Anna Hazelnutt & Connor Runge become the first to free every pitch of El Chamán Loco, a 14 pitch 5.14b big wall in El Salto, Mexico – widely considered the hardest big wall climb in the country. Thank you Rab for supporting Connor and I both as athletes, and more specifically, on this film project of mine. Having your support and trust to make more… creative/unusual films is so so special.
A note: we did not achieve a continuous ascent! We both redpointed/sent each pitch clean in the route over multiple weeks, in a random order (as explained in the video). Talking to big wall climber friends, this can be considered a “first free ascent (not continuous)”. The next step would be to start at the bottom and work our way up, sending each pitch until we reach the top, without coming down. With Connor’s knee injury, we had no chance to do so on this trip. I still wanted to share our story and journey because it was truly a life changing experience that challenged me, send or no.