Czech climbers Dušan "Stoupa" Janák and Jirka Šrůtek climbed the route Freerider (V, 5.13a) on El Capitan in Yosemites in the latter half of October 2006.

The route is classified 5.13a  the American scale and they climbed it the RK style, the hardest pitches PP, the easier ones OS.

They climbed the starting passage „The Free Blast“ and rappelled down on fix ropes at first. After a period of cold weather, they came back and finished their ascent in three days. They didn’t reherse their ascent before (i.e. they didn’t try the hardest pitches before, didn’t stash water, food and bivouac gear on the wall), and climbed up with all big wall gear and climbed the pitches in one push immediately. So the hardest pitches were pink pointed.

Altogather 33 pitches, its autors are the Hubers brothers. This was not the first Czech attempt of the route.  In 2004  Tomáš Sobotka and Jindra Hudeček dmade a worthy attempt. They climbed the Free Blast to heart ledge in three hours, and also absailed because of bad weather and waited. The other attmept they reached the 25th pitch, when they climbed all pitches OS including the hardest (Jindra Hudeček). After that attempt the weather definitively changed worse and the route had to await a Czech accent until 2006.

Photo from the climb in 2006 with short info are here www.singingrock.cz in English.


Yosemite - El Capitan a Half dome
photo by© Radek Lienerth (zoban)


Yosemite - Lost Arrow
photo by© Radek Lienerth (zoban)


Yosemite - Hudy (Jindrich Hudecek) climbing on valley cliffs
photo by© Radek Lienerth (zoban)

Free translation from the Czech source on Lezec.cz