Who is Alex Megos, and where did he come from?
Not long after his onsight of Estado critico (5.14d), Alex Megos continued his good form by redpointing La Rambla (5.15a) in just two tries according to this post in Spanish on Dani Fuertes’ blog. Apparently a flash was not that far off, with Megos falling right near the top on his first go.
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Megos also did A Muerte (5.14d) on his second try.
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I’m going to assume that he fell on flash, worked the moves, lowered, and sent. All this “nth try” nonsense is starting to get old, since it seems like no one is really honest about what they did anyway. This is a hugely impressive achievement, obviously, but the current trend of bragging about how fast something was climbed, often at the expense of true honesty and integrity, is starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth.
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But since it’s well-known that “try” refers to one period on the wall and that working moves before lowering does not increase the “try”-count, how is reporting things in these terms dishonest? Since we all know he worked the moves, he knows we know this, and others report their sends with the same standard, it seems about as honest and meaningful a metric as anything else we’ve got.
There is, of course, some variability in how long individual tries are, but not enough to render the metric irrelevant: no one’s up there for more than a couple hours. It’s not like there’s a chance he hauled up a bivy and camped on the wall for two weeks and called that one “one try.”
But maybe people aren’t as consistent in their use of “try” as I think? There’s also the UK practice of not upping the try-count provided you (a) don’t fall, and (b) downclimb to the ground; that’s a slight complication in understanding UK ascents, but it’s not like it’s a secret or anything.
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He fell 2 moves from the chains on his flash go so I doubt he spent too much time lowering back down to work the moves.
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Personally I think that this kind of ascent has a great deal more athletic integrity than the many sends we read about that take 30+ tries. Megos is someone to be held up as an example. A lot of climbers don’t realize that flogging is time consuming and less likely to create long term high level climbing performance than doing things the way Megos does. Your comment suggests that you think this report is less honest or has less integrity than other reports. Unless you have first hand information that it took him more than two tries I’m not sure why you choose a high quality ascent of La Rambla to raise honesty and integrity as issues.
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Perhaps this was the wrong time to raise the issue, but the greater trend of climbers framing ascents in the most flattering light possible, regardless of what actually happened, is an undeniable and troubling one in my eyes.
Your claim that projecting in order to climb harder routes is somehow an inferior way of rock climbing is another topic altogether.
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Framing ascents in the most flattering light possible has been going on for decades. Agreed, its not a good thing but it been with us for avery long time, unfortunately its just the way some people do things.
I didn’t say that projecting was an inferior form of rock climbing, that would be a blanket value judgement. I said it was less likely to create long-term performance gains and that it had athletic integrity; a comment on methodology and performance.
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You said it Dan.
Yes this is a great achievement, but in a way it disgusts me. “With a steady stream of beta coming from fellow German climber Felix Neumärker (who recently repeated La Rambla), Megos went for it…” (Rock&Ice). Number chasers getting sprayed with beta is not the way this sport should progress in my opinion.
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I actually think they are welcome to do as they wish regarding beta spraying, especially considering it in no way inspires me to get someone to wire a route, then spray me down as I climb it so I can flash it. Maybe if I had a prayer of flashing 15a…
Also, I call what guys like Megos do dedication to what they love, not number chasing. How else do you think they get so good? And good on Rock and Ice for reporting what sounds like the straight facts of the ascent. This doesn’t appear at all to be a case of what Dan is talking about in his first post. I think it is really cool that the new generation is crushing this hard!
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Is Megos the new Ondra ?? !!
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Maybe an improved version, if that’s even possible? Apparently he does not scream like Ondra does… 🙂
Also he climbs very slowly and static. He spent 40min in his first try before falling…
Nice detailed article here with plenty of details from the belayer (in Spanish):
http://desnivel.com/escalada-roca/alex-megos-rla-ramblar-al-segundo-intento
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No, Alex is Alex .
The Trainern:-)
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This Alex guy is a beast!! Way to go dude!!
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I think Mike’s comment applies to every hard boulder ascent.
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