Mortal Kombat F8a+ First Ascent

Great video here featuring climbing coach for ‘Make the Next Move’, Simon Rawlinson on his project, Mortal Kombat. This is a first ascent on some seriously steep terrain. Well done Simon!

If you would like to repeat Simon’s route, you’ll find it at Dinas Rock on the big roof.

This roof has been breached once or twice before, first via ‘Giant Killer’, an impressive trad outing that tackles the obvious line of weakness on the left of the roof. Giant Killer was first free climbed by Martin Crocker and Roy Thomas, back in the day (1988) and at the time was one of the hardest routes in the South. It has seen repeats from a few over the following 20 years including Steffan Doerr, Goi Ashmore, and Simon Rawlinson but sadly sees little traffic these days.

Simon started looking at this route back in 2009. Various distractions and a nasty finger injury meant that he had to postpone his assault until earlier this year. After a month’s climbing coaching in Kalymnos, Simon was ready to do battle!

“Once I returned from Kalymnos I had just one route on my mind, the Dinas Roof. This had felt ‘Futuristic’ last year when I first bolted it and I was unsure if I would have the strength and power required to climb it. Weirdly an injury prevented me from crimping and persuing my normal training and routes of choice and as such I was forced to work some weaknesses such as open hand strength and jamming. The latter gave me the final piece to the jigsaw that allowed me to have a chance at linking this amazing line together.

The line was a great fight only allowing me to have a few burns each session, with sore skin and fatigue holding me back. Luckily the large roof stayed dry over this wet period so I could keep working and fine tuning the sequence required. When I finally sent this route it actually felt quite easy which has really led me to a challenge with the grade. I’m going to say 8a+ as it has taken a while (compared to its neighbour H1N1 F8a in 4 goes, or Rendez vous F8b in a few sessions) and would be an incredible Onsight! Maybe it’s only 8a maybe it’s 8b, I’m really not sure as it’s climbing style is so unique. Future ascentionists will hopefully shed more light on how to grade this climb, all I can really say is it was a real fight, hence the name, and now it is time to really focus on it’s big brother, the 20m version!”

For the full story head over to Make the Next Move.

Video by Monkey Missions