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Jean-Pierre Ouellet: new rock climbs at Moab

At Moab (USA) Jean-Pierre Ouellet has made the first ascents of two difficult new climbs: Zebras and Moonbeam (5.13-) and Green Belly 5.13-

Planetmountain

November 2014

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Jean-Pierre Ouellet and Alexandre Charest

archive Jean-Pierre Ouellet

Every year Jean-Pierre Ouellet spends almost a month climbing on the Moab sandstone cliffs, repeating existing routes and scoping new lines and once again he has come up trumps with the first ascent of two superb splitter cracks, Zebras and Moonbeam (5.13-) at Indian Creek and Green Belly 5.13- in the North Wash, circa 2 hours from Moab, before making what is believed to be the 4th ascent of Dean Potter's Indian Creek 5.13+ testpiece Hong Kong Phooey.

The 35-year-old Canadian climber told planetmountain "Basically, my goals for this year for my annual Moab trip were Trail of Tear 5.13 and Hong Kong Phooey 5.13+. I started by testing my fitness on other 5.13 finger cracks and did four of them really quickly, including the first ascent of Zebras and Moonbeam (5.13-). I then turned on my attention to Trail of Tears in the North Wash and to my surprise I flashed it... A day later I went on to look for another new route in the same area and found a nice overhanging .75 Camalot splitter. I cleaned it and it took me a few tries to redpoint it for it's first ascent, calling it I called it Green Belly 5.13-...

Then, with a about two weeks left on the trip I check out Hong Kong Phooey, first climbed by Dean Potter in the early 2000. The crux pitch involves 40m of overhanging gray and purple C4 climbing and I almost sent the route on my second lead attempt, but in the end it took me four more days to send it. On my last day of the trip temperature was very cold and it actually started to snow while I was finishing the last crux... A full epic!"