Protecting The Hardest Trad Route In The World | Climbing Daily Ep.1493

Hello and welcome to the Climbing Daily Friday Gear Show and welcome to the Frassassi Climbing Festival. It's the end of the day here, we've got a beer and I've got Jacopo Laccia, one of, let's be honest, the best triad climbers in the world currently at the moment. He's being modest but he is. Now today we thought we'd have a little chat about Tribe because that's something you've sent really recently and the kind of equipment and gear that you use for that. So first of all congratulations, that climb looked like just such an epic in every single way. Yes, for me it's a really special or it was a really special line and I invested so much time to do it and it's something like really meaningful for me and the gear was obviously a really big part, like it played a really important role in the whole process because I had to trust it. I use like different kind of gear, the route is mostly protected by cams, I just use two offset nuts on the first part and some really small like slider ball nuts on top of that. Before we get into the specifics of the gear and I should just say it's a little bit noisy here because it's a little bit noisy here so I hope you can put up with that. The route, I want to talk about grading very quickly and I know this is something that you don't necessarily want to talk about that much but a lot of people have been saying, number one, I really respect the fact that you haven't graded it, I love the fact that it's just the route and it is what it is but it is really, really difficult. We're talking E10, E11 territory, aren't we? So I know you don't want a specific grade but it's up there with the hardest trad routes in the world. Yeah, like I stick to my decision not to grade it so I don't want to talk about numbers but I can say that for me it was definitely the hardest route that I've done. Maybe it was my auntie's style, maybe, I don't know, I just really sucked but it's like I invested so much time in it and had to try really, really hard and I'm sure that's the hardest thing I've done so far. Well, as I said, like a huge respect for not actually grading that, that's amazing. So let's talk about gear because it's a trad climb, we're not talking about bolts here so the potential for a ground fault or for that gear to fail is always real with a trad route. How, that crux section, how dangerous is that and if you would sort of bind it off the high point would you be okay? Do you think the gear is good enough to hold you? So I think the crux section is actually pretty safe, especially like the first boulder is protected by really like big and bomber camps and the second crux is protected by okay camps so I was really like, I felt safe in that section. The scariest part was the first section which was also the easiest one and the first piece of gear is quite high up so I used some crash pads like to feel more safe and yeah and once I reached basically the start of the business I felt safe. The top out, so after you reach the final jug let's say, it's protected just by some small ball nuts so you don't really want to fall there. I don't think you will hit the ground, just go for a really big ride. I love when pro climbers say that because your idea of a really big ride is a lot bigger than my idea of a really big ride. You're a black diamond athlete so I presume when we talk cams we're talking C4s? Yeah exactly, at the time the Z4s like the new cams weren't out so I basically used just C4s except for one ultralight number three and one ultralight number four because the C4s don't get to that size. Okay so you use the ultralights purely because of size not necessarily because of weight on something like that? No just because of size because the first part was quite easy compared to the like the real business of the route so I didn't didn't mind like bringing some extra weight, it's fine. So cams for the hard bit, any nuts, any sort of passive protection? You mentioned the ball nuts but lower down, are there any nuts used in the route? I actually use just one nut, an offset nut because it fits like better in this little flake. That was the first piece of gear actually and all the rest of the route is protected by cams and ball nuts. So offset nuts, this is something that some people including me for a long time couldn't quite get my head around because I've always used normal shaped nuts. Why would you want an offset nut? What is an offset nut first of all? Well it's like a normal nut but like shaped differently like it's like a triangle basically and it fits way better in like you know like offset cracks or little slots and it just fits really nice, sits really nice in the in like v-shapes and it feels more stable. Let's say you were doing a route sort of on site, less hard than tribe, would you bring like a separate set of offset nuts or is it just something you might have a few kind of mixed in with the nuts just in case? I normally don't bring normal nuts when I try something on site, I just bring a full set of offset nuts like from like medium one to really small ones and then cams. So ball nuts higher up, what is a ball nut? Well it's like, it's hard to explain, it's like this really small metal plate with a ball on top that can just slide and it's held by a cable and you can just like, there is a trigger you can pull the ball like back and you can fit this like the piece of gear in the crack and then it basically just expands and it works like a normal nut. Yeah I was gonna put my beer down here, so it's yeah it kind of slides in and then you expand it out and then it's similar, I've always thought it's a bit like if a cam had a baby and the baby was a nut that would sort of be a ball nut because you've kind of got the squeezy bit but then you've got the nut bit, it's a weird thing. Yeah I think it's something like in between a cam and a nut basically and just when the cracks are really really thin then you normally use ball nuts because there aren't any cams that will fit in that kind of cracks. And with that route, it's overhanging, did you have to sort of play around with extending bits of gear to make sure there wasn't drag or to make sure there was more, you know when you fall and it's not bang straight onto the bit of gear, did you play around with that at all? I played more with like ropes so I decided to climb with two ropes just because like the gear is not like on a straight line so I used two ropes like to feel more safe and also to avoid like a rope drag and I had to extend a lot the two pieces of gear before the roof, before the first cracks of the route because otherwise the rope drag would be too bad. So when you've got one of these routes, obviously this is as you just said earlier it's a long process, when you looked at that line originally did you know there was gear on it or was there something that you discovered you were like oh look there's that thing there, oh look it can take this piece of gear, what's your process to finding gear placements? Especially on this route was a really like special process for me because I realised from the beginning on that it was possible to just climb it on gear to protect it with normal gear but I basically started to try it when I got into trail climbing so the beginning it felt like something impossible, super scary and I was sure that I would never like I couldn't fall on that route because it would be like too dangerous and year after year I realised that actually the route wasn't so dangerous but it was just really hard so for me it was really nice to witness this process and again regarding gear it basically just in that case I just abseiled down the route and I with a lot of gear on my harness and I started to play around and figure out you know like where should I place what and see like yeah the best solutions. So you've obviously climbed a lot of very difficult trads, what's your head game like? Do you get nervous on these routes or is gear for you one of those things that you've worked out you know where the dangerous bits are and you just get on with the climbing? Because for me when I've got a route that's scary for me the gear is the only thing I ever think about but obviously for you you're at a different kind of level so does it does it ever really affect you? I think like everyone works the same so for us it's the same and it also depends like you know sometimes you just have really bad days and you just get super scared even if you don't have to get scared and the other way around sometimes you just feel super safe even if you are in a dangerous situation but most of the time like with the experience you kind of know like if the gear will hold a fall or not and that makes everything different you know and we always try to just focus on the climbing but it's it's hard to completely like step back from from thinking about falling. That is so good to hear honestly it really is. Iqbal congratulations on that route it was awesome to watch it progress and the North Face film I'm going to put a link in the description below so you can go and check it out it's on it's free to watch do go and check it out and also there's links down below for the gear Iqbal has been talking about today so if you want to see what he's been using you can see it below thank you very much as the sun goes down here we're going to have another beer and I'll see you guys soon