Logan Barber frees hardest crack climb in Australia

34-year-old Logan Barber has freed what he believes could well be the most difficult crack climb in Australia. Attempted tentatively by Barber and Zac Vertrees two years ago, the route is located at the granite crag Mt Buffalo, is called Japanese Deep Freeze and is now graded 31 on the Australian climbing scale, circa French 8b but obviously protected by trad gear.

With this grade Japanese Deep Freeze is now a notch harder than The Great Shark Hunt, the visionary climb freed at the same crag by legendary Australian climber Malcolm Matheson back in 1994. Although more difficult trad climbs have been put up during the ensuing two decades, this is the first time a pure crack breaks the barrier of Australia’s mythical 30 mark.

It goes without saying that Barber is an expert trad climber and in August 2017 he pulled off the 12th ascent of Cobra Crack, the ferociously thin line at Squamish in Canada reputed to be one of the hardest cracks in the world. Freed in 2006 by local Sonnie Trotter, it has been repeated by the likes of Nicolas Favresse, Yuji Hirayama, Alex Honnold, Pete Whittaker and Tom Randall. An avid traveller, in 2015 Barber made the first ascents of China’s hardest trad climbs, The Firewall and Honeycomb Dome at Liming.

Link: Instagram Logan Barber, loganclimbsrocks.blogspot.com, SCARPA