Wild Climbing Fall Off "Gaia" in England

View the big fall off Gaia

Sometimes you got to fall before you learn how to fly, or is it learn how to climb? Anyway, if you’re a climber and you’re trying to do a hard route, then you’re going to log some serious air time. It’s the nature of working a project. It’s one thing, however, to catapult off a bolted sport route at Rifle Mountain Park in Colorado and another to plunge off a sparsely gear-protected traditional route on a gritstone edge in England.

Check out this wild whipper that French climber Jean-Minh Trin-Thieu took on the grit testpiece Gaia (E8 7a UK or 5.12c US), a wild route put up in 1986 by the great British climber Johnny Dawes.  The route has been climbed, and fallen on, by lots of climbers including American Lisa Rands, but in 2008 young American climber Alex Honnold impressively flashed the route, that is he climbed it on his first try without falling. Alex noted after the ascent, “Not a true onsight since I’ve seen movies, but there was no chalk.”

This fall is from the late nineties climbing cult classic video Hard Grit about the toughest and wildest and most dangerous gritstone routes.

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