Huge 5.13+ Added to Mt. Whitney; Beckett Hsin Boulders His Age (14); Winter Ascent of Aguja Standhardt; Plus Finland’s Stunning Blocks

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

Connor Herson and Fan Yang open the hardest free route in the Sierra Nevada

Two days before Connor Herson's autumn semester at Stanford University began, he and Fan Yang blasted off below the 2,000-foot East Face of Mt. Whitney (14,504ft) in California's Sierra Nevada. Their goal: realize Yang's four-year dream of making the first free ascent of the classic aid route Hairline (V 5.10d C2+; 2,000ft).

Herson and Yang's partnership had begun less than a week earlier, after a chance meeting in Tuolumne. They quickly made plans to climb Hairline and hiked up to Iceberg Lake from the Whitney Portal on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 19. "For the next two days we scrubbed and scrubbed, hand drilled, and jugged up and down the crux pitches to rehearse the moves," Yang wrote in a trip report. "At night we endured 40-50 MPH gusts at our pitiful little camp ... and wind chill in the single digits. Then on Friday, without a rest day, we went for the push from pitch one. Our tactic was simple: we would take turns leading the crux pitches until one of us freed it, then we would push on to the next pitch."

Herson led pitch three, the first crux, a monstrous 55-meter 5.13+ with insecure 5.13- laybacking and multiple stout boulder problems, which Yang followed cleanly. They tacked on a 5.12 slab and a powerful 5.13- to the original Hairline topo before stopping for the night on the "Big Sandy" ledge at 5 p.m. Yang wrote that the decision to climb the final three pitches of 5.9 and fourth-class rambling the next day was dictated by their lack of crampons during an especially snowy year--the morning sun would soften the Mountaineer's Route snow slopes and allow safer passage in just approach shoes.

"I cautioned against a night-time summitting and descent, even at the cost of a better “in-a-day” ascent style; Connor concurred," Yang said. "We summited the next morning around 11 a.m. in the glorious sun and practically skipped down to Iceberg Lake, and of course getting chastised for not having crampons by some old-school mountain guides. The respite was brief though--we had to break camp and get Connor back to school." --Anthony Walsh

Beckett Hsin (14) does Midnight Express (V14)

Last summer Beckett Hsin, then just 12 years old, sent Spatial Awareness Low, a hyper-dabby V14 in the Lincoln Cave that had previously been climbed only by Griffin Whitesides (who claimed the FA) and Drew Ruana. Hsin's send would have made him just the second 12-year-old (after France's Oriane Bertone) to send the grade, but Hsin wasn't sure that it was V14. When he spoke to my colleague, Delaney Miller, he described how, because of his body size, he was able to use a different sequence than the adults who'd tried the line. And while he mentioned V14 on his Instagram, he eventually opted for hard V13 on his 8a.nu. Now, just over a year later, Hsin has sent a problem that no one's out there trying to downgrade: Ty Landman's Midnight Express in Boulder Canyon. (Evidence: Drew Ruana spent more than 30 days on the problem.) "So much time, effort, and emotion into this one," Hsin wrote on 8a.nu. "Very psyched to have finally done it. Proudest send to date." --Steven Potter

El Chalten locals make winter ascent of Aguja Standhardt, Patagonia

Two days before the austral spring equinox, the local climbers Pedro Odell and Agustin Perez Aguirre Aloyz made a rare winter ascent of Aguja Standhardt's Exocet (5.9 WI 5+; 1,640ft) in Patagonia. Guidebook author Rolando Garibotti wrote that theirs may be just the third winter ascent of the mountain.

The pair left El Chalten on September 18 and made the long approach to Noruegos camp, where they bivouacked. The next day, Odell and Aguirre Aloyz finished the approach and made a rising traverse from Col Standhardt across two thin mixed pitches and a snow ramp, which deposited them below Exocet's five-pitch ice chimney, arguably one of the most famous ice climbs in the world. They made a second, cold bivouac there, and start climbing relatively late the next morning, at 8 a.m., to let the sun warm them. Conditions in the ice chimney were generally good, and a final pitch of thin, tricky mixed climbing led them to the Torres Group's famed summit mushrooms, which they summited on a brilliant, blue-sky day.

Odell, 20, and Aguirre Aloyz, 23, are experienced alpinists, having spent much of their teenage years climbing among the Cerro Chalten and Torres Massifs. On March 20 of this year, they, among a group of five, made a strong late-season attempt of Cerro Torre's Ragni Route (90 M4; 1,968ft), which ended on the last summit-mushroom pitch when Odell took a 65-foot fall while matching tools. He was uninjured but they unanimously agreed to go down.

After Tommy Bonapace and Tony Ponholzer's first winter ascent of Standhardt in 1990, Bonapace wrote in the American Alpine Journal: "Below us lay a dream landscape composed of an endless snow covered surface out of which glaciated mountain chains rose. In the distant horizon the sun gleamed like a glowing ball, lighting the whole region with a reddish orange light. Behind us, the shadows of the Torre group were creeping over the granite needles of the Fitz Roy peaks. Way beyond, at the edge of the Pampa, lay Lago Viedma. The sun began to sink, losing strength, but gaining gorgeous color. An ice-cold wind blew onto us from the icecap and seemed to sweep the evening glow, pulling the shadows out longer. Suddenly, all the colors disappeared into a monotonous gray. We had arrived at the place where humans without wings can go no higher." --AW

Niky Ceria, bouldering's chief mystic, does a V15 in Finland

When I imagine climbing in Finland I generally imagine myself shivering in front of Burden of Dreams (V17), a diminutive little boulder problem with tiny holds and heinous moves located in a not very picturesque logging cut, surrounded by rags of tarps left behind by certain inconsiderate crushers... In other words, when I think of climbing Finland, I generally also think about how I'd rather go elsewhere. But adidas TERREX has just released a film in which Niky Ceria, Northern Italy's bouldering sage, goes out of his way to showcase some of Finland's less infamous (and more beautiful) offerings--and across a wide grade range. Sure, he does Silver Lining, an amazing V15 (first climbed by Andy Gullsten); but he also does Pervako, a stunning V10 crack, and Autisti, which has to be one of the world's coolest looking V8s. These two problems alone can make Finland a bucket list item for those of us mere mortals. --SP

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