Soloing Gloppedalen North Wall - First Ascent

it is seven o'clock in the morning and i am heading up there to try and well not try do this rope solo of this first descent before we go any further we should establish what rope soloing solo climbing free solo and any type of climbing with solo in the name actually means solo climbing is the act of climbing something alone when it comes to big wall or multi-pitch climbing then solo climbing can be separated into three categories rope soloing this is where you fix the rope to an anchor and belay yourself up the climb placing the gear as you go this is the safest but most time-consuming and labour-intensive method then you have daisy soloing this is where you use no rope at all but you have short tethers which fix directly to the protection and you steadily move these pieces of protection as you climb it's a safe method if you have good gear however only really practical if you want to aid climb then you have free soloing this is where you have no protection and no rope this is the quickest and least labor-intensive way of climbing but also the most dangerous all of these types of climbing are categorized as solo climbing the rope solar category can then be split into two sub-categories which are rope solo aid climbing and rope solo free climbing rope solo aid climbing is where you use the protection you place in the rock to hang and pull yourself up on whereas rope solid free climbing is where you use the protection in the rock only to catch you if you fall today i'll be climbing in this category here so rope solo free climbing just on my own today so we will see how it goes i've done this for a very long time so hopefully i haven't forgotten anything but here we go we have harness jewmar's some sort of personal kit there got rack a rope personally i would like to use a different rope but i didn't have one ladders helmet windproof chalk bag boots water daisy chains solo device i'm using a silent partner some slings attraction i use this below the solo device a rucksack for stacking the rope that's kind of about it god there's a lot of flies i'm going to crack on crack on just climbed the first pitch so i fixed my anchor fixed the rope into me had my spare open on the ground climbed it placing the gear got to the belay fix the belay abseil back down so now i'm back at the base now i've got to either joomla that pitch again or climb it again but i think because it was quite easy i think i'll just go on the traction uh because i think it'll actually be easier than jumaring it obviously has climbed the bag and my bits of gear that are down here on this occasion it probably would have actually been easier to just to freesol it because it was so easy but the problem is because the upper pitches are harder i've got to take a rucksack with me and so i can stack the rope on the high pitches and uh freesol with a sort of like a rucksack and all your gear and shoes and water and rack it's yeah not very good so i think it's better to actually just stick to pure traditional rope soldering uh even on the easy stuff especially when you have a bag so first pitch in bag so let's take a look at the climb coming up it was first climbed in 98 at a grade of a2 plus seven that means the hardest free climbing done was great norwegian seven and then the more difficult parts were age climbed to a2 plus in 2019 yanegal and yahtzee freed the a17 head wall pitch however higher up the wall they got caught by rainstorms and had to make an upward bale via aiding so the remaining a2 pitch and the route in its entirety was still yet to be freed so that is pitch number two and now we're at the head wall pitch say head wall pitch is just like the main pitch you can see on this belay here i've got my cam's pointing in the direction to abseil back down to the last pitch um whereas now i'm going up so if i fall off the rope's going to be pulling upward on that anchor so i need to change my anchor around a little bit and make sure that it's good for an upward pull rather than downward pull so in this case it'll probably just mean altering the angle of the cams a little bit so rather than them uh pointing um you know 45 degrees downwards then i'll just point them 45 degree upwards what you can do sometimes is actually like place another piece a little bit higher and then sort of run your rope and redirect your rope through that piece so then it holds the anchor up and it's not like flopping down and the cams aren't rotating back into that other angle essentially also before i have set down on each pitch i just make sure that i like get rid of all my gear like unnecessary weight like i don't want that weight on my harness when i'm like do marrying up or climbing back up the previous pitch that i've already done so it's just like either you know clip it to anchor light on the floor if you're on a big ledge like this or do whatever like that so this is how i would set my anchor here i've got the cams pointing in an upward direction and i've attached the rope to the lower cam and then i've equalized them off and then have my main point uh from the equalization point so i do that just so that basically the rope isn't just on one carabiner but it's on two carabiners so you can see this is also the setup that