Black Diamond Presents: Carlo Traversi—Empath (5.15a)

Our list of projects is endless right now. Jimmy and I went through it the other day and it's like 25 or 30 boulders deep that are five star v15 or harder lines and and that's in the bouldering realm you know and I've walked past 20 or 30 different cliffs that need attention. They need to either be seeked out for hard trad or you know have enough features to be bolted or sport climbed on and that potential is going to you know expand as well. We pretty much comb through areas and find the five star lines and do the five star lines and sometimes we'll fill in with some of the you know three and four star lines as well but there's just so many good five star lines that I just don't ever see running out of new hard projects you know in California for the time being so it's going to be a long time before that ever happens. It's almost like we found out that an area the size of like Rocklands is in California in terms of the amount of rock and that's cliffs, boulders, like everything. It's like the whole deal. I mean the landscape is almost just paved in rock and there's erratics, cliff bands, and just rock everywhere. I mean basically from just north of Tahoe all the way down through the Sierra is just coated in granite. I knew Jimmy had been hiking a lot and so he kind of knew that I was looking for a cliff. One day he was out looking for boulders and he sent me this text that he just said I spotted this thing from across the river it looks like a cliff I think it's in line with what you're looking for. That's how you find big roots like this you just go look for boulders. I mean that's how I found this cliff there's a bunch of boulders down here on the end of the ravine yeah and I went to look for those came around the corner and just saw this thing this whole wall we're like oh my god this is insane so I ran over and looked at it freaked out and then went and looked at the boulders then I never came back. You know within a week or two we had planned kind of our first hike out there we brought the drill we brought the trad gear we brought everything we needed to like kind of start developing. The rock just naturally makes really difficult climbing. The whole cliff offers quite a lot of rad stuff honestly. Interesting style for sure. Conditions are the best they've been um this year for me for sure I had one good day last November where it was pretty cold out here and it felt really good we got good conditions now we'll see how it goes psyched. Come on come on Carla. The prized line of the cliff is this project with these tufas and these runnels and you know just these crazy features on the wall. And we've always talked about it over the years like we've always just been like oh yeah that roots like insane it's gonna be one of the It's like when you look at it at first it looks like it's a trad root. It does yeah. But all the cracks are like just subtly flared like this and there's some pieces in it for sure like it's maybe possible to climb it with gear but it would be heinous and like extremely dangerous. Keep breathing. I got you good. Yeah it's all in here. Come on. As a climber it would be hard to be shown this route and not immediately want to try it. Whether you're a boulderer, a sport climber, a trad climber, anything if it's somewhat within your realm of possibility it's it's impossible to not want to try it. And then I came out this year to fall in love immediately. It's so amazing. It's f****** crazy dude. What a f****** crazy feature. Yeah it's you don't really get that. Nice dude trust it. I go into the jam Daniel before kicking my foot out. Okay so you're here. I just stomp that and just quickly dive into the jam. So it's finger lock, jam. Jam and then and then I put a right jam in the in the crack just to the left of you. It's pretty rare to climb on a fresh project especially of this quality with really strong motivated climbers. I mean some of the strongest climbers in the world for sure. So I enjoyed the experience a lot more than I was expecting to even. Everyone was super psyched, super high energy and everyone was really motivated for each other's progress on stuff. Come on dude. Get in there. Come on. Keep fighting. Come on dude. Get the feet up and get the toe. Come on. Like you've tried like first round and stuff. How's it compared to first round? I mean I think it's just as hard as first round. Really? That's what I was going off of. Totally. That's probably the best most comparable in some ways right? Because it's like yeah this is way pumpier than first round. And the crux of first round is getting condies. Yeah buddy. Keep breathing. My heart though. There you go. Deep breath. There you go. Come on dude. Deep breath. Come on dude. Very good man. No pictures please. No pictures. No camera man around here. Hard routes in America, especially in the 515 ranger, are super rare. But I think it's pretty rad to have a route like this one that is 100% natural, absolutely no glue and really didn't take much cleaning other than you know some dirt with a wire brush. And it's just 100% perfect. Nice Carlo. Solid dude. Very good. Nice dude. Very good man. Nice. Very good. Nice dude. Nice dude. Come on. Very deep Carlo. Nice. Very good man. Yes. Come on Carlo. Deep breath. Come on. Stay strong. Very good. Very good. Nice Carlo. Yeah buddy. Come on. Let's get it. Come on Carlo. Turn up dude. Solid man. Very strong man. Come on. Very strong Carlo. Come on. Very good. Very good. Yeah Carlo. Come on. You got it man. Very good Carlo. Deep breath dude. Come on dude. Very good Carlo. Solid man. You can do it man. Come on buddy. Nice Carlo. Chill. Very good man. Very good. **** yeah. So sick man. That was sick dude. Thanks man. Very ******* good job. Thanks man. Thank you. Psyched. Psyched to see this one through after a couple years. Phew.