Adam Ondra in der 'Dawn Wall' (c) Heinz Zak
Adam Ondra in der 'Dawn Wall' (c) Heinz Zak

10.11.2016 – Report von Adam Ondra

“Two more days of work on the wall. The first day my goal was to send pitch 10 (5.14a), which is possibly the most difficult pitch besides the two crux traverses because it is long, bold, always wet and with the crux at the very top. I did it and then worked and got very confident on pitches 11, 12 and 13 (5.13c, 5.14b and 5.13b).

Yesterday I woke up on the portaledge with a pretty bad cold and fatigue. I was even considering going down straight away, but in the end I decided to go up to pitch 20 and 21 (5.13c and 5.13d) to get them dialed. In the afternoon, I wanted to work pitches 1-6 so I would be done with all the preparation for the push. But pitch 3 (5.13c) turned out to be more cryptic than expected and I haven’t found any satisfying beta. So I need a couple of hours to work on this pitch before I feel ready for the push.

Anyway, the life on the wall, “2 days climbing 1 day rest” regime has beaten both of us and Pavel and I need a good rest. So we are checking out the weather forecast and planning the push accordingly, but we will definitely not start in two days as we were planning. First I need to get 100% healthy (get rid of the cold) and spend a few more hours on pitch 3.

But the psych for the push is high! I guess I just need a little more patience. Even though it’s hard to be in such a beautiful place and rest!”

Fotostrecke: Adam Ondra in der “Dawn Wall”



07.11.2016 – Report von Adam Ondra

“We had two busy days on the wall, but extremely important, motivating ones! At first, I tried pitch 14 [5.14d], where I still had no idea what to do on the last boulder problem. After a little session, I could finally do the moves and soon after I gave it a go, but realized that my beta for the intro-moves on the last boulder problem didn’t work. It took me a lot of time, skin, frustration, and swearing to finally find a satisfying sequence, but I was exhausted and my skin thrashed. I still gave it another go that night, slipped on the first boulder problem, but then continued to the anchor, which gave me a lot of confidence that next time it should work out.

The second day, I was incredibly lucky to get an overcast day, so I could make a lot of work. At first, we took some pics with Heinz Zak on pitch 14, then went down and sent pitch 8 (5.13d) and toproped pitch 7 (5.14a). After lunch, I went for pitch 11 (5.13c) and linked the whole crux sequence, then linked the whole crux on pitch 12 (5.14b). Then we went down for a toprope session on pitch 10 (5.14a), which is always desperately wet in the dark, but I still made it with one hang on toprope. To finish the day, I just rechecked the moves on pitch 9 (5.13c).

It seems like I need to work a bit more on pitches 10, 12 and 13 (5.13b) and then pitches 1-6 (only 5.12b to 5.13c range) and I will be ready to go for the push. Can’t wait!!!”

02.11.2016 – Report von Adam Ondra

“After the period of rain and two days of rest, I went onto the wall with Pavel for three days. The plan was to send pitch 15 [5.14d] and 16 [5.14a] the first night. Hauling took us a while, so we got to our basecamp under the crux pitches in the dark. But it did not matter really. It was finally cold enough for pitch 15! Unfortunately the very beginning of the pitch was still wet after the big rain, so I had to skip the first 5 meters, which are not very difficult. Finally, on my fourth go I could send this ‘shortened’ pitch 15. Super excited about it! I worked hard on pitch 16 later that night. I got pretty close, trying it via the ‘Loop Pitch’ and tried to continue all the way into pitch 17 (5.14a), which makes sense to me. It is much harder—the whole pitch could be around 5.14c—but I think it is worth it. But let’s see what I will think on the push;-)

Right now, we are resting on the portaledge this morning. I would like to work on the 4 pitches (around 5.13c-5.13d) to the Wino Tower tonight and tomorrow. Then we will go to the summit and complete our ground-up free/aid ascent. Cool style in my opinion to justify the use of fixed ropes.

Life on the portaledge is just great. We’ve just had oatmeal for breakfast, and it is pleasant temperature to hang around in the sun and we even have solar panels to charge our phones. Life is pretty sweet up here. Even using Wag bags when necessary is not as bad as I thought.”

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QuelleBlack Diamond, Fotos: Heinz Zak, Pavel Blazek