Two brave Brits have become the first to complete a tough climb up a 160-foot fissure in Utah's Canyonlands.
Tom Randall, 32, and Pete Whittaker, 20, free climbed the Century Crack by squeezing body parts into the gap and shuffling painfully upwards.
Mr Randall even built a replica of the unusually shaped fissure in his cellar in Sheffield so the daredevil pair could practise the gruelling ascent.
Other adventurers have attempted the feat at the U.S. national park, but the duo were the first to free climb the whole of the longest and hardest 'offwidth crack' in the world.
The committed pair spent two years training for the dangerous ascent, forcing themselves through 17,500ft of horizontal upside down offwidth climbing, 250,000 core and abdominal conditioning movements, 42,300 pull-ups and bicep curls, and almost 16 hours of static abdominal holds.
But Mr Randall said they had had to go beyond anything they had heard of or considered reasonable.
He said: 'It had to be extreme to the utmost - or we'd never push ourselves close enough to our limits which we knew needed to be reached.
'We got sent the measurements of the crack over email from a guy who had previously attempted to climb it.
'It's a very specialist type of climbing which not many people do. The first time we climbed it was a long fall but we had a rope.
'The second time was much more risky, there was about 30 per cent or more of the route where if we fell, we would have hit solid ground.
'It's a calculated risk as we know our limits so we felt it was also a manageable risk.
'It's the only climb I have ever done which was as equally tough mentally as it was physically. I had to just get into my zone and try not focusing on the route.
'The climb is so painful if you think too much about it then it can overtake your thoughts. You need to find a kind of active meditative state as you have to deal with reality.
'It's by far the hardest offwidth crack climb in the world so being the first to free climb it was an incredible feeling.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1lv57XuN7
Cracked it!
Cracked it!
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Cracked it!
Now they have to try it with a baby strapped to their back!
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.
Re: Cracked it!
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Cracked it!
In that second picture, he looks like he's climbing up the middle of a giant, nasty looking boil covered ass....
