Weekend Whipper: Ripping Gear (and Nearly Decking) on ‘Meltdown’ (5.14c)

Readers, please send your Weekend Whipper videos, information, and any lessons learned to Anthony Walsh, awalsh@outsideinc.com.

Meltdown is a historic single pitch trad line in Yosemite, first freed by Beth Rodden in 2008. The splitter sat unrepeated for an entire decade, until Carlo Traversi cleaned its cobwebs off in 2018. Since then, it’s only received five ascents, including by Connor Herson, who called the crux boulder “harder than any boulder I’ve done on the ground.”

Ethan Pringle was recently gunning for Meltdown’s sixth ascent. “The day this clip was taken, it was my fourth day on the route and my first day trying to lead it,” he told Climbing. “Oh my third day, I sent the route clean on TR. On the fourth day, I was pretty nervous, and it was very cold and humid. I had already fallen once on this attempt, at the end of the lower, main crux. I rested and pulled the moves to the flake that the pieces ripped out of.”

“I wasn’t recovering very well on the flake,” Pringle continued, “and when I climbed a few moves higher, I stalled out trying to place the next piece: a hard-to-place stopper. I said ‘take’ to my partner Catie and thankfully she took up some slack before I dropped. I had seen Babsi [Zangerl, fourth ascent] rip a piece out of this flake a month or so earlier, and I’m quite a bit heavier than she is, so I knew ripping gear out of this somewhat hollow flake was likely. Fortunately I slowed down a lot before I landed gently on the ground, thanks to a pretty expert belay from Catie. I didn’t really have time to be scared. It all happened so fast.”

After this fall, Pringle said he learned to not trust the nest of gear behind that hollow flake, and, during his next trip to Yosemite, he plans to “sort out another placement higher in the crack, on the left, so I can avoid placing gear behind the flake. It would change the route a lot if I ripped the flake off, and I also really don’t want to deck.”

Fair enough, Ethan! We’re glad you’re OK. Happy Friday, and be safe out there this weekend. Thanks to @keibegood for the video.

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