A new generation in Yosemite, including Walt Shipley, Steve Gerberding, and John Middendorf, rejected trenching. If there were no cracks or other natural features that could be pitoned, headed, hooked, or free-climbed, they believed a bolt or rivet should be installed. In the softer Fisher Towers rock, trenched placements deteriorated fast from erosion and repeated use, requiring subsequent parties to carry a drill. Which led to another problem: Because a drill was needed to maintain these placements, the drill might, by accident or design, be used on previously natural placements as well.

I’m in awe of Beyer’s re?sume? of hard routes in the Fisher Towers. But not his trenching. On a first ascent, my partners and I strive to leave a route that can be enjoyed by others, without forcing them to drill. A route where we conform to the natural challenge presented by the rock, leaving solid bolts where no placements are to be had. And, fortunately, new lines in this style keep getting put up in the Fisher Towers.

In 1996, with nine ascents of the big Fisher Towers via existing climbs under my belt, I decided to attempt a new route on the enormous west face of the Oracle, with Chip Wilson. I geared up, free-climbed to a ledge 15 off the ground, and placed a Birdbeak. Above was a vast, vertical ocean. I could not bring myself to step up onto that piton. I came down, Chip declined to try, and we walked away.

A year later I returned with Dave Levine. We spent hours staring at the cliff with binoculars from different angles and at different times of day. For a new route to be worth doing, it has to have a low bolt count, and that means the line has to have mostly continuous cracks. After studying the face, we finally saw the full line. This time I stepped up with confidence on the first Birdbeak, placed another, stepped up again, and kept going. Our line, Beaking in Tongues, was a first-ascent dream: We placed bolts at the belays, but otherwise followed seams and cracks for seven independent pitches.

Of course, we have it easier today than Beyer did. In 1989, just as Beyer stopped climbing in the Fishers, John Middendorf ’s A5 Adventures began selling the Birdbeak. This tiny piton had a nifty drooped-pick design, like a minuscule ice axe. With Birdbeaks (and the more recent Peckers and Tomahawks), previously unusable seams like those on the Oracle were now open for business.

In 2007, Jeremy Aslaksen did the fourth ascent of Beaking in Tongues, 10 years after the first. He reported that the route had held up well. “We couldn’t even see where the original placements were, let alone find widened slots,” he said.

Aslaksen and Paul Gagner have established most of the recent hard new routes on the big Fisher Towers. Their campaign began on the east side of Kingfisher, with a long sequence of Peckers in a crack system that was mostly hidden by a mud curtain. How many Peckers? Aslaksen recalls, “24? More? Most were kind of A-frame style, when you have two or three teeth into the rock and the base is balanced on a nubbin below. Only good for a bit of a downward pull.” Gagner calls Weird Science (A4) his favorite Fisher Towers route “because of how improbable it was, and because it came together with minimal drilling.”

In March 2010 they started up a route on the Titan. Gagner, hiking near the tower, pulled a huge boulder onto his foot, crushing his toes. A week later, Aslaksen, at home in Albuquerque, pulled a boulder onto his toes. Not until August did the pair reassemble in the Fishers to finish the climb, Gimp Warfare (5.9 A3). In September 2011 they completed Trick of the Tail (5.10+ A3), which meanders up the enormous, heavily corrugated west face of Cottontail. On a roll, a few months later Gagner led the serious first pitch of a new route on the Oracle, working up sloping 5.10 ledges right of Beaking in Tongues to access an excellent crack system. In April 2013 they completed another new line on the Kingfisher, this time on the west face [see Climbs and Expeditions.]

All of these routes ranged between A2 and A4. In this context, Palmada’s unrepeated, supposedly A6+ route on the Titan was an anomaly. Had a pair of European climbers, under the noses of the locals, found a line that was harder than any existing Fisher Tower climb?

In the spring of 2012, Oju, Peligru! on the Titan was repeated by Richard Jensen, a highly experienced aid climber who also had repeated Beyer’s Intifada. He wrote an extensive blog about the experience (www.conclusivesystems.com/danger/). Did he tell a tale of struggle and fear, of admiration and respect? Not at all. Jensen suggested a rating of A3, at best, and claimed that Oju, Peligru! was a “completely manufactured ‘route,’ with virtually every placement requiring drilling.”

Jensen found trenched heads of aluminum and lead, and wood dowels stacked against tiny pitons in trenched holes. Unsustainable, unpleasant. Presumably, these are techniques that work well for aid climbs on pocketed Spanish limestone. But could they be transferred successfully to the Titan’s blank sandstone? No, they could not.

During his ascent, Jensen made an odd decision. Rather than struggle with the flared holes and rotting fixed heads Palmada had placed, he drilled new bolts alongside them. Adding bolts during a second ascent would normally be regarded as poor style, but Jensen asserted that Palmada and Olle? had been “methodical and calculating,” and what he encountered was not “climbing.” As such, he felt no obligation to use their placements.

Jensen’s blog includes a video of the belay atop Palmada’s first pitch, touted by the first-ascent team as an anchor from equalized hooks, followed immediately by hard, serious climbing—thus the proposed A6+ rating. The video shows that the three hooks in question were seated in drilled holes. Palmada’s own video shows the rightmost hook being cleaned with multiple blows from a hammer—more solid and secure than the word “hook” usually suggests. Several other placements, perhaps drilled, were used at this belay, and it appears that the placements immediately following this belay were trenched into blank rock, making the seriousness rather contrived. Jensen skipped this belay entirely during his ascent, continuing to an anchor in a good crack 170 feet off the ground. But Jensen’s “second ascent” was equally contrived, and did not conform to the challenge left by the first ascent.