Laura Pineau Makes First Female Ascent of ‘Wet Lycra Nightmare’ (V 5.13d A0)
At 4:30 a.m. on November 26, Laura Pineau woke up on a ledge barely wider than her sleeping bag. The treetops were 400 feet below her elbow. Dawn would break at 6:21 a.m. There would only be a few hours of shade to send the crux pitch of Wet Lycra Nightmare (V 5.13d A0), and she’d already fallen on it five times the day before. She needed every second she could get.
Pineau sat up and shook off the cold. By 7 a.m., she was well into her redpoint attempts. She traversed over a ledge, rocked a right heel on the sloping edge of the roof, gripped two slopers, then pulled herself up in a sharp yank.
Her gaze locked on the high, shallow pinch that first ascensionist Todd Skinner once called the “hideous taco” hold. As her right hand closed on it, she swapped her left to a high mantle—and slipped off.
She’d never sent a V9 before, and needed to now. It took five more tries for her to pull up and hold the hideous taco rigidly enough that her left hand could flip down and mantle. When she finally pressed herself up to a balanced point, it was a miracle—and all she had to do was step up on a large, chalked-up foothold.
She pushed her toe onto the hold. The crux pitch was over.
Then her foot skittered, and she was flying.
As Pineau fell onto her rope, Leaning Tower’s shaded overhang echoed with one long note of anguish. Her send unraveled; she’d lost it at the last second.
Later, she said that she’d fallen because she couldn’t keep her mind quiet.
“That was maybe my one shot to do it,” Pineau remembers. “I had done the mantle, which is a low-percentage move for me. And I just blew it.”
Mademoiselle Fissure
Two years ago, the feeling of looking down from Leaning Tower, the steepest cliff in North America, had terrified the 22-year-old French athlete. Back then, she was a new college grad and former Ninja Warrior France hopeful. After months of training, the casting directors rejected her from Season 8, so she drove into Yosemite as a rookie trad climber and supported Amity Warme in checking out Westie Face (5.13- R), the only other free route on Leaning Tower. Pineau described herself as “completely unprepared” for the steep granite cliffs of Yosemite. “I was just trying to survive up there,” she told Climbing.
She couldn’t be more different now. The Laura Pineau on Wet Lycra Nightmare is an experienced trad climber whose audacity to aim high in every style of climbing is matched only by her unrelenting optimism. In the past two years, she’s sent El Cap via Freerider (5.12d/5.13a; 2,900ft) and 5.13d/5.14a trad (Greenspit), and ticked 5.13 in everything from finger cracks to offwidths. She’d teamed up with Babsi Zangerl for the Rostro-man linkup (including the 5.12b Alien Roof finish) in Yosemite, gone deep water soloing with Sasha DiGiulian in France, and made friends with her personal hero, Lynn Hill. Pineau even picked up a nickname: Mademoiselle Fissure, or “Lady Crack,” which she displays on her social profiles in half-jest, half-sincere ode to her love of all crack sizes.
Speaking with Pineau, one on one, is like entering a vortex of confidence; she’s a walking pep talk who wants you to succeed. Each of my conversations with her, from belays on the Owl Roof (5.12c) to interviews for Climbing, ultimately condenses to a co-motivation session; her general demeanor is that of someone who can sense you’re on the eve of a great triumph.
“You’re going to get this, girl,” she insists in a low French accent. “Let’s fucking go.” If we’re in person, she leans forward as if she’s ready for a chest bump or hug. Any dream of yours is met with infinite hype.
Six months ago, Pineau exploded into a new discipline, speed climbing, when she and Kate Kelleghan became the first women in history to complete the Yosemite Triple Crown, climbing El Cap, Half Dome, and Mount Watkins in less than 24 hours. When she got injured after the Triple, she took advantage of her cardio endurance in August by logging the first female Yosemite Picnic Triathlon, a nearly IRONMAN-level fitness challenge based in Tuolumne. First established in 2020 by Jason Hardrath and Ryan Tetz, the bike-swim-climb event involves 88 miles of biking, two 1.1-mile swims of Tenaya Lake, and 5,200 feet of rock climbing and running for a total of 14,100 feet of vertical gain over 100 miles.
“The hardest part, for me, was the swim,” wrote Pineau on her FKT report. “I finished with hypothermia both times. The second swim was done in the dark.” Pineau and Ludovidi pulled it off in 23 hours 58 minutes—just two minutes shy of their 24-hour goal.
A return to free climbing
While speed climbing—mostly jugging, aiding, and pulling on cams—pushed Pineau to adopt new habits and grow, it also shrunk her free climbing capacity. “Speed climbing makes you really weak,” she said. “There’s no other way around it.”
At the beginning of 2025, she knew that after the Triple Crown, she would want to return to Yosemite in the winter to try Wet Lycra Nightmare. Her inspiration came from Jordan Cannon and Sam Stroh’s documentary about Wet Lycra at the Arc’teryx Academy. “I was like, wow, what an epic time on Leaning Tower,” she said. “It was overhanging, it looked so hard, and the boulder problem looked sick.”
