The Best Weekend Whippers of 2024
2024 was a banner year for Weekend Whippers, largely thanks to you, dear reader, for your wonderful, creative, and sometimes nauseating submissions. From first-ever trad falls and belay miscommunications, to literally forgetting to clip the crux bolt, we published an impressive range of falls that nearly always left our editors’ scratching their heads. Behold: our three favorite Weekend Whippers of 2024.
#3: Awesome, Airy Fall on Famous Red Rock Crack
If only all whippers could be this airy! Michelle Voss recently had a great one while projecting Red Rock Canyon’s famous The Great Red Roof (5.13-), a striking sandstone splitter that has repelled some of the world’s strongest crack climbers.
“I came to Red Rock with one goal in mind,” Voss wrote to Climbing, “The Great Red Roof. I’ve become inspired by roof cracks over the last few years as they are just downright aesthetic and intimidating. I love the moment of walking up to this type of challenge for the first time. The exhilaration is intoxicating and it promises adventure.”
This video is Voss’s first time trying the crux section of the roof. Voss said that crack does not lend itself to easy foot jamming, and it is quicker to simply campus the final few feet of the roof. “I didn’t know exactly what to expect…so I fumbled my way through, trying different foot placements and wrong cam sizing,” Voss said. “I pushed it until absolute failure and ended up taking the whip mid cam placement!”
Voss said it’s important for her to find her true limit while climbing. “It’s easy to get into the ‘projecting mindset’ and fall when things aren’t going perfectly,” she said, but by pushing through that mental doubt—especially when the falls are as clean as on The Great Red Roof—she often surpasses her perceived physical abilities.
#2: Massive Upside-Down Whipper on Gunks 5.12 Trad
“Slammin’ (spicy 5.12), in the Gunks, has a 12a middle crux, and then the top is guarded by a V5 runout boulder problem,” Zhihua Gan told Climbing. “During this attempt, I took a whipper at the final move of the crux because I didn’t get my hip close enough to the wall before reaching the final jug.” As Gan fell, her flailing left leg caught the rope, flipping her upside down.
“My foot wasn’t behind the rope the moment I fell off the wall, so I’d say it was just bad luck,” Gan clarified. “There wasn’t much my belayer or I could do about it. Fortunately, I only ended up with a sore tailbone, and I sent this route four days later.”
Gan noted that “belaying this route is tricky. The belayer has to pay out extra slack on the already runout terrain so that the climber could potentially land under the first roof in the event of a fall, rather than smashing into it.” While it’s easy to armchair-commentate about the obviously violent nature of Gan’s fall, she was adamant that her belayer gave “a great catch” despite how it looks.
“I took a total of four whips on this route before eventually getting the redpoint, and those big whips were certainly memorable. The route lived up to its name!”
#1: Yikes! Bridge Climber Decks When All His Pieces Pull
Do you categorize bridge climbing as an intrusive thought or a welcome change of scenery? For Michael Murphy, we’d wager he now groups it with the former.
Murphy had wrapped up a casual day of climbing at New Jersey’s Mt. Tammany and was headed home. But before he got there, he decided to finally check out a crack-riddled concrete bridge he’d been eyeing.
Both Murphy and his partner tried leading the vertical splitter, but neither made it to the top, and they both whipped multiple times on a nest of gear high in the crack.
“My buddy finally unlocked the beta with an all-points-off dyno,” he told Climbing. Murphy tied back into the sharp end, eager to try the powerful new beta, but he was tired and made it only 20 feet up before asking for a take on a cam below his previous highpoint. He sat on a No. 0.5 Black Diamond Z4 cam … “and all three of my pieces promptly slid out of the crack.”
“Turns out,” Murphy said, “painted concrete doesn’t have the holding power of the more-textured concrete that we were falling on above. I hobbled away with a potential crack in one of my foot bones (still waiting on confirmation from my doctor) and a bitten tongue. Not bad for what could have been a much worse fall.”
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