The Yosemite Triple Sees Rare Repeat & Olympic Tickets for Bertone and Roberts
Bertone and Roberts Get Olympic Tickets
During this past weekend’s European Qualifiers in Laval, France, 18-year-olds Oriane Bertone and Toby Roberts each claimed gold, punching their tickets to Paris 2024. Bertone’s Olympic berth has been long anticipated; the Frenchwoman began competing on the IFSC circuit as a youth competitor in 2019, winning all seven out of the eight Youth Cups that took place that year. Her first competition on the adult circuit wasn’t until 2021, after qualifications for the Tokyo Olympics, but Bertone has since proven herself one of the world’s best competitors, placing second in five World Cups, winning one outright, and placing second in this year’s Bouldering World Championships in Bern. During the weekend’s Qualifiers, Bertone performed with the recognizable confidence and springy style that has made her such a fan favorite. She had an almost perfect bouldering round, falling only once, and she secured the high point in lead, proving the ticket rightfully hers.
Like Bertone, Roberts began as a youth competitor in 2019. He’s steadily improved over the years, going on to win both bouldering and lead World Cups this year. In Bern, he was just two spots out of qualifying for the Olympics. Throughout the weekend’s Qualifiers, Roberts remained in the top spots, entering the final round in first place. He was, however, pushed a spot back following bouldering. With 15 points between him and France’s Sam Avezou, the rounds leader, Roberts needed to put on a show as the final competitor on the lead wall. Not only did he secure the high point he needed in order to take back the lead, he continued upward, sticking a massive swing-and-jump dyno to the finish and becoming the only competitor to top the wall.
European athletes who have not yet qualified will have two more shots next year just prior to the start of the Games. Find a full list of qualified athletes here.
—Delaney Miller
Tyler Karow and Miles Fullman complete the Yosemite Triple Crown
Tyler Karow and Miles Fullman have become the eighth party to complete the Yosemite Triple Crown, which Fullman calls “The final exam for a Yosemite speed climber.”
The Yosemite Triple builds on the Nose-in-a-day speed tradition and involves climbing the three largest walls in Yosemite—El Capitan, Half Dome, and Mt. Watkins—in a single 24-hour push. The linkup was first done in 2001 by Dean Potter and Timmy O’Neill, who finished in 23 hours and 15 minutes. It was first done free by Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold in 2012—a feat that involves climbing some 70-ish guidebook pitches, many of them 5.12 and 5.13, in 21 hours and 45 minutes. Honnold went back and soloed it several weeks later, using a mixture of free soloing and aid, finishing in just 18 hours and 55 minutes, a speed record that still stands.
Karow and Fullman climbed using a mixture of aid and free tactics, climbing 7,000 feet and hiking 18 miles in 21 hours and 33 minutes.“Beyond chasing the goal itself, we both wanted it to feel a certain way,” Fullman wrote on Instagram, “like we belonged up there and knew exactly what to do and to have fun while doing it. We must have succeeded because neither of us even feel very wrecked. Couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day.”
Just a few days later, Fullman and Karow teamed up with Brandon Adams to set a new speed record on New Dawn (5.8+ A3 2,500 feet). Their time, 16 hours 45 minutes, took some seven hours off the previous record. It was Fullman’s sixteenth El Cap route in 2023. “I’m tired,” he said.
—Steven Potter
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Paige Claassen does Everything is Karate (5.14c)
Paige Classeen, on a van trip with her husband and toddler, has made a quick ascent of Everything is Karate, one of the hardest routes on the East Side of the Sierra, near Bishop, California. The route was bolted by Patrick O’Donnell in 2012 and freed by Ethan Pringle in late 2016. Its star-studded list of subsequent ascentionists includes Chris Sharma, Ben Hanna, Carlo Traversi, Giovanni Traversi, Babsi Zangerl, Jacopo Larcher, and Keenan Takahashi.
It’s been an impressive 2023 for Claassen, who took a break from her route-climbing routine to visit Rocklands and make a one-day ascent of Quintessential (V13) and repeated Giuliano Cameroni’s Legacy (V14/5.14d). Last April, she made a rare repeat of Slice of Time, a technical 5.14b in Eldorado Canyon.
—SP
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Floatin’ (V16) gets third ascent—one week after the second
Last week, I wrote about Florian Wientjes’s ascent of Floatin’, a quintessentially powerful V16 in Japan that was first climbed by Ryuichi Murai. Now Ryohei Kameyama, a longtime crusher, has made the third ascent. Kameyama is no stranger to the grade. In March 2019, he made the second ascent of Charles Albert’s proposed V17, No Kpote Only, for which he suggested V16. (The grade has since come down again, to V15, at least if serial downgrader Nico Pelorson can be believed.) That same month, Kameyama got the second ascent of La Revolutionaire Assis (V16) in Fontaineblaeu, another Charles Albert problem. Since then, he’s climbed dozens of V14s and V15s in Japan and made a trip to Finland to try Burden of Dreams (V17).
—SP
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