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Elite rock climbers are a funny bunch. Unlike most other world-class athletes out there, the path to joining the ranks of the best climbers in the world is not very straightforward. The metrics of success in the sport are so undefined that the background stories of each character could not be more different. However, when it comes time to push the limits of the sport, like when climbing’s pre-eminent power couple Emily Harrington and Adrian Ballinger teamed up to tackle a massive big-wall free climb in Kyrgyzstan’s Ak-Su Valley, their vastly different backgrounds were exactly what was necessary to succeed. Of course, it wouldn’t be an episode of TGR x HBO’s Edge of the Earth series if the trip was easy, so we got to chatting with Emily and Adrian about some of the immense challenges they faced during production of the film. The episode Reaching For The Sky is available to watch on HBO and HBO Max today.
Kyrgyzstan has long been a place elite rock climbers have set their sights on, with some of the biggest, cleanest rock faces in the world towering up above the Ak-Su Valley in the Pamir-Alai mountain range. First discovered as a climbing destination by Soviet climbers nearly 50 years ago, it was quickly recognized as a spot that rivaled Patagonia’s Fitz Roy in rock quality and the remote adventure-y feel. Unfortunately, in the late 1990’s the area became a conflict zone with terrorist activity and frequent military skirmishes, forcing the Kyrgyz government to close the area to foreign travel for a time. It was here in 2000 that American big wall climbers Tommy Caldwell, Beth Rodden, John Dickey, and Jason Smith were kidnapped and held hostage by a local extremist militia before escaping. While the threat of violence has greatly diminished, the incredibly remote and stunningly beautiful place has once again started drawing the interest of climbers from across the world to its sheer granite faces.
Adrian and Emily check out Bishkek's bazaar before heading into the mountains. | HBO photo.
In the summer of 2020, Emily Harrington and Adrian Ballinger launched an expedition to film an attempt at free climbing a truly massive route on Pik Slesova, one of the most prominent summits in the Ak-Su Valley. The 4240-meter-high peak features several legendary routes, including the 5.12b Perestroika Crack, first free climbed by Lynn Hill and Greg Child in 1995, a massive aid climb called The Russian Shield on the Northwest Face put up by Conrad Anker and Alex Lowe also in 1995, and a 2000-foot 5.13a free climb called the American Way first climbed in 2019 by David Allfrey, Brent Barghahn, Nick Berry, and Eric Bissell. For Harrington, the dream of a Yosemite-sized free climb high on a peak in the middle nowhere was something she couldn’t ignore any longer, so she set her sights on climbing The American Way in a style she knows best: alpine-style free climbing. That meant launching an expedition to one of the most remote mountain ranges in the world to climb one of the hardest routes she had ever attempted entirely under her own power.
A quick reminder: free climbing is the act of rock climbing while using a rope, carabiners, and self-placed protection only for protecting a fall. Upward progress is made entirely by using your hands and feet on the rock. Falls are possible, and at this difficulty level, highly likely – but to call an ascent a true “free ascent” a climber must re-start a pitch by lowering down and pulling the rope if they fall at some point on it. On a route as long as The American Way, climbers must spend the night on the wall, sleeping on tiny ledges or even on a contraption called a porta-ledge (essentially a lightweight cloth platform that temporarily attaches to the wall to provide a flat place to camp on a vertical wall). Free climbing can either be considered “sport climbing,” where the protection consists of bolts that are drilled into the rock that a climber clips their rope into while leading, or “trad” climbing, where the climber places their own pieces of protection into natural features like cracks while leading. This stands in contrast with aid climbing, where climbers use ladders, pulleys, and other mechanical assistance to gain vertical ground. To put the route’s 5.13a rating into context, it’s the type of route only a few elite climbers in the world can complete, featuring sustained amounts of vertical climbing on minutely small holds with dynamic moves, overhanging terrain, or sections with no holds at all where the only thing holding you to the wall is the friction of your shoes.
Clinging to tiny granite holds is Emily Harrington's specialty. | HBO photo.
