Gripped Magazine
Pete Whittaker and Mari Salvesen Flash the World’s Hardest Urban Crack
In October, Mari Augusta Salvesen and Pete Whittaker flashed Autobahn 5.14, Tom Randall’s sixty-meter urban roof crack. The splitter offwidth roof crack runs on the underside of a highway, requiring wide pony technique reminiscent of Whittaker and Randall’s Century Crack 5.14 in Canyonlands National Park, United States. The footage of Salvesen and Whittaker’s flash ascents has been released and can be viewed below.
Randall made the first ascent of Autobahn in September 2024. He climbed it without a rope, but had a harness, some 6 mm cord, and two #5 cams to bump along as he progressed. Whittaker’s flash is likely the second ascent, with Salveson’s flash being the third.
Autobahn is a wild feature to climb, and to an onlooker, perhaps equal parts awe-inspiring and head-scratching. For starters, the crack is perpetually quite dirty, given that it’s on the underside of a bridge in Berlin. It’s made of concrete and is completely splitter, leaving climbers bruised, blistered, and bloody from the uniform sharp edges and texture. And finally, the whole thing is constantly moving and flexing, as bridges always do to accommodate varying conditions and vehicles as they move along the road. All this is to say that the climb is for the very best offwidth climbers, a perfect route for the Wide Boyz and Salvesen.
“60m wide pony shuffle under a bridge outside of Berlin,” said Salvesen on Instagram. “We trained for a flash, and both managed.” Even more impressively, the shoelace of Salveson’s climbing shoe came undone very early in the climb, meaning she had a loose shoe for a good portion of the climb. Whittaker and Salveson both did not comment about the grade. Whittaker simply called it “8?” meaning its somewhere between 5.13b (8a) and 5.14c (8c+) in the YDS.
Mari Salvesen and Pete Whittaker Climbing Autobahn
The post Pete Whittaker and Mari Salvesen Flash the World’s Hardest Urban Crack appeared first on Gripped Magazine.