California Has a New 5.13c Big Wall—It Tops Out at 14,000 Feet
“It’s the Salathé Headwall of the high country,” said Andy Puhvel of the immaculate crack crux on his and Chase Leary’s 17-pitch masterpiece, Keel Haul (V 5.13c). Located on the east face of Keeler Needle, a 14,260-foot sub-peak of Mount Whitney, their 2,000-foot line is a free variation of the aid route Australopithecus (VI A3+), established in 1999 by Ammon McNeely and Kevin Conti. The technical climbing begins at 12,400 feet and tops out in the thin air above 14,000 feet. When they sent, in early June, their route became one of the highest hard crack climbs in the United States, with two pitches of 5.13, four pitches of 5.12, four pitches of 5.11, and more of moderate terrain.
In fall 2022, Puhvel was hiking near the Keeler Needle and, in the afternoon light, saw a splitter crack running through the headwall. On April 20, 2023, during the heaviest snow year that the East Side had seen in decades, Puhvel recruited Leary to rap in and investigate. They spent 45 days at the Whitney Massif over the next year, cleaning the holds, trundling loose rocks, and bolting the belays. Their top-down tactics allowed them to clean the route as much as possible. “We take a lot of pride in making our routes buffed,” Puhvel said. “We want them to look like they’ve been climbed 30 times.”
They attempted to free the line twice in 2023 but failed to send the crux eleventh pitch, the Gemstone Crack. At first, they tried to climb the route over multiple days, spending the night on a portaledge, but they found it hard to recover given the altitude.
“We woke up super hammered from not getting any sleep,” said Puhvel, “so we decided to try to send it in a day.”
Climbing hard 5.13 at altitude was also a challenge. “In the beginning, it was pretty dang harsh,” he said. “Even jumaring last year I was like, Oh my god, my heart and my lungs.”
This year, they got fit for the altitude early in the season, hiking out to the route six times between early April and early June. When they saw temps of 102℉ in Lone Pine, they knew temps on the route would be in the idyllic 50s. “The moment the sun hits, you could be shirtless,” Puhvel said. The prevailing winds come from the west, but because the route faces east, the winds just pass over, allowing them to climb despite frequent 30-40 mile per hour wind reports.
On trip 27, the pair started the approach—which gains 4,600 feet of vertical in just 5 miles—thinking, “Damn, we’re kind of over it.” Nevertheless, at 6:30am, they began up the wall.
After 10 pitches of mostly 5.11 and 5.12 cracks, they arrived at a 300-foot overhanging headwall, home to the 40-meter 5.13c splitter they called the Gemstone Crack. After Leary successfully led the pitch—which protects with small cams, nuts, and two bolts—Puhvel followed it cleanly. He’d just reached the belay when the skies opened up.
“If it had just rained 10 minutes longer, everything would have been in flux,” said Puhvel of the storm. “We would have gotten wet and cold, the route would’ve got too wet. But instead, it did that 10% drizzle thing for half an hour and nothing got too wet and we could finish.”
They freed the last 5.12 pitch, followed by four pitches of 5.10 and 5.8, summiting at 6:30p.m., 12 hours after they started. They rappelled the route with two 60-meter ropes.
Prolific developers
Andy “Big Hippy” Puhvel, a 53-year-old Bishop climber who runs the Youth Climbing League, a Bay Area recreational kids climbing league, has established a half dozen Sierra routes with Chase “Swami” Leary, a 33-year-old East Side local who works as a Mammoth ski patroller. In the 2023 edition of the American Alpine Journal Puhvel describes Leary—whose father, Kevin Leary, made the first ascent of The Gong Show (5.11d), a classic roof crack in the eastern Sierra, and the Buttermilks classic Leary-Bard Arete (V5)—as “a local granite master whose wizardry on the rock has earned him the nickname ‘Swami.’”
“We climb like bread and butter,” said Puhvel of his partnership with Leary.
The pair have recently emerged as some of the most prolific developers on the East Side of the Sierra, making the first of such lines as King of the Jungle (5.14a) and, with Peter Croft, the five-pitch Green Thunder (5.13b) and the six-pitch Up in Smoke (5.13a) on the Hulk.
In 2022, Puhvel and Leary added four striking routes to the textured green granite of Trapezoid Peak, including Puff the Magic Dragon (5.12b; 5 pitches), the Shield of Dreams (5.13b; 6 pitches, protected mostly by RPs), Harvest Time (5.12d; 6 pitches), and Rasta Root (5.12b; 5 pitches). The Trapezoid routes, which top out at 13,000 feet, added a bunch of classics to a highly accessible section of the High Sierra. The formation is a 15-minute drive from downtown Bishop and a two-and-a-half-hour approach. “You can make it back to Bishop for restaurant time,” Puhvel said.
Puhvel speculated that the Keeler Needle is home to other free-climbable routes, and he has eyes on Crimson Wall (5.12d A3), which was first aided in 1992 by Mike Carville, Kevin Brown, and Kevin Steele and is named after the pre-dawn glow on the wall. It has only a single pitch of aid.
And after that? Leary and Puhvel plan on exploring other formations in the Sierra. “Chase and I have a thing that as long as the lines keep appearing as really classics, we keep doing ‘em,” Puhvel said.
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