Harrington loves this style of climbing. Growing up in Boulder, Colorado, which she considers one of the best places to be a rock climber in the lower 48, her career has spanned from winning at the highest levels of competition sport climbing, to expedition climbing in remote reaches of the world. After falling out of love with the rigors of competition climbing, she decided to take her climbing skills into some big mountains. Since then, her travels have taken her on sport climbing trips to China, exploratory expeditions to Myanmar, to the summit of Everest, Cho Oyu, Ama Dablam and setting records closer to home with feats like climbing Yosemite’s El Capitan in a single day via the 40-pitch 5.13b Golden Gate route. For her, climbing has always been about the challenge of pulling hard moves on rock, and the natural progression has been to take her skills and impressive athleticism into harsher and less forgiving environments.
On the other hand, Harrington’s partner Adrian Ballinger’ career has been largely focused on technical high-altitude mountaineering. As a long-time guide on the world’s 8000-meter peaks, Ballinger has a unique ability to perform in the extreme conditions found at the world’s highest elevations. Ballinger grew up in the Washington, DC area and decided to decline a Georgetown medical school admission to focus his life on climbing. Today, he is an IFMGA guide who owns and operates Alpenglow Expeditions, an outfit that specializes in getting clients to the top of high-altitude summits as fast as possible using a revolutionary system of pre-acclimatization steps. Unlike Harrington, his career focus has not been hard rock climbing, instead he is best known for what he calls “going really slow up really big mountains,” and using guiding as an avenue to explore the world. He has summitted Everest and K2 without supplemental oxygen, pioneered the first ski descent of Makalu and skied off Cho Oyu and Manaslu, and spends much of his year guiding big peaks in South and Central America.
A pretty typical scene on any big wall climb - hanging out in a porta-ledge. | HBO photo.
Ballinger and Harrington met in 2012 at Camp Two on Everest during Harrington’s first attempt on the mountain. She recalls, “Adrian came to our tent, and he had his little like handheld espresso machine and he offered me an espresso and we just sat and chatted and drank espresso. And I think he was sort of like, ‘What are you doing here? Like, what's your deal?’ And I was like, ‘well, I've never, never really done this before.’ I was just enjoying being new to everything.” That first impression must have lasted, as the two started climbing together and sharing their lives before getting married in 2021. They now live in the Lake Tahoe area with their dog Cat.
The Kyrgyzstan expedition was one the biggest challenges they had ever faced. For one, the challenges of traveling during a global pandemic were greatly multiplied thanks to the remoteness of the Ak-Su Valley. Kyrgyzstan is no small country, and unfortunately, the only international airport in the capital city Bishkek, is on the opposite site of the country. The crew, including cinematographers Austin Siadak and Colette McInerney and support climbers Esteban ‘Topo’ Mena and Roberto ‘Tico’ Moralez, spent several days exploring the melting pot of culture in Bishkek before packing up the cars and heading into the mountains. From there, the trek to basecamp commenced.
The American Way route snakes up the massive wall on the right. | HBO photo.
Learn more about the expedition when you watch Episode 2 of TGR x HBO’s Edge of the Earth, available to stream on HBO and HBO Max today.
TGR: What’s the significance of the route The American Way? Why did you choose to attempt climbing it in the style that you did?
Emily Harrington: The American Way on Pik Slesova is definitely the most remote far-out-there big wall I've ever attempted. We don't have that much information, aside from just hearsay and talking to friends. And then we have one topo, so one map that was hand-drawn. And then we have information about other routes on that feature. But some are from this Russian website that's been translated, and then there's this French one that we've got and translated. So, it's like a mishmash of information. But it's not a clear, "This is where you start and this is where you go," type of thing. There's not a description. So, that's going to take some exploration. And the fact that it's only really been climbed once, by one group of people, means that it's not going to be the most obvious thing in the world as to where we we're going to go. It's going to be hard to find the root. There might be some loose rock. There might be some cleaning involved. Again, it's not like driving up to Yosemite and following the bolts or the chalk or the topo and reading the descriptions.
