Austrian climber Barbara "Babsi" Zengeri made history this weekend as the first person ever to flash climb a route on El Capitan.
According to an Instagram post from Black Diamond, which you can view below, Zengeri flashed Freerider 5.13a, the Yosemite route made famous by Alex Honnold's 2017 free solo climb. Flashing a climbing route means that Zengeri climbed the 32-pitch, 3,300ft face on her first attempt, without falling once.
"Babsi’s unprecedented, no-falls ascent of the 3,300-foot route on her first try ushers in a new level to her already stacked ticklist of El Cap free routes," writes BD in the post.
The climb took Zengeri and her partner Jacopo Larcher of Italy three days to complete. Larcher was leading during the Boulder Problem, characterized by tiny crimp holds which Honnold famously established as the most difficult move of the route, but he missed the undercling hold and fell. Informed by his experience, Zengeri was able to stick the move and get the flash.
German brothers Alexander and Thomas Huber established the Freerider route in 1998. The route follows crack systems up the southwest face of El Cap and has numerous cruxes. In 2012, British climber Leo Houlding nearly flashed Freerider but for a single fall, while Pete Whittaker's 2014 attempt isn't considered a true flash because he took a detour
Flashing it further cements Zengeri's place as one of the best all-round female climbers in the world. Named National Geographic's Adventurer of the Year in 2019, she made the first female free ascent of the Alpine Trilogy in 2013, three routes on El Cap between 2015 and 2016, the Eiger's hardest route in 2018 and Eternal Flame on the Nameless Tower in Pakistan in 2022.
As always, lots is going on in Yosemite's climbing scene right now. Just last week, we reported that Alex Honnold is there projecting The Nose, while at the end of October, two relatively unknown climbers set a new record for the Yosemite Triple Crown.
