Will Moss Completes Hardest Trad Rope Solo of All Time

Just one month before he became the first person to flash El Capitan in a day, 20-year-old Will Moss clipped his rope into a Grigri and pulled onto China Doll (5.14a R) in Boulder Canyon, Colorado. For any other climber, what happened next would be newsworthy in itself—and certainly not something to forget about for three months, until long past his Yosemite trip—but for Moss, at the time, it was simply training.

The young New Yorker was familiar with the route. In fact, he’d already sent the 140-foot testpiece back in February 2024, during his first year as a University of Colorado student. Between classes, Moss had spent his free time ticking some of the hardest routes in the area, including trad lines Cheating Reality (5.14 R/X), Kill Switch (5.14a), and Viceroy (5.14b R). The latter—a two-pitch extension to Crank It (5.14a)—famously left both Brad Gobright and Molly Mitchell with broken backs during their all-gear redpoint attempts. Despite the R and X ratings, Moss protected his ascents with only trad gear he placed himself, skipping all bolts and fixed gear. “I’m psyched to have done all these climbs only clipping gear I placed on lead,” he wrote last year on Instagram.

This winter, he felt stronger than ever, and he wanted to prove it. “I was preparing for the Free Rider flash and was trying to do as much hard and insecure granite as possible,” he tells Climbing. “[China Doll] has insecure laybacking with some pretty bad feet. I sent it five times total, sometimes on top rope solo, sometimes leading it. Eventually, I just wanted to see if I could push myself a little further and prove to myself mentally that I was a way better climber than I was last year.”

In his final few weeks before heading to Yosemite, Moss committed to a challenge: attempt to lead rope solo China Doll while maintaining his usual trad ethics. That meant skipping the route’s fixed piton and bolts. By self-belaying, carrying the weight of the rope, and manually controlling his own slack, he’d significantly increase the difficulty from his prior send. “More than anything, it just seemed like a cool, fun challenge to make this granite testpiece a little bit harder,” he says.

There was just one problem: He’d never lead rope soloed in his life.

Alone on the Wall

Lead rope soloing is a rare and advanced practice among free climbers, and sensibly so. It’s both physically harder and more dangerous than climbing with a belayer. Not only does the climber have to manage the rope and repeatedly let out slack for themselves before they can make a move, but they also must straight-up ignore a belay device’s manufacturer’s instructions. The Petzl Grigri, for example, is a widely recommended lead rope solo device, but Petzl insists that the Grigri is not designed or tested for self-belay.

With all the extra rope management required, lead rope soloing is most common among aid climbers, who can rest on their personal anchor systems clipped directly to protection to adjust the rope between moves. Lead rope soloing has only recently become more popular among free climbers as a redpointing technique, especially for harder routes. Brent Barghahn, who lead rope soloed The Parity Prow (5.14-) in 2023, estimates that only about six to eight people have rope soloed 5.14 in the past 20 years.

At least five of these climbers are well-known. One of the most prolific rope soloists today is Alexander Huber, who has established the first free ascents of alpine routes Nirwana (8c+/5.14c) in 2012, Mauerläufer (8b+/5.14a) in 2018, and Ramayana (8b+/5.14a) in 2021, all via lead rope soloing. Fabian Buhl has lead rope soloed the Wetterbockwand (8c/5.14b) and Ganesha (8c/5.14b). Keita Kurakami has lead rope soloed the Nose (5.14a), and Lukasz Dudek has lead rope soloed Pan Aroma (8c/5.14b). Notably, each of the aforementioned routes—even the Nose, with its bolted Changing Corners 5.14a crux—has bolts on their crux pitches.

A Quick Learner

Moss learned to lead rope solo by watching a video by Barghahn. On April 12, Moss headed out to Boulder Canyon with the idea of using the Wild Country Revo to self-belay. While rappelling a friend’s static fixed line, Moss decided to test the device by going hands-free on rappel, even though Barghahn hadn’t suggested that. Ideally, the Revo would catch him before he hit his backup knot.

It didn’t. When Moss removed his hands, the Revo instantly dropped to the backup knot—then broke entirely.

“It was honestly kind of a silly thing, letting go of the rope on a static line,” says Moss. “This broke the Revo. I saw the inside of the teeth were way below where they needed to be, so I didn’t get a lot of practice that day.”

This incident spooked Moss into returning the next day with a different setup: a Grigri+ and a Micro Traxion. His next big concern was that while he was climbing, the rope would “backfeed,” sliding through his belay device back through his gear and resulting in a dangerous amount of slack in the system. If he fell, he’d have too much slack out to catch him before he hit the ground.

Barghahn, who runs the gear company Avant Climbing Innovations, gave Moss a few of his Anti-Backfeed Keepers: plastic clips that attach to a gear carabiner and cinch down the rope like a finger. “Those were really helpful,” says Moss. Still, it didn’t eliminate all of the risk of getting stuck mid-pitch. “If you feed too much slack, you’ll have a really heavy brake strand, so the Grigri will lock up on you,” Moss explains. “If you have too little slack on the micro, you’ll have to feed out more during the middle of the crux. That’s definitely the biggest thing I had to think about leading the climb.”

Go Time

According to Moss, China Doll’s R rating comes from the fact that there’s no good gear until 30 or 40 feet off the ground until the route’s first boulder problem, protected by a 0.1 cam. “If the 0.1 rips, you’re going to fall onto the slab,” Moss says, “Up higher, it’s protected by a ball nut and some really small nuts.”

With some friends nearby in case anything went wrong, Moss took two practice laps on China Doll, clipping bolts and taking purposeful falls to test his lead rope solo system. Finally, he went for his first attempt at the gear-only rope solo—and sent.

The climb felt a lot harder than it had with a belayer. “I had sent it five times that season with pretty minimal problems, sometimes just doing it as my first route of the day,” he says, “but the time I sent it lead rope solo, there were definitely some times when the Grigri locked up on me and I had to deal with that.”

In addition to physical challenges, he felt constantly alert: “Thinking about more things at once—you’re clipping this gear, thinking about the crux, and thinking about how much rope you’re feeding through the micro.  Lead rope soloing 5.11 would have been cruxier than climbing China Doll with a belayer.”

Three months later, Moss sees his lead rope solo of China Doll as preparation for future projects. “A big motivation for this was to get that style down so I could take it to bigger walls,” he says. “It seems really cool to be completely self-reliant on a big wall, in my eyes, even though I haven’t really done much of it.”

This fall, he plans to take a semester off from college so he can maximize his time in Yosemite.

Watch Will Moss on China Doll below:

The post Will Moss Completes Hardest Trad Rope Solo of All Time appeared first on Climbing.