Wet Lycra Nightmare, the free version to Wet Denim Daydream, offered Pineau the opportunity to match her top sport grade, 5.13d, and beat her top bouldering grade, V8. “To climb Wet Lycra Nightmare, you need the full Yosemite palette,” she said. “You need to be able to crack climb, stem, offwidth, chimney, boulder… You need to know how to climb on granite really well and be good at all styles.”
She started working on it on September 28th, but it took 10 sessions to send the crux initially—then, several more days to send the two 5.13s that followed. “This summer, I definitely wasn’t strong,” she said. “I injured my right shoulder in mid-July; I couldn’t lift my arm up. Then I went back to France to see my PT and train a little at the gym, but it made my shoulder injury worse. I came back to Yosemite in probably the worst climbing shape of my life.”
The slow, wall-style process of working Wet Lycra Nightmare was a welcome contrast to the nonstop pace of speed climbing that Pineau and Kelleghan had been immersed in for several months. After all, during all of their training laps for the Triple, they didn’t get the chance to sleep on the wall, make dinner on a ledge, or stare at the stars from halfway up a cliff. They were simply too busy moving.
Dance it out
After her fourteenth try in total—and ninth of that day—on the crux pitch, Pineau lowered onto the Ahwahnee Ledge in defeat.
Nothing was working. In a few hours, the sun would appear and ruin any chance of sticking on the slopers.
Suddenly, she called out to her belayer, John Kasaian. “I need some dancing music,” she said urgently. “I need some ABBA.”
For the next 30 minutes, Pineau, her belayer, and her photographer danced to the most hype songs they could think of: ABBA, the Macarena, “Kiss” by Prince, and whatever else sounded like an “old party.” The more ridiculous the singing and dancing got, the more relaxed Pineau felt.
She knew she had plenty of water on the Ahwahenee Ledge; she could stay here for a few extra days if she needed.
“I had told everyone, ‘I’m not coming down until I do it,’” said Pineau.
This time, when she went back up to try the V9 boulder, it was with a quiet mind. This attempt didn’t have to be the send. “I was just in a pure climbing flow; I wasn’t thinking of anything. Just in execution mode,” she said.
After Pineau finally locked off on the hideous taco hold and stepped up on the giant foothold—this time, not slipping—she didn’t stop to think, but went straight into the second part of the 5.13d pitch, the dyno, jumping into an all-points-off rightward leap.
She caught it. The shock hit at the anchors. “I was between tears and happiness. I couldn’t believe I had just done it after trying 15 times,” she said.
Trapped in the sky
The climb wasn’t over. Now that the crux pitch was complete, Pineau still had three more 5.13a pitches to go.
The first included a hand crack into a long stem corner. To keep tension, she grunted and screamed through the calf pain. “People should be less scared of screaming,” she said, laughing. “A lot of extra power comes from it.”
On November 27, Pineau geared up for the second: a pitch on old pitons that Pineau, who chose to pre-place quickdraws and/or gear on most of her pitches, called “basically a sport climb.”
But it was the final 5.13a pitch of Wet Lycra Nightmare that was the most memorable: the ultra-exposed, bombay chimney that most people picture when they think of the route. To climb it, Pineau would have to hang off a single chicken-wing in a chimney, cut feet, and push herself into an upright position from a high foot.
“It’s the most exposure you’ll ever feel,” she said. “Suddenly, the air is opening. It feels like you’re at the end of the world. Your feet are dangling in the air with 1,500 feet in front of you.”
There was one consolation to reaching this final 5.13a pitch: It was shaded from the afternoon sun, so Pineau knew she had all day to execute the movement. This was a helpful reminder when, on her first go, she followed tick marks that led her to put her hand in the wrong place.
She erased the old tick marks, re-practiced the move, lowered down, and went up for a second go. As soon as she fit into the chimney, she realized she was stuck.
She couldn’t move up. She couldn’t disengage.
“I couldn’t find a way to get up,” she said. “I was just holding on, shaking my legs, trying to find a way up. I don’t know why I messed up the beta. Maybe I was just tired.”
If Pineau has one superpower, it’s fighting through to the end—especially on the last leg of an exhausting mission. For a minute and 30 seconds, she fought against the two walls of the chimney, clawing for a way to stand up and not fall into the air below. When she finally did, she didn’t celebrate.
“It’s not over until it’s over,” she said. “You have an easy slab to the top, but I kept staying focused until I clipped the anchor.”
Someone climbing on Leaning Tower will see the Lower Merced the entire way; it’s only when you reach the summit that the southeast side of the Valley becomes visible. So it was a full, majestic view of El Capitan that greeted Pineau as she scrambled the last few feet to the summit to claim the first female ascent and eighth overall ascent. When she clipped her lead line into the final anchor, she let out a proper victory whoop.
“I couldn’t believe I had done it,” she said, reflecting on the emotions of that moment. “It was definitely one of the biggest fights of my life. I was thinking of all the people that helped me achieve this big goal and how they supported me. I borrowed entire haul bags. I borrowed quick draws and gear and so much stuff. I was like, ‘Wow, I’m really lucky to be here, and to experience this.’”
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