When I was a kid, one of the games we played on the classic Apple IIe computers was Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego. The basic gist of the game was that adults were tricking us into learning geography while we tried to arrest the evil Carmen Sandiego. In a lot of ways, I feel the same way nowadays trying to track the progress of everyone’s favorite climber, Chris Sharma.
This month finds Sharma in England for a lecture tour, and this past weekend he made it out to Malham Cove to try one of England’s hardest sport routes, Rainshadow (5.14+?). Rainshadow is an unrepeated extension to the existing route Raindogs (5.13b) that was first climbed by Steve McClure back in 2007. From Climbing.com’s story about McClure’s FA, here is a description of both routes:
First climbed in 1986 by Dave Kenyon Raindogs featured a “visionary” lunge for the just-out-of-reach anchor chain — the crux of the route and the scene of many failures. Mark Leach first tried the obvious extension in the late 1980s, when climbers bolted numerous outrageous Malham lines (most still unclimbed).
The business of Rainshadow — which McClure finally linked on June 18 after 17 days of work spread over two years — first requires climbing Raindogs without grabbing the chain or getting too pumped. A poor rest by the anchors leads to an extremely bouldery (V11/12) crux bulge on pinches and crimps, leading directly into a technical 5.13b/c wall, then a final 25 feet of big moves on undercuts, which stopped McClure several times only inches from the top. After 100 feet the route finally comes to its logical end at a no-hands rest.
Sharma onsighted Raindogs and made good progress on the extension. Reportedly he is psyched to come back to try to finish it off. You can read the full report at the Climbing Work’s blog.
