Tom Ballard Sends New European D15-

Tom Ballard has sent his new D15- project in the Italian Dolomites.

Tom Ballard is the son of the famous alpinist Alison Hargreaves, who died on K2 in 1995 at the age of 33. Alison was pregnant with Tom with she climbed the north face of the Eiger.

In the winter of 2014/15, Ballard climbed the Eiger’s north face in winter while soloing the six great north faces of the Alps in one winter season.

Last summer, he was also working on developing a new crag in Italy he called Tomorrow’s World, which is a 50-metre roof near Passo Fedaia in Italy.

In 2015, he established a number of drytooling routes at the cave, including Edge of Tomorrow D13, Fear Index D12, Real Steel D9, Ovlivian D14, Let Them Eat Cake D13+ and Je Ne Sais Quoi D14+.

Ballard’s new route is reported to be D15-, which would make it one of the most difficult winter routes anywhere. Drytooling or “D” routes are different than “M” routes in that they don’t have ice on them. Europe has a number of  drytool-only crags, which have natural and manufactured holds.

Also in European drytooling news, Marianne van der Steen flashed Kamasutra D13+ at Bus del Quai di Eseo in Italy.

More details to come and be sure to follow Ballard on Instagram here.