Recent Sendage:

• _V8
  
  Jake Tiger

  _{2024-09-30 (FA)}
  Just 5 mins up the Slhanay Trail youll find this breathtaking highball. With signs of being previously cleaned it clearly had been tried in the past but no one has ever claimed a ropeless ascent. Labelled as ‘Trailside Highball VH’ in the guidebook. I started practicing it on a rope. Wire brushing where I found usable little crystals and eventually found a path to the top. The headwall didn’t feel hard but it definitely felt insecure. There are no handholds and just tiny little crystals to stand on for that entire upper section. I realized, with the downward sloping landing and the mega drop off after the angle change, it would be reckless to attempt this with just bouldering pads beneath me. I had never fallen on the top section, but still, it felt far too insecure to, what would essentially be, soloing it, even if I had truckloads of pads at the bottom. Thats where the idea for the net came in. I found some cheap nets on Amazon that were designed to be play nets for childrens playgrounds. They only had 500lbs breaking strength, so I bought two of them and stacked them on top of each other. The trees in the area were staged perfectly to rig it. It took two sessions of jumping into the net to feel relatively comfortable with it. Such an unnatural feeling. On the day of the send, as I was practicing the headwall on a rope, I went for a test fall, via rapid rappel, into the net. I snapped one of nets corners. Clearly not rated for these impacts I hastily made a repair to that corner and practiced the top section again until I was extremely confident on it. I then came down, took off the harness and went for a ground up attempt. I sent it pretty much first attempt. The rigging of the net took about 2.5 hours. It was a total of five trips up the hill with pads. Two trips were done previous nights to stash pads and three trips the day of. It was a lot of hard work, 8 hours total wire brushing over the span of three sessions. I spent more time prepping for this climb than actually climbing or practicing it but in the moment of the send, the earth stood still, I was incredibly present and my climbing felt fluid and joyous.