About two years after he climbed the epic Hollow Mountain Cave link-up Sleepy Rave, James Kassay managed to send the epic Hollow Mountain Cave link-up Wheel Of Life which adds a V9 on the front end of the aforementioned Sleepy Rave. It could be argued that Wheel Of Life is more of a route than a boulder problem (just check out the 12 minute video Ethan Pringle climbing the line), but Kassay registered his ascent as V16 on his 8a scorecard and commented that he’s now trying a “direct” version of the problem.
Update: Kassay updated his blog with some interesting thoughts on the ascent including why it may have taken him longer than some would have thought to put together the full Wheel Of Life:
Call me stubborn, crazy or out right stupid if you must but climbing the full length of the cave wasn’t just a matter of getting from one end to the other the easiest possible way. Ethan was confused as to why I didn’t want to use the “easier beta” of putting on knee pads and milking the knee bar rests that are otherwise impossible to use…
Ultimately I set myself a personal goal and that was the way I was going to do it.
werd.
loading...
ben cossey has recently sent (in last 2 weeks) wheel of life, with virtually no attention. He considers that both halves of cave have been downgraded since dai sent WOL that it is probably only V14.
loading...
This is such an interesting problem/climb in many ways. It actually seems like neither a route grade or a boulder grade really explains the difficulty of “The Wheel of Life”. It’s probably a good thing for climbing that something this stellar can’t be easily distilled to a number.
Check out Ethan’s take on James method and his own plus the difficulty here on the Petzl blog. http://tinyurl.com/3wav2m7
For himself he says here 8c+/9a route(!) which one would normally equate to V13ish… but also says it could be the hardest problem in the world that he could probably not ever do using James beta…
He and James have a similar take on the whole thing even though they chose different personal approaches to sending it. “I think the less you worry about what others are doing or what they
think of your methods, and just climb for yourself and your own
enjoyment, the better.”
I like this. As long as you are always honest in what your style was when telling others, you can’t go wrong with this attitude.
loading...