Climbs

A Mizugaki testpiece on the historic Kotei Iwa boulder.

Named after the young Italian climber Tito Claudio Traversa who sadly died in a climbing accident.

First ascentionist Carlo Traversi describes the problem:

The Dark Side has a V9 intro into a sustained V15, and those intro moves change the setup for the crux. All told, it is 17 moves from start to lip.

It starts off on a jug rail, an actual jug! The feature continues and it becomes a slopey—but good—hold for your right hand, and then you get these two really, really bad crimps: the crux holds. The left hand is the one that you spend the most time on, and there’s a crystal that goes right into your index pad, that’s the one that splits. You load the left hand, and basically put all your weight on it to reset your feet. Then you do a big lock off and enter the sloper-rail section.

The sloper rail is really bad. One of the worst slopers I’ve ever grabbed, for sure. You shuffle along this rail for eight or nine hand movements. It really feels like you’re hangboarding on the Beastmaker 2000 45-degree sloper. Then you get into this crimp rail, which is better than the crimps at the beginning but still very thin. That puts you into a high gaston, and then one last big lock off to a hold that is basically the end of The Force, which comes in from the right.

The Dark Side is weird for a hard problem. I’ve never seen a problem that is V15 or harder that looks like it. It either looks impossible without chalk on it, or it looks kind of chill when it’s chalked up. [1]

References

[1] https://www.climbing.com/news/carlo-traversi-on-establishing-yosemites-hardest-boulder

Bolted by Johnny Dawes in 1985. He described the route as follows:

Slate is famous as the rockover capital of British climbing, yet the Meltdown barely has one. Off the top of my head I can remember ten unique moves I've never come across elsewhere. In '86 I was able to link large sections together, one combination representing the hardest link I've ever done at that point except perhaps for the pre-scarred crux of Scritto's Republic in '82. On Meltdown eight 6c moves up a dynamically-climbed rib are sandwiched between an ankle-height drop down involving precise rotation of the whole body and a highly compressed mantle. This link I repeated in '90. It was my best achievement of the year alongside The Very Big and the Very Small, but this time complete with the substance of the start and clipping two bolts.

This meant I'd linked up to the second crux traverse right. The technicality of these cruxes is such that any limb's contact can fail which is unusual. The top crux is the harder, powerful-like Hubble, subtle like Shirley's Shining Temple yet at the end of an horrendous sequence. Lovely. The trouble is the sequence has disappeared.

While yarding like mad at the edge of the overlap the overlap broke, the weight of a satchel full of gold, I fumbled it then watched as it rotated slowly, accelerating swiftly onto obscure bits of disappointment. Some 11 years have passed since the convoluted ripples right of the first pitch of The Quarryman first attracted me. What to do now? One idea I hit upon was to remodel the hold out of bronze. Like a gold cap on a gangster's tooth the cast would gleam on the smooth purple overlap. I have a friend who casts bronze. His skills combined with a strangely clear image in my mind (plus High8 video evidence from a Stone Monkey pilot) should allow a meltdown to remould the moves of my memory.

Meltdown is unique, though only 80' high it has two crux traverses of 20' each. Each move is different to any other, tiny slivers of slate as sidepulls manifested in spookily appropriate positions, rounded micromounds for feet, set in natural perfection to limit the sweep of the hand. Clusters of three holds where three are necessary to swap hands. There is a rest before the crux which takes six moves to establish and use three footholds to enable a heel standing/hands off, possible by starring out your body. The second crux involves using the bronze cap; this will be for six moves. A dyno into a left hand finger pointing layback (fingers straight, hand palm at 90 to them) with the right knee resting on top of the left hand. A slap into an undercling and then a leg flag move where it would be ideal if you could take off your left calf muscle. Then a full foot smear, toe pull and footless dropdown after a low, long slap onto a pinch in front of your face. Extended, a big beautiful slopy foothold comes just within reach, legs and arms all crossed up, a hand off is sequentially possible. A few deft un-weightings, a set up and a sideways double dyno (the easiest move on the route) and the Meltdown is complete. [2]

References

[1] Jerry Moffatt and Johnny Dawes trying Meltdown in the 80s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu2b4P6-IcY

[2] On The Edge, 'The Slate Issue' (no 66?)

There is some confuision around whether Alex Sharpe and Brian Hall or John Allen and Steve Bancroft made the first free ascent in 1974.

There is some variation in the line taken by each of the ascenionists so far. Andy Earl climbed a line very close to the arete, Dan Varian and Will Bosi ended up slightly more on the right face at the top and Franco Cookson moved on to the right hand face earlier still, avoiding a couple of moves up the prow [1]. Franco amusingly named his variation Varian the Librarian.

Regarding the grade, Andy Earl didn't offer a grade and Steve Crowe wrote it up for the guidebook as E9 7a. It is now more commonly climbed above a big pile of pads at ~8A.

References

[1] Franco Cookson discusses the controversy around the line on UKClimbing.com, 9th Feb 2022 https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/opinions/the_blurry_line_-_when_does_a_sequence_become_a_line-14240

[2] On The Edge 128, page 18