Will Ondra onsight the Salathe?!

According to some Czech thing, google translated to English, Ondra is intending to try and onsight the Salathe on El Cap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zefqr_unb6I

This would be the first onsight of an El Cap route if he's successful... and it's "only" 13c, which is well below his normal onsight limit for sport routes (he has onsighted 14d, flashed 15a).  

Now taking bets... will he pull it off?  My money says... yes.

Not going to give you my money! ;)

The following is a statement from Ondra through Black Diamond [on climbing the Nose]: “Yesterday was probably the longest climbing day of my life. We went with my dad up on The Nose, wanting to free it in a day. We started at first light and up to the Great Roof it was going well, onsighting all of the pitches in a few hours. But the Great Roof shut me down. I had a pretty good flash go, got the beta, lowered and gave it a second shot thinking I would fire it off easily, but I had not realized how important the feet are on this climb.
“After climbing so many pitches and taking no rest after my flash, they were super shaky and weak. I fell, gave it even a third go and fell in the end of the traverse. There was no point in giving it more tries and we just wanted to top out. Time to switch to night climbing and onsighting all of the pitches except for Changing Corner, topping out at midnight in the starting rain.

cue in the geezers with the inevitable "there's no way in tarnation that a sport climbing euro weenie could possible understand the techniques involved in climbing granite cracks and the craftery required to place the widgets....... blah blah blah....."
(heating up the popcorn....)

I too onsight 13c.. 

Based on his Dawn Wall performance I think flashing Salathe seems reasonable. 

https://www.climbing.com/news/twins-free-el-cap/

Only 5.9 C2 climb I am sure someone has onsight climbed it the way most climb it. He is just trying to be the first to onsight free climb it.

Although if someone wants to they could change the wiki page to say onsight only counts for free climbing but currently it just says... "A clean ascent, with no prior practice or beta. For ascents on the first attempt with receiving beta see flash. "

Yuji damn near did it, I think Ondra can do it.

Honor system. No one knows if he pulls on a draw secretly.

Russ Keane wrote: Honor system. No one knows if he pulls on a draw secretly.

Video the entire climb or it didn't happen.

ViperScale . wrote:

Video the entire climb or it didn't happen.

I'm pretty sure the standard interpretation of an onsight requires no fewer than two uninterrupted videos (at least one must be capturing the climbing at all times but two is preferred). It blows me away that people think they can claim these feats without adequate proof...

apoet wrote:

I'm pretty sure the standard interpretation of an onsight requires no fewer than two uninterrupted videos (at least one must be capturing the climbing at all times but two is preferred). It blows me away that people think they can claim these feats without adequate proof...

You think I could market a new watch that has a timer that is slower than normal time so people can claim faster nose ascents?

Briggs Lazalde wrote:

Technically the higher you climb the slower the watch does move. You age slower at higher elevations. 

Time moves slower as gravity increases so the higher you climb the faster time goes by.

ViperScale . wrote:

Time moves slower as gravity increases so the higher you climb the faster time goes by.

but you are rotating faster as the distance to the center of the earth increases the higher you go, so time moves slower

The Czech Republic is at latitude 46° and Yosemite is at latitude 36°, and because the earth's rotation creates centrifugal force that decreases gravity closer to the equator, Ondra will feel lighter on the Salathe than he does at home. Has he been in Flatanger recently? Because that's a latitude 64.5° and must be like training with a weight belt. The irrefutable truth of physics means that he is certain to onsight.

rafael wrote:

but you are rotating faster as the distance to the center of the earth increases the higher you go, so time moves slower

You are thinking about like the ISS where they are going around the earth every 90 mins so over a year they age like 0.01 secs or something slower per year. However if you are still on the earth I don't think the velocity time dilation is greater than gravitational time dilation but than I could be wrong.

Floyd Eggers wrote: Both are aspects of time dilation and are not independent of each other. I believe the speed would cause more of an effect than gravity in this case.

EDIT (Seeing if I can edit stupid post limit):Think if you draw a line from the center of the earth to outer space. The rotation of the ISS is going faster than that line would be moving with the spinning of the earth but if you are standing on top of El cap that line would be static relative to where you are and the rotation of the earth. So I don't know how much faster than the rotation of the earth you must be traveling to counter your distance from the center of the earth but I would assume it had to be faster than that static line. If you know a line to someone who has used an atomic clock and tested difference between elevations on earth let me know

I would be interested in the answer.

ViperScale . wrote:

You are thinking about like the ISS where they are going around the earth every 90 mins so over a year they age like 0.01 secs or something slower per year. However if you are still on the earth I don't think the velocity time dilation is greater than gravitational time dilation but than I could be wrong.

Both are aspects of time dilation and are not independent of each other. I believe the speed would cause more of an effect than gravity in this case.

I call this kind of thread drift "death by nerd"

Who's "Will Ondra?" Does he have a little brother?

slim wrote: cue in the geezers with the inevitable "there's no way in tarnation that a sport climbing euro weenie could possible understand the techniques involved in climbing granite cracks and the craftery required to place the widgets....... blah blah blah....."
(heating up the popcorn....)

Maybe you should step off on the old geezers shit.  At least until you see it.  I'm 61 and would love to see him pull this off.  I can respect what's been done, what's being done and what will be done.

Good ol' Willie Ondra.  Damn, he was good.