FREE ASCENT of El Capitan’s 2nd Hardest Route | ft. Babsi Zangerl & Jacopo Larcher
2023 · 5 min · Trad, Big Wall · Louder Than Eleven
This short film documents Babsi Zangerl and Jacopo Larcher’s free ascent of Magic Mushroom (VI 5.14a) on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. Filmed in 2017 and released by Louder Than Eleven, the footage records what the filmmakers describe as the route’s second free ascent; the route is presented here as one of El Capitan’s hardest free lines. The piece names the route, grade, and place directly and concentrates on the climbing sequences that make a big‑wall 5.14a notable. At roughly five minutes, the edit is a compact record rather than a longform profile: concentrated climbing footage, tight rope‑team shots, and an original score by Fizzix Productions. For viewers interested in big‑wall free climbing, it offers a concise look at how two elite climbers work a sustained, hard free line on El Capitan.
Review
Five minutes for one of the hardest free ascents ever done on El Capitan, and the compression is both the problem and the point. Babsi Zangerl and Jacopo Larcher free Magic Mushroom, roughly twenty pitches at 5.12 or harder with two pitches of 5.14a near the top, topping out on December 10, 2017 after an eleven-day final push and more than a month total on the wall. It was only the third free ascent.
This is for climbers who know the wall and want the record. Each of them led every pitch of 5.12+ or harder, and Louder Than Eleven's footage catches the rope work, the toprope rehearsal and the portaledge camps in tight shots. Skip it if you want to understand what the route demands. Five minutes cannot show why two 5.14a pitches after days of fatigue rank this second only to the Dawn Wall.
What works is the score and the pace. Fizzix Productions keeps it restrained, and the edit does not pretend to be more than concentrated climbing. What it gets wrong is scale. Tommy Caldwell and Justen Sjong freed this in 2008 and it sat unrepeated free for almost a decade, and the film gives that history no time.
Babsi Zangerl & Jacopo Larcher vs Zodiac is the same pair a year earlier, ten minutes, third free ascent of a 5.13d. Together the two films are fifteen minutes on two of El Cap's hardest routes. I wish either had been forty.
