is the FFA of Chocolate Jesus, V13, in Rocky Mountain National Park's Wild Basin, which was first climbed by Carlo Traversi in 2016. Also super impressive: Earlier this year, in February, Lamb made the FFA of Dave Graham's ultra-classic Spectre, one of the proudest (and reachiest) hard climbs in Bishop, California. Like Carlo Traversi (who is relatively short at 5'7''), she suggested a personal upgrade to hard V14--and said it was "the hardest and proudest boulder I've done."
"To go all in on something that's completely out of my box during one of the wettest winters in California felt a little crazy," she wrote on Instagram, adding that it was a great reminder that "persistence, patience, and blind faith in the process pays off."
--SP
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