RIP Kurt Albert. Who is redpointing this week?

In honor of Kurt Albert's recent passing, I decided that it was time to get my act together for a specific redpoint that I have had on my mind for a long while.

This was one of the first routes that caught my eye when I arrived in the Wasatch just over 4 years ago. At the time, I did not know anyone who had successfully climbed the entire route. The first pitch was not too difficult, though at times I found the protection a bit tricky. Since then, it does not seem as devious.

The second pitch however holds the true crux. I have since heard stories from all sorts of climbers. Even a few brief reports on the internet. I knew that this crux section regularly spit people out, and some have even epic'ed and necessitated rescue from other climbers to get off the exposed second pitch. I've gotten quite a bit better at climbing wide cracks in the last 3 or so years, but any skills I may think I have prove not to be enough.

Yesterday, we thought that temps might be good enough if we could catch a break in between the rain storms. We dispensed with the first pitch and I picked out the rack for the second. As I started up, I got pretty nervous. Not only was this one of my longstanding projects, but I had not been on the sharp end of the rope for over a month. There is a good rest just before the crux and I made sure to take my time to get composed and remember my beta.

And it went! Once I was through the hard section, I ran it out with only a few quick pieces of gear to the next belay. I brought up the second and third and we hiked off. We were able to get a few more quick pitches in before the rain came down.

So after 4 years in the Wasatch, 4 years since my first attempt on this line, 4 years of gritty, thrutchy learning on granite...

I finally redpointed Crescent Crack.

redpointed after the fall: aka totally unreliable yesterday :)

Nice work Zac! Im going to be honest here and say that I redpointed this about 2 months ago after backing off several times in my first few years of climbing... still scares me.

I've been doing a lot of Couch Redpointing lately... I feel ya.

Zac Robinson wrote:I finally redpointed Crescent Crack.

I knew what route you were talking about by the second paragraph - the first pitch was my first trad lead. We rapped so my partner could lead mexican crack that day.

I went back again last season but we started to late and the sun was setting by the time we finished the first pitch.

It's still at the top of my todo list... grats on your sweet redpoint!

Good job, Zac.

The first time I led that pitch was after my partner waffled on it for about an hour. Up, down, up, down, up, down...

Finally, he said he didn't want to do it and asked me to lead it. I did, but not before a fair amount of waffling myself.

Meanwhile, a soloist passed us about 4 times as he did laps on it.

Again, good send.

when i was a kid (and even now for that matter), kurt albert was one of my heroes. RIP.