Pietro Vidi repeats Meltdown, 8c+ trad crack in Yosemite

Established by Beth Rodden in 2008, Meltdown has seen only a handful of repeats in the past 17 years and is still regarded as one of the most challenging trad climbs in the world.

Pietro Vidi first started trying the super thing crack after his free ascent of The Pre-Muir with Camilla Moroni on El Capitan two weeks ago. Adopting a headpoint approach to working the climb, the 22-year-old spent his first two sessions figuring out the individual moves, before starting to link sections together on day three. It took a further two sessions of lead tries before he finally clipped the chains, during his sixth day on the route and third day of lead attempts.

Vidi commented: "I started making some good links on toprope on day 3, when I realised I would probably need to skip some gear in the first part and also a crucial nut placement on the second crux in order to save energy. This made for quite a big runout but still seemed relatively safe.

I made my first lead tries on session 4 and got through the first crux, only to fall right after, when I struggled to place a cam properly and got too pumped to continue. That afternoon I actually watched a video on Ethan Pringle ripping the gear in the hollow flake, which is right below the nut I had decided not to place. He almost decked out. This made me quite nervous!

The following day, I tested the gear in the flake myself, almost breaking a nut, which I was convinced was bomber and thus, further multiplying my nerves. Luckily I found that a bigger nut would fit and my confidence slowly came back.

On day 6 I started up the route, feeling really confident, only to dry-fire right after the crux move and break the trigger wires on the cam. I managed to temporally fix the cam with some tape and then sent the route on my next try, with quite a battle against numb fingers and pump!

Meltdown is, for sure, the hardest trad route I have climbed, apart from ‘Tribe’. The climbing is super insecure with horrible feet, extremely technical but still really physical. Beth’s first ascent, more than 15 years ago, was truly incredible and ahead of its time!"