BURSTOn March 23, Connor Herson repeated one of the most difficult pure crack climbs in the United States: Mason Earle’s Stranger than Fiction 5.14. Located in Bartlett Wash, Utah, the 110-foot crack line works its way through a range of crack sizes and angles, requiring a mix of jamming techniques, bouldery power, and endless endurance.
Earle made the first ascent of the route back in 2015 after three years of on-and-off projecting. In November 2023, Lor Sabourin made the long-awaited second ascent after working the route for four years. That same month Pete Whittaker made the third ascent, taking 12 sessions to achieve the redpoint. Incredibly, Herson sent the route after only two sessions of effort, clipping the chains on his fourth go of his second day.
Stranger Than Fiction starts out severely overhanging, with the crack fluctuating between hands to thin hands to fingers. After a rest and a hard boulder problem, the route ends with a relentless, overhanging finger crack. The finger jams are good but the feet are desperate. In his first ascent, Earle famously climbed this section of the route without a climbing shoe on his right foot to better fit his foot in the thin crack. He popped his shoe off just before entering this final section, revealing a taped-up foot. Sabourin employed this taped-foot tactic in the second ascent, but Whittaker did not. Herson took a new approach for his ascent, going completely barefoot for his right foot for the top section of the route – no shoe, no tape.
Herson, only 21 years old, is racking up an unprecedented tick list of classic and cutting edge trad climbs in the United States and Canada. His list of accomplishments is already too long to list but highlights include repeats of Meltdown 5.14c, Magic Line 5.14c, Blackbeard’s Tears 5.14c, Cobra Crack 5.14b, and Crack of Destiny 5.14b. While in Squamish last summer, he made first ascents of the stunning crack The Shark 5.14b as well as one of Canada’s hardest sport climbs, Midnight Way 5.15a. In 2022, he made the first all-gear ascent of Carlo Traversi’s Empath 5.14d.
To learn more about his ascent of Stranger than Fiction, I reached out to Herson. You can read our short interview below.
Interview with Connor Herson
Jamming barefoot must have been painful! Did you experiment with taping your foot?
I actually never tried taping! On my first attempt working out the moves, I was wearing two climbing shoes but decided to take one off and clip it to my harness so I could try the move with my foot. To my surprise, it was far easier that way! I noticed it wasn’t painful at all barefoot, so I decided it would be cool to just do the whole thing with no tape. On the actual send, I got a few toe gobies, but they weren’t that bad.
What was your method for the first crux, the burly thin hands section?
It’s hard to describe in text, but my method involved twisting out of a knee bar into some thin hand jams. From there, I found a very specific way to use the jams such that I didn’t fall, and it worked! I also think that during the day of projecting, I somehow improved my thin hands technique haha.
A lot of footage has been posted online of the climb in recent years. Did you study these videos before getting on the climb?
Of course I’d seen the footage of the crack and generally knew what was in store, but I didn’t analyze any of the footage for beta immediately before my trip. It’s quite difficult to learn micro-beta on finger cracks without having climbed on them, so I figured it was better to just try it and learn for myself.
How were you feeling on the send go? As you left the ground did you think a redpoint was a real possibility?
Before the send go, I felt pretty destroyed, and I assumed I was in for a training burn. It was dusk, and I’d already given three attempts that day. On two of those attempts I’d kept going all the way to the anchor after I fell. However, once I pulled on for that last go, there was never any doubt. Everything felt controlled, and I wasn’t close to falling at all – I actually felt more solid the higher I got!
Any thoughts on the difficulty compared to other hard cracks you’ve been on?
Hard to compare thin hand cracks with finger cracks! Also I’d like to think that I’ve gotten better at crack climbing since my ascents of Cobra, the Crack of Destiny, and the Shark. So even though this one took me less time, I’d say it was roughly equivalent in difficulty with some 14b gear routes I’ve done.
Mason Earle on Stranger Than Fiction
Pete Whittaker on Stranger Than Fiction
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