Long push in alpine style

I was wondering what was your tips to climb big walls as speed as possible, with less gear possible for 24+h straight. 

How do you stay focus, how do you manage the lack of sleep?

Practice. Do smaller big days first. 12 hours, then 16 hours, then 18, then 20, etc. Learn how your body responds. 

Fitness. The more fit you are, the less tired the exertion will make you, so the less tired you'll be as the hours accumulate. 

Caffeine. Definitely helps with perception of alertness, especially if you don't use it often. 

Hydration, nutrition, sleep banking. Stay well hydrated and well fed for the preceding few days at least. Bank sleep for a couple weeks prior if possible. Add an extra 30-60 minutes to your sleep window each night and an early start or late finish or long push are all much more tolerable. 

Practice. Make no mistake, performance and decision making will decline with long efforts. Make sure your systems are dialed and good habits are ingrained. 

Only take a six pack with you, you’ll have to hit the top once you run out

Lead in blocks and have the leader short fix. Once the second gets to the belay they can tag up the gear that's needed and take a catnap until the leader runs out of rope to shortfix with, then wake up and place them on belay. 

Otherwise, counterintuitively, you can go faster by slowing down once you're tired. This will allow you to make sure you're not screwing the second or the leader with rope management mistakes or things like that. Just force yourself to keep moving but double check things to ensure safety. As one of my mentors would say, risk and speed are for the rested, deliberate caution is for the exhausted. 

Hydration and electrolytes are also important to prevent cramping as the hours and days drag on. Drink more down low as you'll haul less weight and rationing up higher is preferable to rationing down low only haul more weight. 

It can also help to start out with routes that are harder down low and easier up high to pad the safety margin for things. Tangerine Trip or Virginia to tangerine trip is a good route on El Cap to test your long term pushing mettle as the upper pitches fly by even when you're completely worked and exhausted. 

If doing a shorter route that will be in a day or so, sort it out so that the bulk of the climbing is done in daylight. Normally this means starting at night when you're fresh so less likely to want to sleep. then when you're exhausted the sun is up and makes it slightly harder to drift off when belaying. 

Fail Fallingwrote:

Lead in blocks and have the leader short fix. Once the second gets to the belay they can tag up the gear that's needed and take a catnap until the leader runs out of rope to shortfix with, then wake up and place them on belay. 

My goal is to not haul anything, the second climbing with a backpack. Short fixing still has a significant advantage to taking the risk of doing it (only free climbing) ? ( I haven't try it cause it fell sketchy to me) 

Thx for all other replies, interesting thoughts! 

Tan guywrote:

My goal is to not haul anything, the second climbing with a backpack. Short fixing still has a significant advantage to taking the risk of doing it (only free climbing) ? ( I haven't try it cause it fell sketchy to me) 

If you haul your water in a backpack on your back, you're still hauling that weight up the wall and the heavier the backpack the more effort must be used to clean. 

There's minimal additional risk to short fixing versus being belayed. You're just self-belaying yourself as the leader and if you fall you'll fall exactly as far as you would if you were being belayed. The risk is in the placements you make, not the type of belaying that's happening. 

I’ve hauled on every el cap push ive done, climbing in three makes the effort of hauling irrelevant. After the leader short fixes the second starts cleaning and the third tensions the rope with their jugs, snugs up the bag with a far end haul set up and releases the bag on to the rope below the jugs and the lowers them self out. They far end haul it through any roofs it could get stuck on and then once they get to an anchor you just put the hauler and a downward facing jumar on haul line to be able to hoist the hauler on the anchor and begin the haul. As long as the leader minimizes the time at the belay they won’t need to lead that fast to get to the top in a day. Theoretically to do zodiac in a day you can stay at a pace of leading each pitch in an hour and a half

Meth 

Hayden robinsonwrote:

I’ve hauled on every el cap push ive done, climbing in three makes the effort of hauling irrelevant. After the leader short fixes the second starts cleaning and the third tensions the rope with their jugs, snugs up the bag with a far end haul set up and releases the bag on to the rope below the jugs and the lowers them self out. They far end haul it through any roofs it could get stuck on and then once they get to an anchor you just put the hauler and a downward facing jumar on haul line to be able to hoist the hauler on the anchor and begin the haul. As long as the leader minimizes the time at the belay they won’t need to lead that fast to get to the top in a day. Theoretically to do zodiac in a day you can stay at a pace of leading each pitch in an hour and a half

I'm planning to climb a 700m (2300 ft) wall in France (Grand Dru  Pilier du Trident ). it is in a remote location, so I won't have hauling gear or jumar, only the bare minimum. Hauling gear is not a good option for another reason, it's an alpine route, not straightforward as El cap can be

SirTobyThe3rd Mwrote:

Meth 

Not in my ethic but I'm curious of how many big names use this type of cheat.

