Peter Whittaker Climbing 300-Foot 5.14d Trad
Pete Whittaker's new trad route Crown Royale is one of the hardest pitches of gear climbing in the world
In October, Pete Whittaker made the first ascent of Crown Royale on the Profile Wall in Norway. The 300-foot pitch is one of the hardest crack climbs in the world at 5.14d.
Whittaker’s grade suggestion makes it one of the hardest crack climbs in the world, being a step up from Recovery Drink 5.14c which Whittaker repeated in 2019, and Blackbeard’s Tears 5.14c. Bon Voyage and Tribe are two of the other hardest gear-protected pitches in the world, but they’re more face climbs than pure crack, and their first ascentionists never graded them. The 100-metre Crown Royale required Whittaker to untie from his 80-metre rope and solo the last 20 metres.
Whittaker said the redpoint took around an hour and he placed 17 pieces overall. “I started with eight pieces and tagged up the remaining nine from the halfway rest,” he reported on 8a.nu. “I’ve no idea about the weight of the rack, I tried to select small pieces in general.” Watch him on the FA below.
Over the past decade, Whittaker has become one of the world’s strongest trad climbers, with climbs like Recovery Drink 5.14c, Cobra Crack 5.14b and Century Crack 5.14b. Just last month, he made the first ascent of Eigerdosis 5.14b on the Profile Wall. In 2016, Whittaker became the first person to rope-solo free-climb El Cap in under 24 hours with an ascent of Freerider 5.12d in just over 20 hours. He most recently climbed Stranger than Fiction 5.14b in Utah.
Crown Royale FA
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