Cobra Crack 5.14 Trad Repeated in 2023

Nat Bailey, 23, has climbed Cobra Crack 5.14 in Squamish after “two and a half years and probably sixty attempts,” as he wrote on his blog here. Bailey said an early motivation to attempt Cobra Crack was the Eliza Earle film Cracking Cobra, which you can watch below.

The first ascent of the steep crack was in 1981 by Tami Knight and Peter Croft. The first free ascent of Cobra Crack was in 2006 by Sonnie Trotter and it quickly rose to popularity as one of the world’s most difficult single-pitch cracks thanks to a film in the Banff Mountain Festival – watch the film below. Since then it’s been climbed by several of the world’s best trad climbers, see a list of the known repeats below. Previous to Trotter’s send, Swiss climber Didier Berthod had been projecting it – watch here.

In 2021, Bailey, along with Drew Marshall and friends, made the (non continuous) first free ascent of The Crack in the Cosmic Egg 5.13b in Zion – read about it here. And in 2020, he opened a new route in the Bow Valley’s Heart Creek called It Takes a Village 5.13b. Bailey is currently writing a regular blog for Coast Mountain Collective, which you can find here.

In an interview with Gripped in 2006, Trotter said: “Cobra is 30 metres long, with the crux pulling over the lip around the two-thirds mark. It involves huge dynamic throws between one- and two-finger locks; pain is ever-present, and the mental crux is overlooking the pain move after move. The redpoint crux comes over the lip on a slippery side pull; the feet are next to nothing, and it takes momentum and a huge throw to latch the final edge, at which point you’re about 15 to 20 feet about your last piece of gear—it’s really exciting.”

Cracking Cobra

Known Cobra Crack Sends
2006 – Sonnie Trotter (Canada)
2008 – Nicolas Favresse (Belgium)
2008 – Ethan Pringle (USA)
2008 – Matt Segal (USA)
2009 – Will Stanhope (Canada)
2009 – Yuji Hirayama (Japan)
2011 – Alex Honnold (USA)
2013 – Pete Whittaker (UK)
2013 – Tom Randall (UK)
2016 – Ben Harnden (Canada)
2017 – Mason Earle (USA)
2017 – Logan Barber (Australia)
2017 – Said Belhaj (Sweden)
2019 – Tristan Baills (Canada)
2021 – Ryan Sklenica (Australia)
2021 – Stu Smith (Canada)
2023 – Nat Bailey (Canada)

Cobra Crack FA

Update: While we had not spoken with Bailey at the time of this story, we have since and you can expect more about this climb and Bailey in the near future.