Adrian Ballinger: So the Ak-Su first and foremost was a training ground for Soviet Alpinists. So Russian climbers in the greater ranges like Pakistan, and Nepal and Tibet, Russian climbers have been some of the best climbers throughout the history of climbing there, both their technical skills on terrain like rock and ice, and their high-altitude ability to suffer. And where they trained and built those skills and competed for the money to be able to go to the greater ranges, was here in Kyrgyzstan as a Soviet republic. And the Ak-Su valley and its neighboring valley, the Karavashin, were the two areas where they were testing themselves on rock. And so in the '60s, '70s, they were climbing here, mostly doing what's called aid climbing. Again, using any means necessary to get up the rock, to summit the peak. That's what climbing used to be about it, summiting the peak instead of the style you climb the peak in.
As far as I know, in 2019, the American Way was the first free route up that, up the entirety of the Northwest Face. And that's what kind of captured Emily's imagination: a high level 5.13 free route that's only seen one team ascent by a group of really highly talented and respected Yosemite climbers.
Beat down but not over it. | HBO photo.
TGR: How did you envision combining your skill sets for this mission?
AB: I'm not a professional rock climber, I'm a big mountain climber and skier. Can't say it enough, I'm a good rock climber. And I love rock climbing. Like just love it to my core. And I've gotten a lot better the past few years under Emily's yelling at me. But so my goal is to free everything I can and hopefully have the weather window and the opportunity to really put in time to work through the route. And I mean, if I could free every pitch on the thing, that would be insane. But I could be like Emily freeing all of it and me freeing every damn pitch I can without ruining the whole mission for both of us, I'll be super proud of that.
Emily Harrington clinging to the wall high up on Pik Slesova. | HBO photo.
TGR: Can you tell us about the importance of having a good support team on a trip like this?
EH: The success or failure of an expedition is really hinges on the group of people there and how they work together, and how they trust one another and how they communicate with one another. Expeditions are hard, and everything from landing in the cities and that sort of city time and logistics time and trying to train and stay fit and stay psyched to living on the wall with people. It's super important to have people there, who you trust and who you can communicate with and hopefully who you are friends with. And in this case, I think we have the best scenario.
TGR: What’s it like traveling to a place like Kyrgyzstan to go on climbing trip? What’s special about the culture here?
AB: Kyrgyzstan is one of the most mountainous countries on the planet. It is an alpine playground. Very little of it is flat. It has numerous high mountain ranges, not just a single one - the Tian Shan and the Pamir Alai. It's got five peaks over 23,000 feet. So the tallest peaks outside of the Himalaya are actually here in Kyrgyzstan. And it has these epic rock walls in the valleys between the big mountains. Planning this wall in Kyrgyzstan, it's essentially the same size wall and same difficulty as what Emily did in Yosemite, but really it feels entirely different because of the remote nature. It's really difficult for us to get there with all the travel and the hiking and all the rest, but also it means we essentially have no rescue services if an accident was to happen. So, the same fall that Emily took in Yosemite, if that was to happen here, it's much more likely that it would be potentially fatal because she can't be in an ICU unit in six hours. It would probably take three days. Helicopter rescue on the wall is completely impossible. There is no professional search and rescue system. As far as we know, there are few, if any other climbers in the valley that we are going to. So we know once we get there, we're on our own in our little capsule.
Big moves in big terrain. | HBO photo.
EH: The capital Bishkek really does feel like this melting pot. You can feel and see the Russian Soviet influence, but then there's definitely a very Asian, Chinese influence. And then there's also this Middle Eastern aspect to it that is also very present as well. So, it does really feel like a multicultural city. The bazaar is this enormous marketplace in the middle of Bishkek, where there's tons of vendors, there's all these different zones. There's the dried fruit and nut zone, there's the meat zone, there's the clothing zone. It feels really endless, like this labyrinth of humanity. It's always cool to go to those places in a city that you've never been to because it really does feel like this... It's very raw. The thing that strikes me the most about places like that is the different smells. You're in one zone, it smells like one thing. And then you literally go 20 feet and the smell completely changes, the vibe changes. And I just think it's a very cool experience of life happening.
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