Who hammered a supposedly hardest sport climb in the world?

Louie Anderson

THE BOAST: I conquered one of the nation's toughest climbing routes
PROBLEM IS: Experts say it can't be climbed

In the summer of 1995, Anderson shimmied up Refiner's Fire, a 20-degree overhanging wall near Barstow, California, that at the time was one of only two 5.14b climbing routes in America. Or so he says. Unfortunately, Anderson has no video, no track record, no proof. What he has is his word, which was good enough to initially net him considerable fanfare in the sport-climbing world. In the years since, however, many elite rock-jocks have taken a hard look at the wall and a hard look at the 31-year-old Anderson, and have come to a different conclusion. Their new name for the route: Refiner's Liar. "On his best day, the guy couldn't even come close to climbing it," says Randy Leavitt, a former training partner of Anderson's. A highly regarded sport climber, Leavitt himself tried the route and failed. Then he dangled $1,000 in front of Anderson simply to repeat the feat (with cameras rolling). Anderson declined. So Leavitt asked Boone Speed, who had redpointed the nation's only other 5.14b, what he could make of Refiner's. "Randy figured if anyone could do it, I could," shrugs Speed. He couldn't: "You'd almost have to be a fly to climb that wall." Anderson dismisses the attempts to vet his story; it took a year and a half of study to manage the 19 moves on the smooth, granite face, he says. "It's not a clear-cut thing that you're going to be able to repeat it every time," Anderson insists. Thus it seems his feat will go unconfirmed. Which is fine with him. "I don't care if anyone thinks I'm kick-ass or not," Anderson says. "I'm comfortable with the truth

All from way back in the day when you could be a pro with a considerably higher mix of BS than actual achievement.

So it is possible it was never hammered.