Cédric Lachat fast as lightning up Zahir in Wenden

Perhaps the first to succeed in climbing a multi-pitch 8b+ in a single day - I.e. without working the individual pitches on days prior to the redpoint - was the usual suspect, Adam Ondra, when in 2007 as a 14-year-old he blew everyone away with his ground-up, 8-hour ascent of Beat Kammerlander’s famous Silbergeier in the Rätikon, Switzerland.

A fair few years have gone by since then and this combination of single-day speed and extreme difficulties on big walls has been matched on several occasions - Ondra’s astounding ascents of Tough Enough and Mora Mora on Tsaranoro in Madagascar in 2010 are a case in point - but the fact of the matter is that climbing an 8b+ in just a day’s work are still rare occurences.

This has now been achieved by Switzerland’s Cédric Lachat up the 255m high Zahir, a Wenden testpiece established by Günther Habersatter between 1996 and 2004 and freed by this Swiss duo in 2006. This summer Lachat had already climbed several difficult alpine sports climbs (Fly in Lauterbrunnental and Yeah Man up Gastlosen in Switzerland) as part of his Swissway to Heaven project. Now though, belayed by Fabien Dugit, he decided to try his chances, raise the bar and climb Zahir in nothing but a single day. According to Fanatic Climbing, Lachat onsighted all pitches except for the crux 8b+ which he dispatched on his second attempt. Not a bad way to end summer.

Info: FB Cedric Lachat, Karpos, Petzl, SCARPA