Black Diamond Presents: Carlo Traversi Takes On The Triple 14 Challenge

I started climbing in Colorado about 10 years ago. I came here in 2006 to come here for college and ended up dropping out of college and just climbing. I spent all of my time in the Rocky Mountains bouldering as much as possible. As the years progressed, I started doing some more sport climbing, and then eventually started making my way up to the Diamond. I've kind of always thought about doing more endurance challenge things than climbing, but I wasn't doing enough multi-discipline climbing to really feel confident in my own abilities. The concept for this challenge came from a conversation I had with Kevin Jorgensen and Tommy Caldwell. I remember Tommy saying something about how it'd be cool to do a 514, a V14, and a 14,000 foot peak all in the same day. I remember him joking that most of it would be pretty easy for him to do except for the V14 because he hadn't climbed V14 in the park. And I was like, well, I've climbed V14 in the park, maybe I could pair together the other few things there. We're all trying to find creative ways to kind of push our limits, and I just thought it was a fun one that might be able to work. It's a little bit arbitrary, though, because if you can climb V14, the other two are gonna be pretty easy. But there's not that many people that boulder really hard and can climb on the Diamond, so it does kind of take a well-rounded skill set. I love going bouldering. I would never trade my bouldering days. I also love going sport climbing. I really enjoy that experience. I love my days doing big walls in the Alpine, and to just combine all of those days into one big, big Alpine masterpiece is kind of a cool thing to do. The hiking was definitely the biggest variable involved with the whole challenge. From the Bear Lake parking lot, you hike about two to two and a half miles up to Jade through pretty rough talus. Once you finish Jade, come back down to the Bear Lake parking, switch out gear for sport climbing, trad climbing gear, and then head up to the Diamond, which takes about three and a half to four hours, where you'll find Sarcasm. Once you finish Sarcasm, then it's another hour or so hike to get to the base of the wall, make your way up the North Chimneys and onto the Diamond. This is the Triple Four Team Challenge. Was it like 5.30 in the morning? So I left Boulder at about 3.15, 3.30, drove up to the Bear Lake parking lot and did the little jaunt up to Jade here. And gonna try and send this thing as fast as possible. I feel pretty good. I'm confident that it will happen. It's good conditions, so I can't complain about that. Just have to try hard. Yes, this Park Valley has this unique position where there's a lot of hard bouldering, some high altitude, difficult sport climbing, and some high altitude, big wall climbing. So it's really the perfect place to do this. So Jade is kind of like the test piece of our generation, the mandala for the younger guys. It's just three really small holds and you're grabbing like a pretty miserable right hand hold and you're doing a really powerful long dead point on a really sharp little crimp. This is kind of like not what I expected to happen really. I thought for sure I'd get through this the very least. This finger's about to fully split open. I've got one more try probably. Give it one last Hail Mary and most likely it's gonna split open and bleed everywhere, but might as well go for it. I just completely filleted my finger. I've never had that bad of a split slash flapper on my fingertip actually. You know, I feel like it's just trying to make this day as hard as possible. So I'm gonna go try and climb Sarcasm with nine fingers. Tommy Caldwell style. I'd say it was a pretty hellish hike, but I'm here, I made it. 14 miles later. My running clock from when I first left the car is at six hours and 58 minutes so far. I got it taped up so that hopefully it's like okay to climb Sarcasm. I wanted to do something that was a difficult 514. Sarcasm's also a route that I've always wanted to do because it's a really famous Alpine sport route and it's a beautiful wind. And it's one of those Tommy Caldwell like hardcore classics in Colorado. Probably one of the more dicey 514s at altitude. Maybe in the world that's so technical and there's almost no holds on this rat and you could easily just slip off and it's over. Sweet, here we go, Sarcasm. Okay, keep me tight through here because I could fall at any moment. Oh my God, dude. Wow. Damn, it's game on. I was so pumped. I was like, just stay with it. So once Sarcasm was done, I was like, okay, like it's on. That was like the moment where I knew that this whole project could actually work. Jesus, I'm like bleeding through the tape hardcore. Wow, that was crazy. I was not expecting that. Especially with the split tape. I was expecting it to take a bit of time to figure it out and to climb it. And so I went up at the first time, put some chalk on it, got through the moves, felt really, really heinous to me. And then came down, like rested for a little bit, chalked up and was like, I'm just gonna go for it, see how high I get. And on that second try, I surprised myself and climbed the whole thing. After this morning on Jade, I feel like I deserved that one. It wasn't actually too bad with a taped finger, like not as bad as I thought it was gonna be. Just that last slopey crimp that you like saw me reach out and I like desperately slapped in. It's cause like this friction on that thing was just ----. Cause I have tape and then I was like, oh God, like come in quick, oh God, oh God, try and get up. We gotta figure out, we go down and like repack and then we can roll out. We're gonna go climb the diamond now. Yeah, it's kind of like weird to say that at this point in the day, but I'm kind of in disbelief at this point, man. I'm like running on just pure psych right now cause I'm like wrecked. I don't care if I have to crawl, man, we're going to the top of the diamond. We're here, we're gonna do it. We're gonna ******* do it, dude. Okay, I am on belay. Ready to rock climb. All right, dude. All right, man, let's get this ---- done. Oh man. The diamond's a big day on its own. You're doing 14 miles. You're doing a big wall, an alpine climb. The biggest challenge for Carlo is the altitude. Doing it at high altitude with a lot of hiking in between. How you doing? Hands okay? Yeah, yeah, feeling good. Sweet. This is beyond a long day. This pitch is a little funky, but kind of fun in some ways. Now we're climbing. Warm up. I want to get you warmed up a little bit. Dude, this is so heinous. I think we'll be all right. I don't know what time it is, but. Okay, Johnny, I'm up. I'm like, I don't really have any words, you know. I'm just worked, man. The challenge has been done. I ******* appreciate it, man. That was a blast. It's 9.30. 9.30. I think I'm going to feel more stoked tomorrow when I can just sit around and think back on what an awesome day this was.