Is New Fisher Towers Aid Route a Mythical A6+?

David Palmada and Ester Ollé, Catalan climbers from Spain, ascended a new aid route on The Titan in Utah’s Fisher Towers in late August. Palmada assigned the exorbitant grade of A6+ to its crux pitch, which, if confirmed by anyone repeating the route, would be the hardest aid pitch in the world.

The pair took 13 days to climb the 1,044-foot-high, 11–pitch route, called Look Out! Danger, up The Titan’s northwest face. Besides the A6+ pitch, the line has three A5 pitches, three A4+ pitches, and four other pitches from A3 to A3+. No bolts were used at any belays but Palmada did drill aid placements up a blank section. That all adds up to a pretty serious aid climb.

Palmada proposed the A6+ grade after climbing Intifada, with its supposed A6 aid, on neighboring Cottontail Tower last year. He told the Spanish climbing magazine Desnivel, “The A6 is not simply a proposal. I have the experience of Intifada, which is rated A6.” He noted that the placements on the crux pitch are more precarious with longer and more serious fall potential than the hard aid on Intifada. Palmada said, “I can’t say that if you fall you will kill yourself, because I never hope to know that. But technically speaking, we believe this has raised the bar.”

How high that bar is raised remains to be seen. Intifada, established solo in 1988 by American soloist Jim Beyer and rated A6, the only route of that difficulty in the world, is somewhat controversial. The second ascent party thought it overgraded, calling it maximum A4+, while the third ascent called it A5.

An article in Climbing Magazine summarized Beyer’s description of the route’s last pitch, the A6 one, as “38 hook moves, a crux of stacked blade tips in rotten flakes, and a lunge to the summit.” The anchors for that last pitch were supposed to be totally jingus. If you fell anywhere above the anchor you would zipper everything, pull the anchors out, and plunge to the ground.

The second ascent party basically debunked that whole A6 myth. It turned out that the 38 hook moves was for the entire route and there was no “death anchor” on it either. The last pitch turned out to be A3+ and was simply not as harsh as Climbing’s account. Richard Jensen, reporting on his website about his second ascent, also found “a sabotaged route in the form of intentionally filled holes to keep people from figuring out what to do and make the climb seem harder than it is.”

So what exactly is the theoretical grade of A6 supposed to be? On his Big Wall website, John Middendorf calls it, “A5 climbing with marginal belays, which will not hold a fall.” Jim Beyer says, “A6 is two grades harder than some A4s. A6 is two or more pitches with potential death falls and no bolts.”

So does A6 exist? Or is it just a high numbers game to garner publicity? If it’s the latter, it’s certainly worked for Look Out! Danger since news of its ascent is all over the Net. Comparing it to Intifada, however, is a mistake since it was downrated and its mythology has been thoroughly debunked. Stay tuned. We’ll see if an American team blasts up the route and debunks it too.

Photographs above: Top: Ester Ollé at a hook belay on The Titan. Bottom: David Palmada aiding a crack system up his new route at the Fisher Towers. Photographs courtesy David Palmada and Ester Ollé/Desnivel