Wet Lycra Nightmare 5.13d

Wet Lycra Nightmare is a nine pitch, roughly 270 meter (900 foot) free line up the steep northeast face of the Leaning Tower in Yosemite Valley, one of the steepest big walls in North America. It follows an earlier aid route, mixing bolt ladders, corner and face climbing, and a crack through a band of quartzite, finishing with an awkward chimney move climbers call the bombay. At 5.13d, with individual pitches up to that grade stacked back to back, it forces sustained hard climbing on steep, often overhanging rock rather than a single crux, and it has stayed a rarely repeated testpiece since it was freed.

History

Todd Skinner and Jim Hewett made the first free ascent in 2004, freeing an existing aid line on the Leaning Tower. Alex Honnold made the second known free ascent in 2015, calling it a great day of climbing on some of the steepest rock in the Valley. The route saw few further ascents until Sam Stroh completed the fifth free ascent in spring 2022, and Jordan Cannon, with Stroh's help, made the sixth free ascent that December, spread over two days and leading every pitch first try except the 5.13d roof pitch, which took him two attempts.

On film

Arc'teryx Presents: Wet Lycra Nightmare follows Jordan Cannon and Sam Stroh, with Alex Honnold also featured, during Cannon's 2022 free ascent of the route. The film documents the demands of stringing together consecutive hard pitches on the Leaning Tower's overhanging granite, including the long hanging belays and the logistics of redpointing a route this sustained, and situates Cannon's climb against Honnold's earlier ascent of the same line.