i have so i have silent partner then i have the rope coming out the top of the silent partner and then i have the spare rope coming out the bottom and going into a micro attraction here and i have the top of the micro traction facing upwards so you can pull spare rope through it easily and i tend to go for this underneath here some people actually like it on the gear loop but i tend to go for it underneath so if you are on hard pitches you can access it with both hands or sometimes if you're on a hard pitch an awkward position you have to pull rope through then it's on the wrong side of your harness then it's a bit of a nightmare to get to that's the setup okay that's enough uh chatting around crack on crack on with crack let's do it i've now led one of the crack pictures um so i've got to do more back up again so this is my joomla setup i've got a going on attraction an ascender with a ladder basically that's just because i can't be bothered to set up the other joomla system so i'm just using attraction because it's not really that far to do my and then i didn't really have the right cams for the b legs i'd use them in the route so i'm going to swap the belay around a little bit make sure that the cam's going upward pull direction and then crack on with that pitch it looks a little bit steeper the next one this head wall pitch was kind of all right uh the first head wall pitch next one looks a little bit steeper but yeah all good smash on not much climbing in this video is there just me rambling about rope soloing and abseiling but there you go that's that's that's what you get that is what you get i am at a hanging belay uh which is a little bit more complicated because you have to stack the rope in the bag you have to wait the bag going down and then you have to also make sure that you've got a directional pull up for if you fall off uh on the next pitch so i'm going to use cams in the belay and really deep in this crack i'll have one piece pointing down and one piece pointing up and then i'll equalize them off that's basically that's the theory that's the theory the next pitch looks uh definitely a little bit more tricky a little bit more thin so that could be exciting i just want to get my setup and system right first before setting off currently my belay is an absolute junk show so i'm going to clean it all up and make it a little bit better [Music] the second headwall pitch went pretty easily and then i found myself below the final a2 plus pitch which hadn't been freed so it's a little bit interesting i've got to the right-hand side of the ledge and this looks a little bit more tricky than i thought it was going to be to be honest thought there was going to be a crack but it sort of looks like bridging i mean there are some good holds but yeah i don't know it's like a little few wet patches um i mean it's probably fine but i should just be a little bit careful so i've got my setup i've got two cams down there in the break and then i've got sort of like my first piece straight off the ledge here hopefully after this can i steep a bit here it will be easier i think this could be interesting honey you definitely need to pay attention that is for sure and have a good help my systems good yeah it's not over it's not over until it's over okay so basically i did that corner bit free came around the corner onto a ledge tried to go up the original uh a two a two bit i think just the top crack then it got really steep quite flaring bad like i just couldn't yeah i wasn't going to be able to free that it was kind of dirty so then i came around kind of put high runner in came down stepped round the corner down did a little down climb and now i find myself in this chimney and it is the it's the greenest mossiest chimney ever but i'm hoping it's going to take me to the top and it's not going to be too bad basically i'm just going to squeeze into that thing up there it's just it's just blooming awful looks blowing awful but i think that's going to be my freeway to the top yeah i'm just going to have to get involved and go up there basically get involved get green so this was the final pitch yeah up to here then you had some undercuts underneath underneath there up to this uh sloper and bridge out across onto this wall i tried to go up that crack over there that's where i had to bail and uh not bail but go down climb out right and then up the green chimney look good let's get this stripped and done with [Music] here we go topped out fish back brush did all go free but not by basically three meters at the end uh didn't go on the original aid line so that's where i had to go down do a little down climb and then climb the green chimney uh but yeah i mean it all went free did it all free

Channel: Wide Boyz

Views: 105,846

Keywords: solo, solo climbing a first ascent on gloppedalen north wall, rope solo climbing, free solo climbing, rope solo lead climbing, rope solo lead climbing tutorial, crack climbing, wide boyz, pete whittaker, rope solo technique, pete whittaker rope solo, pete whittaker rope solos el cap, first ascent gloppedalen, north wall climbing, rock climbing, rock climbing norway, rope solo with grigri, top rope solo, silent partner

Id: 7zqod-Jhik0

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 18 2021