The summer has been marked by Kilian Jornet’s unclassifiable alpine ride, a whirlwind of speed that has eclipsed at least one great achievement on the north face of Ben Nevis (Scotland). If the world of climbing and mountaineering has finally understood that nutrition, psychology or planned and scientific training are an obligatory toll to advance at full speed, patience remains, on the other hand, one of the great virtues to be mastered in the most technical and exposed climbs. There are many ways of understanding rock climbing, but none preserves such a solid ethic as that which prevails in the United Kingdom, a place where, curiously, there are hardly any decent walls.
There, local climbers take refuge on cliffs, on crags in the woods and progress on gritstone, a mixture of limestone and sandstone on which they climb using self-protection, even when it rains. And it rains often. In the rest of Europe, climbing is so popular because it is safe: single-pitch walls suitable for sport climbing are protected with mechanical or chemical anchors that can hold more than 2,000 kilos of weight. You can fall as many times as you like without fear of injury. In the United Kingdom, placing a fixed belay is a heresy that prostitutes the essence of climbing: moving vertically is a game as much physical as mental in which the commitment assumed rules.
One of the kings of this type of climbing, also known as Trad (from traditional), is James Pearson. On August 1st he completed the second repeat of the Echo Wall route on the north face of Ben Nevis, first climbed in 2008 by climbing icon Dave MacLeod. The route is 70 metres vertical and runs along a ridge. The beauty of it is that not only are the moves terribly difficult, but protecting yourself is equally complicated. In addition, the hardest sequence is at the top of the route, and a fall could end up with the climber on the ground if he were to jump over one of the protections he had placed.
Pearson became famous in 2008: he was 22 years old and had an outsized ego fueled by a series of early ascents, so he proclaimed to the world that he had just climbed the most difficult and challenging route in Trad. The route was called The Walk of Life and Pearson gave him the highest degree of commitment and difficulty: E12. At that time there was only one E11 on the planet, climbed of course by Dave MacLeod… and Pearson had not even attempted it. Soon the questions began to arise: how dare he propose such a grade?
In the climbing world, lying or deliberate omissions are like doping in other sports. In the UK, inflating a difficulty is almost as serious as killing a family member: ethics is ethics. Pearson’s record book was soon scrutinised, and it was concluded that he was a strong, brave climber, but lacking in humility and not enough experience. Then came the final straw: Dave MacLeod climbed The Walk of Life and severely downgraded it: in his opinion it was not higher than E9. Although social networks did not exist at that time, Pearson’s discredit was enormous, so much so that he left the islands and moved to Innsbruck (Austria) trying to hide his shame while he struggled to progress as a climber.
Innsbruck is the Disneyland of climbing, but Pearson had no patience for a severe training regime, so his performance plummeted and he soon found himself caught in a vicious cycle of alcohol, drugs and partying. Two things saved him: he met his current wife, French climber Caroline Ciavaldini, and his sponsor, The North Face, gave him one last chance: a year to rehabilitate. For years, Pearson learned to rebuild himself but remained under suspicion. The community did not forget. Despite everything, he greatly improved his strength, his ability as a sport climber and he never strayed from the ethic of Trad.
Unlike sport climbing, which only requires precise movement using the strength of the body, Trad requires a psychological strength that the vast majority of climbers do not possess. It is about being brave. Trusting in the quality of the floating anchors that one places oneself, knowing that they can fail. Understanding that a fall can have serious or fatal consequences. Preparing oneself so that fear does not short-circuit the brain. Generally, most Trad climbers practice the route by climbing on a pulley, that is, with the rope already passed through the end of the route. Once they have understood the movements, how to protect themselves and seeing that they are capable of completing the challenge without falling, they launch themselves from the base of the route, placing one anchor after another when the rock allows it. The exposure is brutal.
Pearson is a master of this devilish game. In February 2023, he climbed for the first time a Trad route in Annot (France) that he had discovered and designed. This time, he did not want to comment on its difficulty, he took 10 months to reflect and in December he announced that in his opinion the route had a difficulty of E12 (9a), the highest ever given to a self-protection route. In sport climbing, 9a is an enormous difficulty when you consider that the highest grade reached is 9c.
Pearson almost begged the strongest climbers to try his work and confirm or not his expectations: 15 years after proposing his first E12 only to be beaten and fall into depression, the Englishman showed renewed courage, this time based on maturity. He was looking for his redemption. However, he seemed naked again in the eyes of others. Adam Ondra, the best climber of the century, travelled to Annot. And he was amazed. The route was not only extraordinarily aesthetic, but also difficult and exposed. It deserved to be E12.
And so Pearson decided to settle some old debts. He travelled to Scotland, settled beneath Ben Nevis, tried out Dave MacLeod’s magnum opus Echo Wall, hanging from a rope and unaccompanied, and after several attempts, rain and the typical Ben Nevis fog, his wife came to reassure him. Where MacLeod had invested two years of work, Pearson needed only 10 days to achieve success. His comment was equal to his feat: “16 years later, I am a very different person. I am a husband and a father who has climbed hundreds of Trad routes around the world, but I am still the same kid who talks about a piece of rock and only asks for your approval.”
