Trad climbs

El Corazón takes features originally aid climbed by Flight of the Albatross, Heart Route and Son of Heart linked by some new climbing. The name means The Heart in Spanish.

8c/+ on trad gear. The breakdown is roughly an 8A boulder in to 8b route in to 7C boulder. Footholds, some glue-reinforced, have broken since the first ascent.

References

[1] https://www.hazel-findlay.com/blog/reflecting-on-magic-line

[2] https://eu.blackdiamondequipment.com/blogs/stories/q-a-babsi-and-jacopo-send-magic-line

Named after Jerry Moffatt who decked from the upper reaches of the route on a previous attempt at the FA. Miraculously he survived relatively unscathed, using up one of his nine lives. Having completed all the hard, dangerous climbing and found a good runner he was stumped by the dirty top section so decided to lower off the runner. The runner failed and he landed flat on his back and was knocked unconscious, but miraculously awoke unscathed.

Alan Carne recalls

I thought he was dead. He landed flat on his back and was completely unconscious, immobile and I just looked at him and thought 'oh, my god, he's dead'.

Free version of the Muir Wall with some variations in line.

Originally led but now typically done above a big pile of mats at about 7C+. On the first ascent Jerry Moffatt took a fairly direct line at the top, whereas people typically traverse round to the right before topping out when climbing the line above pads.

The route had previously been climbed in two parts: the bottom half as One Step Beyond Direct by Ron Fawcett, and the top as Homeward Bound by Peter Beal. Johnny combined the two to complete the natural line up the middle of the wall.

It masqueraded as an E7 for a decade or two, but the combination of sustained hard climbing and hard-to-place small gear led to an upgrade.

Bellavista pushed multi-pitch climbing in the Dolomites to new levels of difficulty via some wildly overhanging territory. The route tackles the enormous roofs of Cime Ovest overhanging some 60m over its 283m length. Lead protection comes primarily from pegs and some trad gear. Alexander Huber spent 5 weeks working the route prior to making the first ascent, describing it as “by far the wildest route on an alpine face”. [2]

In 2014 Huber suggested that holds on the crux pitch were better than when he made the first ascent:

... the crux pitch was heavily manipulated. There are many crystallized fossils in the dolomite rock of Tre Cime and if you work hard, you can break out many of these. Then remains a pocket or hole which looks basically natural. But for cleaning a toothbrush is definitely not enough: you need hammer and chisel. In the former crux traverse in the middle of the pitch you had to crimp thin edges where you find now big pockets, some of more than 10 centimeters in diameter. The character is heavily changed even though it remains to be a great and fantastic climb. The grading is somewhere in between 8b and 8b+. [1]

References

[1] https://www.8a.nu/news/bellavista-chipped-from-8c-to-8b-+

[2] https://www.planetmountain.com/en/news/climbing/bellavista-alexander-huber-climbs-8c-on-cima-ovest-di-lavaredo.html

the name spotted on the destination board of a bus in Chester as they returned home which fitted well with the tone of the adjacent routes Cenotaph Corner and Ivy Sepulchre.

References

[1] https://theclimbersshopjoebrownblog.co.uk/blog/joe-brown-biography

The third route to be free climbed on El Capitan, after Salathé Wall and The Nose.

The first ascent by Alexander and Thomas Huber followed meticulous preparation, with every hold ticked and every gear placement labelled.

Just a few days after the first ascent, British teenagers Leo Houlding and Patch Hammond made an extraordinary almost-onsight ascent of the route for their first big wall.

The route incorporates parts of Continental Drift (a mixed free and aid route) then largely follows the North America Wall climbed free in its upper half. Until discovery of the Pineapple Express Variation all ascents used a short pendulum to overcome a 10m blank section.

References

[1] https://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/12199901800