Climber Drops Rope, Hauls Guitar, Gets Album Cover Shot

A climber succeeded in getting a photograph of himself mid-route in Red River Gorge for his new album. Just to be clear, we’re not condoning nor criticizing this, we’ve just never seen anything like it before.

The climber’s name is Wade Matthew and you can listen to the album he dropped recently here – listen to his song Colorado Sky below. He posted his new album cover art on Mountain Project here and shared it on social media. It depicts him sitting in a famous Hueco on a route called Banshee in the Solarium. The image was shared to a Red River Gorge Facebook page with mixed reviews, check it out here.

Banshee is a 30-metre 5.11c first climbed by Eric Anderson in 2005. The description on Mountain Project reads, “Anchor your belayer and step out over the void, follow bolts up and right to a huge hueco. Sit down and ponder the meaning of life. Exit the hueco and make difficult moves up and right to a second hueco… Sit down and ponder why we climb. Exit the hueco and follow jugs to the anchor.”

There’s a long history of climbers pulling up on routes for things other than climbing, including bar-b-que parties on routes like the Grand Wall in Squamish, but we’ve never seen anyone haul a guitar up.

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A post shared by Wade Matthew (@wadematthewmusic)

Colorado Sky