Freerider is the Astroman of the new millennium. This route is climbing at its finest. The route follows complex crack systems up the southwest face of El Capitan. Essentially it is the Salathe wall with a few variations used (pioneered by Alex Huber) to avoid the numerous 5.13 crux pitches first freed by Paul Piana and Todd Skinner in the mid 80's.
Location
The first 10 pitches of this route are often independently completed as a separate route and is known as Freeblast-5.11. A good description of Freeblast already exists on this site under the El Capitan base routes heading.
Protection
One set micronuts and nuts. One purple metolius, doubles from blue metolius to #3 camalot (with 3 orange metolius/.5 BD), one #4 camalot, one #5 camalot, one #6 camalot, and one #6 friend. 23 alpine style draws.
Check out Clint Cummins' web page for history, beta and topos for this route, and other long Yosemite free routes. He has recorded free ascents of this route up to #32 in June 2008.
Has anyone tried the Teflon Corner lately? I've heard from many folks that the bolted "Huber" variation has lost a key hold, and is now much harder (mid-13ish?). Was this the bolt line to the right of the dihedral? Are there any variations to the left? The corner itself is still 12d, I guess... What sort of style is it?
Thanks in advance, Scott
PS- Any beta on the "Scotty Burke" OW? I've seen the Monster and have an idea of what to expect (ughh...), is the SBOW harder?
By Monomaniac Administrator From: Morrison, CO Nov 16, 2009
The Teflon Corner is insecure ninja stemming. Its the dihedral left of the Huber Variation. The pitch actually wanders all over the place, and veers way left, below the teflon corner, before jogging back right to an optional belay right of the Huber Variation.
The Huber variation boulder problem did experience some breakage... a large breadloaf like sloper broke off. It is probably solid v7 now. It can still be done, its just it may require a very commiting dyno and not offer a clipping stance before you soar. The Teflon corner is a water polished dihedral that requires crazy palm stemming and body english. Don't be afraid of it- once I chalked my palms REALLY well, I freed it right off... I did feel like I was going to fall the whole time though. I remember a lot of backstepping and dropkneeing in the smears. After it was done it felt like one of those things that is impossible to rate.
The SBOW is harder than the monster in my opinion, but it is not as long and sustained. We found the trick was to lieback out of the crack for a section low on the route, and then try to swim back into it for the difficult slightly overhanging section of about 15 feet or so.
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