Should the Crack on Silence 5.15d be Jammed?
The world's hardest sport route has a crack that makes up one of the cruxes. Pete Whittaker and Tom Randall talk about Stefano Ghisolfi's recent attempts
Silence is one of the hardest rock climbs in the world at 5.15d and was first climbed by Adam Ondra. A few years ago, crack master Pete Whittaker wanted to see if you could jam through the crux, so he roped-up and gave it a few burns.
Whittaker was able to link a few jams in the upside-down granite splitter, to which, Ondra said: “In my point of view, I guess the new beta might be similar difficulty for me. The new beta requires wearing flat shoes on both feet (instead of a soft downturned shoe on my right) which would definitely make the other sections harder for me. Great news is that the route is possible without dislocating the knee though, which makes the route much better.”
Fast forward to this year when Stefano Ghisolfi visited Flatanger to project Silence. While he didn’t repeat the world’s hardest sport climb, Ghisolfi did manage to find new beta. In the below video, Whittaker and Tom Randall, two of the world’s best crack climbers, discuss Ghisolfi’s approach.
Silence Beta
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