New Grade V 5.13c in California
Keel Haul on Keeler Needle
Bishop locals
Chase “Swami” Leary and Andy “Big Hippie” Puhvel have completed a grand project up the nearly 600-m face of Keeler Needle (4,300 m). Keeler Needle is attached to Mount Whitney, was first climbed by Warren Harding in 1960 and is widely regarded as the proudest spire in the Sierra Nevada.
Puhvel, 52, and Leary, 32, live in Bishop and, for the past five years, have been on a first ascent tear, putting up high-quality, hard routes in their backyard alpine playground. Before their barrage of new routing, there were only two pitches rated 5.13 in the entire alpine Sierra, and they were both on the welltravelled Incredible Hulk: Airstream (FA P. Croft) and Nalazak (FA J. Whittaker and L. Rivera). Since then, Puhvel and Leary have added eight more 5.13 pitches along with countless 5.12s above treeline, all on megaclassic routes. Their vision from the start was to find the steepest unclimbed walls that still existed in the Sierra, and to produce highquality, modern, hard lines that were clean and safe for others to enjoy.
Puhvel says about his approach to newrouting: “If the route wasn’t going to be really good, steep and hard, we weren’t interested in putting in the endless amounts of work it takes to establish a quality multi-pitch alpine route.
Luckily, we struck it rich all over this mountain range!”
They started in 2020 on the north end of the range on the well-travelled Incredible Hulk, and together with Peter Croft they established Green Thunder (5.13b), a five-pitch overhanging route that, at the time, was the hardest route in the Sierra. The next year they put up another six-pitch 5.13 on the Hulk, Up in Smoke (5.13a), also on the steep “dark side.”
In 2022 they moved into the central Sierra, discovering an amazing wall on Trapezoid Peak, on which they painted four new hard routes in a season. Shield of Dreams (5.13b) is the king line of these routes and includes two back-to-back pitches of 5.13 on tiny gear at 3,900 m (see cover photo of 2023).
In 2023 they shifted their vision to the southern Sierra, where Puhvel had spied a steep headwall on the top third of the gigantic monolith of Keeler Needle in the Mount Whitney massif. After 27 trips in 27 weeks, they finally sent their most demanding route by far, Keel Haul (5.13c, Grade V).
The 17-pitch route roughly follows the path of the aid route Australopithecus, established in 1999 by the El Cap Pirate Ammon Mcneely. Ammon tragically died last year, literally the day before Puhvel and Leary set off on skis to scope the route in mid-winter, and his passing made them feel a strong sense of connection to the line he had pioneered. Ammon showed them the path up the dead centre steepest part of the monolith.
According to Puhvel, “establishing this route required maniacal devotion and relentless effort to clean, prep, rehearse and send. Although we were possesed, we enjoyed every trip up there together, and it was one big party until the job was done!”
The route’s coolest feature, according to Leary and Puhvel, is the Gemstone crack. After