question for climbers: what's more difficult to master, the physical or mental aspect of doing a climb like this?
i imagine the intersection of people who have both sides of that coin covered (in any sport) is vanishingly small.
i imagine the intersection of people who have both sides of that coin covered (in any sport) is vanishingly small.
The number of people who lead climb multipitch walls is much bigger than the number who can climb a single 5.14 pitch, even on a toprope in a gym.
Keep in mind that these climbers spend years relying on their gear and taking no shortage of falls. They trust themselves and their partners. I don't want to minimize the mental challenge here (I struggle with it when I lead climb in a gym, let alone "trad" outside with my own gear), but for climbers at this level with this much experience, the fear of falling is sufficiently small that they're thinking about the climb rather than the consequences of a misstep.
Climbing 5.14 pitches is a whole other story. Perfect technique isn't enough; you also need a perfect physique -- lean and muscular in all the right places -- and not muscular in the wrong places, because muscle is heavy. Conventional climbing wisdom is that persistent hard work can take a fit person a long way -- to about 5.12 or so -- but after that it comes down to genetics. I'm reasonably athletic, have been climbing on and off for over a decade, and multiple times per week for the last 18 months. I'll be ecstatic if I can ever do a single 5.13 pitch.
The second number reflects the difficulty of the [hardest part of the] climb. I believe it originally went from 1-10, with 10 being the hardest thing a human could climb, but innovations in climbing shoes and better climbers have raised the max over the years, so now it goes from 1-15.
Imagine the scale as being of exponential difficulty. For the same climber who spent a week going from 5.5 to 5.6, it may take a year to go from 5.10 to 5.11. So you can imagine how elite a 5.14 climber is, let alone a 5.15 one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_%28climbing%29#Free_climb...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Decimal_System#YDS_cla...
The difficulty is rated as one pitch relative to another and certain pitches as benchmarks for a certain difficulty. e.g. pitch X is 5.13a and pitch Y is somewhat harder so it's 5.13c while Z is quite a bit harder making it a 5.14a, etc.
5.6 can be climbed by any healthy adult, 5.7 by most. I reached 5.11 in a year of climbing; I expect to reach 5.12 within 5 years, and 5.13 sometime within my lifespan if I am dedicated and train relentlessly. 5.14 is only within reach of the greats who live their lives to climb, and 5.15 has been climbed by 2-3 people on this Earth.
More people will climb 5.14 & 5.15 in the future, but the progress of peak potential is slowing.
[1] http://www.mountainproject.com/v/the-edge/106105353
[2] http://www.mountainproject.com/v/bachar-yerian/106244878
EDIT: good account of a repeat of the B-Y here:
http://www.supertopo.com/tr/The-Bachar-Yerian-A-Three-Year-O...
To answer beachstartup's question though, I'd say confidently that all else being equal, a 5.14 climber is more elite than a 5.11 climber who has good mental fortitude.
The first time I ever ice climbed was just terrifying. The entire environment, from the falling ice, to death cookies (if you wear crampons and step on a large piece of ice, your crampons become skates), to the slope is all designed to kill. One of my very first pitches, I was going up just great until I reached about forty feet. Then, the insanity of it all hit me...I mean, I'm afraid of flying in airplanes and there I was climbing a waterfall in the f'ing Rocky Mountains???
As the fear gripped me, my body failed. I started gripping onto my ice tools as tight as I could; so tight my arms spasmed until finally I had no strength left and I dropped. so, there I was on the side of a fricking waterfall, the ice tools (that I borrowed from a guy who bagged Everest) were six feet above me, and I had no strength left.
My fear created the exact situation I was afraid of...
But seriously, how'd you recover from that?
And it's not very nice to say someone is exaggerating their emotional state. :-) It's certainly possible for people to get very scared the first time they climb 40 feet up, even on top rope.
You just can't just be stronger than most and expect to finish the route. This isn't so different from other sports, they just have a different mix. A golfer needs a lot of technical skill, and a bit of strength, plus some emotional strength, to get through those tough shots. Can you think of a sport that requires less physical strength? How about a very intense gamer?
Emotional strength is a huge part of climbing. Think about it: you're 1,000+ feet in the air. The last piece of protection you have is over 10 feet below you - meaning, if you fall, you fall twice that distance. There's a slight chance that the protection that you've placed could in fact come off, as you fall, making you fall even farther (say, another 20 feet!). Can you keep it together, to make the move upwards, or are you going to freeze, thinking about what could happen? A fall of 20 feet isn't going to be fatal, but it could be pretty messy, if you get tangled in your rope. Now (in the case of the Dawn Wall), you've been working on this project for over 7 years. When do you say, "enough!" and move on? I mean, look at Tommy Caldwell - he mistakenly chopped his own finger off, which could have ended his career, but he kept going, and look what he accomplished!
Minor nit, but the ropes used in this type of climbing will be dynamic, not static. That means you'll fall the 10 feet to the last pro, that 10 feet again plus the stretch on the rope...more like 25-30 feet. I've only climbed lead in the gym, but those kinds of falls are still scary as hell. I can only imagine what it would be like that high up.
Also, good call on the finger thing. I know the story is about him doing something that no one has ever done before and his injury shouldn't be the focus, but not calling it out is insane and I've yet to see one story include that tidbit. Anyone who's climbed knows just how important fingers are, it's hard for me to fathom climbing an indoor 5.13 without my index finger, let alone this many outdoor 5.13/5.14s. It's utterly amazing that he's continued to be an elite climber after his injury.
Objectively, there is actually less danger to a climb like this which occurs on a steep wall far from the ground since you can fall a long ways before you hit something. People have fallen for 50-100 m (the length of a rope) on el cap and been fine. The 10-30 foot "clean" falls these climbers risk are really not bad with a soft catch by a stretchy rope. It takes a bit of time for your mind to accept this fact but it happens rather naturally with time spent on the rock.
There are those who focus on climbing without a rope or doing climbs with ground fall potential. Some claim this is a mental challenge but I've found these people are largely idiots or attention speaker who have deluded themselves the can handle the danger or accept death. To me there is no real mental challenge and certainly nothing admirable in this sort of climbing.
FWIW I've free climbed routes of 5.11+ difficulty and ~1000 ft of length range which is sort of the "advanced amateur" of multi pitch free climbing compared to this routes 5.14+ difficulty over 3000 ft. Achieving this took years of climbing several times a week combined with dedicated finger strength training and numerous road trips to different climbing areas to practice on different types of real rock.
The kind of dedication that allows a person to train up to 5.13/5.14 climbs is, to me, just mind-blowing.