Tan guywrote:

I'm planning to climb a 700m (2300 ft) wall in France (Grand Dru  Pilier du Trident ). it is in a remote location, so I won't have hauling gear or jumar, only the bare minimum. Hauling gear is not a good option for another reason, it's an alpine route, not straightforward as El cap can be

So without an ascender, I'm assuming you're not doing aid intensive pitches where your second needs to follow by ascending the fixed line. If that's the case,  you're not doing a bigwall push, you're doing a long multipitch freeclimb. Considering the forum you posted this in, none of what we're going to give you is going to be worthwhile since you're using different systems than bigwall climbing. This may be better posted in the trad forum

Fail Fallingwrote:

So without an ascender, I'm assuming you're not doing aid intensive pitches where your second needs to follow by ascending the fixed line. If that's the case,  you're not doing a bigwall push, you're doing a long multipitch freeclimb. Considering the forum you posted this in, none of what we're going to give you is going to be worthwhile since you're using different systems than bigwall climbing. This may be better posted in the trad forum

Who knows, maybe it's a proper wall, but being French the A3 goes at pedestrian 5.13 or something... Hahaha. 

But seriously, fix and follow could still be a useful tactic for the steeper pitches. And that's basically the free climber's aid climbing.

Tan guywrote:

Not in my ethic but I'm curious of how many big names use this type of cheat.

Pretty sure it worked for Hermann Buhl.

Fail Fallingwrote:

So without an ascender, I'm assuming you're not doing aid intensive pitches where your second needs to follow by ascending the fixed line. If that's the case,  you're not doing a bigwall push, you're doing a long multipitch freeclimb. Considering the forum you posted this in, none of what we're going to give you is going to be worthwhile since you're using different systems than bigwall climbing. This may be better posted in the trad forum

I was asking about fatigue managment, i was thinking that big wall climber could have better experience to share than trad climber....

What Kevin said about water also applies to food for me. I find it harder to eat as I get more tired (and the water runs out) and so I try and force food down at almost every belay early in a climb to get ahead. Also, bring food that is easy to swallow when you're mouth is dry and you're somewhat dehydrated. Chewing some bar into dry granola and not being able to swallow it is unpleasant.

X Cwrote:

What Kevin said about water also applies to food for me. I find it harder to eat as I get more tired (and the water runs out) and so I try and force food down at almost every belay early in a climb to get ahead. Also, bring food that is easy to swallow when you're mouth is dry and you're somewhat dehydrated. Chewing some bar into dry granola and not being able to swallow it is unpleasant.

Yes, in find running gels very easy to eat, it's my go to food on the wall

Electrolytes into the water is not plaisant but as mentioned above it really help the body, I'm already using it

Tan guywrote:

I was asking about fatigue managment, i was thinking that big wall climber could have better experience to share than trad climber....

And yet your responses to bigwall fatigue management have been pretty much "that won't apply to me." Sooooooooooo

Tan guywrote:

Not in my ethic but I'm curious of how many big names use this type of cheat.

I've used LSD microdoses. They're great at buffering pain and keeping focus. 

My only issues with microdoses is sometimes they exacerbate headaches at elevation.  

For this kind of route its really not got much in common with big walls, I recommend you simply go to the envers and get as much experience doing big days on rock. You will ideally be climbing in the dark, in the summer you'll have a lot of day light but will still probably end up rapping in the dark.

 Get efficient with your transitions, the only way you can actually speed climbing up more than getting your systems dialed would be to simul climb all the scrambly parts. You're doing basically a scramble with a few pitches of not particularly difficult climbing, you wont be worked liked you would be big walling, speed will likely be determined by your ability to route find. 

Tan guywrote:

I was wondering what was your tips to climb big walls as speed as possible, with less gear possible for 24+h straight. 

How do you stay focus, how do you manage the lack of sleep?

in my experience, sleepiness/fatigue comes in waves.  sugar helps a lot, caffeine helps to some extent (although it seems there is a point where additional caffeine is not useful anymore).