What is the hardest route rated 5.10a you haveever done?

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covelocos

Trad climber

Nor Cal

Apr 24, 2012 - 01:12am PT

Taxman, JTree

bergbryce

Mountain climber

South Lake Tahoe, CA

Apr 24, 2012 - 01:52am PT

Sacherer Cracker
But that was when I was pretty new to crack climbing. Need to get on it again.

mike m

Trad climber

black hills

Apr 24, 2012 - 01:59am PT

That crack in Arkansas looks cool.

klk

Trad climber

cali

Apr 24, 2012 - 02:10am PT

hardest ten a i ever did was damnation crack at leavenworth. it was rated 5.8 at the time. or maybe that 5.8+ wide crack on the other side of the crag, i forget the name. they're both probably rated 10b now.

comic book had like one weird 5.9 move off that big ledge and the rest of it was like 4th class. exorcist is a 5.8/9 finger crack to a single, height-dependent move that is probably an ungradeable jump move for all you shorties.

i'm with munge, five nine has way more old-skool potential than anything in 5.10

and donini is right, these days all the backwater areas without cutting edge difficulty overcompensate with chestbeating moderates. we may not have any real five fifteens (fourteens, thirteens, etc.), but just wait til you get on one of our 5.9s.

Inner City

Trad climber

East Bay

Apr 24, 2012 - 04:23am PT

Crest Jewell...Kidding!! hmm, not a lot of good choices for me here...uh,Cryin' Time Again...er,

maybe that 10 wide crack at Echo Summit, what is the name? OOh, that sh#t was bad...Jam Session that was it! Holmes led it and I thought, holy phu....brutally hard and sustained and vertical and...oh no...

I preferred the easy 10a's like Crest Jewell (easiest ever at the grade?)

Crescent Arch is nearly 10a eh, 5.9 plus is a great rating! A little harder than Crest Jewell!

The Vision is a great 10a. One Move.

Peter Haan

Trad climber

San Francisco, CA

Apr 24, 2012 - 09:14am PT

I would suggest The Crack of Doom is the most daunting 5.10a I have ever done. (June 1971). It makes a farce of grading! It is 5.10a regardless; the rating is correct and I thought so back then too. But the route has so much power and foreboding, it one of those "5.10a routes for 5.11 trad leaders". But don't forget that a 5.10 rating (no letters back then yet) was a very heavy rating, the highest actually.

Even the first pitch is scary: a dead vertical to overhanging black jagged chunky lieback flake leading to the slot starting the actual main crack system---this feature is never any harder than 5.9 on lead but is really steep, scary, highly unusual and quite burly--- very off-putting! In fact today many would rate this pitch 10a just because they would be so blown out doing it. It looks like "non-climbing" actually!

The middle pitches are largely S-chimney and miles of heel-and-toe mostly with little protection---- you just climb. And the shorty final pitch, the only pitch of 5.10 on the four pitch route, is also very unusual, exposed, and would be an awful place to screw up, especially so very close to the belayer (very little rope out in the system) and with maybe two things in for your lead. Terrific route as an ensemble of leads located in the awe-inspiring giant alcove right next to Despair. That the final moves on the route are actually the crux---- really operatic! You are finishing off four hundred feet off the ground, doing trick moves close to your belayer, forced out of the crack system to surmount a small overhanging. Never as technical as many of the harder Pratt routes but Doom really is a masterpiece..... your understanding broadens, considering it was done fifty years ago, ground up. Leading off into its features was more than Roper could handle even and he along with Sacherer were roundly defeated by this climb. Very very few climbers today are capable of matching what Chuck did on first ascents in his best luminary years and I am thinking that this one climb best represents the depth of mind he had in those early sixties. He really believed, 'Technique is your protection' and climbed this way from the beginning.

donini

Trad climber

Ouray, Colorado

Apr 24, 2012 - 09:15am PT

Here we go again, the ST obsession with grades. The hardest 10a is not 10a and the easiest 10a is not 10a, they are both something else and you can either do them or you can´t.

donini

Trad climber

Ouray, Colorado

Apr 24, 2012 - 09:26am PT

Sandbagging.....now I can get into that. Good weather today in Rio, going out to clip some not very close together bolts....shudder.

MisterE

Social climber

Apr 24, 2012 - 09:31am PT

Modern Warfare, Joshua Tree.

Knee-size dependent, and my knees are too big. The only climb that Maidy could do that I couldn't, ever.

Elcapinyoazz

Social climber

Joshua Tree

Apr 24, 2012 - 10:30am PT

hardest ten a i ever did was damnation crack at leavenworth. it was rated 5.8 at the time.

Still rated 5.9 AFAIK.

Evel

Trad climber

Nedsterdam CO

Apr 24, 2012 - 11:50am PT

Hardest 5.10a I've ever done was some 5.9 at Seneca.

can't say

Social climber

Pasadena CA

Apr 24, 2012 - 12:39pm PT

Siberian Swarm Screw in Yose

Rankin

Social climber

Greensboro, North Carolina

Apr 24, 2012 - 12:49pm PT

Chingando.

steve shea

climber

Apr 24, 2012 - 01:02pm PT

omph slot, crack of doom

matisse

climber

Apr 24, 2012 - 02:07pm PT

I'm with Seamstress on Bird on a Wire. I followed Emily on the crux, and I think it was her second 10a lead. I didn't think it was harder than 10a and I'm a whiner too (even on top rope)

David Wilson

climber

Apr 24, 2012 - 02:15pm PT

I'm going with Reeds left side, knowing full well it is much easier than Crack of Doom ( that I haven't done )

Bruce Morris

Social climber

Belmont, California

Apr 24, 2012 - 02:38pm PT

I've led the OW pitch on the left side of Reeds and it had that I'm glad to be alive now that it's over feeling when I pulled onto the belay ledge. But I think I was more grateful to be alive after finishing the 5.10a crutch on Pink Dreams. So that's my index of hardness: How grateful you are to be still alive after you've finished the lead. Not too many 5.10a's out there like that, but those are two I can think of.

Vitaliy M.

Mountain climber

San Francisco

Apr 24, 2012 - 02:48pm PT

Chingando.

I would say it is pretty easy for a 10a OW. Compared to 10c Generator Crack (which I can't even fking start) is a walk up. I need to do more OWs to understand the whole rating thing for them. Seems like either you know the technique, or you don't. When you don't it's a 5.11, when you do it is a 5.9. But I would rate Generator as 11+ with all the variety of techniques it requires, and irregularities/being part overhanging too.