Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
On October 5 and 6 Adrian Vanoni freed each pitch of Prayer For A Friend (5.14a; 600ft), a 20-year project on Washington’s Prusik Peak. Prayer wanders between crack systems for five technical, mentally demanding pitches (up to 5.12-) before a distinct crescendo: A striking overhung finger crack breaching an otherwise blank headwall. Some have called the crux pitch an alpine Cobra Crack.
The story of Prayer is intergenerational, and began with Fitz Cahall two decades ago. “Prusik Peak is iconic, especially if you live in Washington,” Cahall said, recounting his first glimpse of what is now Prayer. In the early 2000s, the longtime Pacific Northwesterner was enjoying a day of soloing multiple peaks in the Enchantment Range. “I had an awesome day, and was going up the West Ridge (5.7; 400ft) of Prusik, which goes right by Prayer; holy good God!” The West Ridge is classic, and Cahall knew that thousands of eyes had likely seen the lichen-specked splitter he was gawking at, but, alas, in this era there was no quick way to learn more about the line. Cahall made a mental note to investigate its history when he returned from the mountains, but life had different plans. He had missed many calls whilst in the mountains, and soon learned that one of his close highschool friends had died from a rare form of cancer. The splitter on Prusik slowly became a memorial: A Prayer For A Friend.
After some digging, Cahall learned that the splitter was likely untouched. He recruited his life partner Becca Cahall and their friend Aaron Webb to check out the entire 600-foot feature, spending the next three summers slowly learning its nuances. Cahall sandbagged himself on an early attempt, questing up the 5.11 face-climbing pitches with minimal use of the drill. He’d have to stomach his preliminary boldness time and time again while enroute to work the crux pitch. Nik Berry would later add a few bolts to this lower section, with Cahall’s permission. After three summers of effort, Cahall was still far from redpointing the crux splitter. “It was a powerful experience, those three seasons. But other things started happening in my life,” he said.
Other things. Cahall was expanding, and his inspiration went toward other creative expressions. He began making films under Duct Tape Then Beer, and telling stories on The Dirtbag Diaries podcast, and now Climbing Gold, too. In addition to becoming one of his generation’s prominent storytellers, Fitz and Becca welcomed their first child in 2011.
Prayer For A Friend served its purpose in Cahall’s life. It was a way to connect with himself and his friends—living and dead. Around 2007, it was time to pass the torch.
***
“I have hiked 80 miles in the past two weeks in rain, snow, heat, and 40 mile per hour wind to work on A Prayer for a Friend,” Nik Berry wrote in a 2018 social media post. Berry had gone all in on the razor splitter beneath Prusik Peak’s summit. “After having so much success in Yosemite [this season] it feels motivating to fail on an objective. … This route will provide ample motivation for future training sessions.” He returned the following season, logging more hours on the biting tips crack, but again fell short. “You never forget the ones that got away,” he later wrote. Berry couldn’t be reached for this article.
***
When Cahall was piecing together Prayer during those early 2003 forays, the line’s eventual first free ascensionist—Adrian Vanoni—was a toddler in the Seattle suburbs. Twenty years later, that toddler has grown up into one of America’s elite budding trad climbers. Vanoni has iconic cracks and big walls like Cobra Crack (5.14b) City Park (5.13d), Stingray (5.13d), and Golden Gate (5.13b; 3000ft) in his rearview mirror, but his climbing has remained centered around Prusik Peak; he’s a proud Washingtonian, after all.
“I climbed the Stanley-Bergner (5.10a; 500ft) in 2019, when I was nineteen,” he told Climbing “It was transformational—took us 18 hours!” Vanoni returned to Prusik a year later to solo the Beckey-Davis (5.9; 650ft). After summiting, he down-climbed the West Ridge and saw what Cahall, Berry, and countless others had: Splitter cracks shooting up a headwall. Prayer. Vanoni was entranced but also out of his league: “I thought, one day someone is going to do it, and then I’ll try to do it too, eventually.” He took a photo of the headwall, made it the background of his phone, where it remained for most of the next two years, and continued climbing in earnest.
After climbing Index’s City Park (5.13d) in 2022—a life-achievement route in Washington—Vanoni thought it was time to revisit Prayer. He walked the 10-mile approach alone, had a mini-epic trying to rappel into the route (“I built this shitty anchor unbeknownst that there were bolts pretty much right next to me. It was a whole thing.”), and eventually got acquainted with the moves in isolation. Vanoni returned a week later but quickly injured his finger on the steep crux fingerlocks. Nursing his injury, Vanoni and his friend toured other routes on Prusik and he hiked out of that trip having climbed nearly every route on the peak. Prayer loomed.
Prayer became a constant in Vanoni’s life. It was a guiding force. This year, he returned to Prusik multiple times. On one trip, he shiver-bivied with a friend and barely climbed. Another time, he shared Krispy Kreme donuts with strangers on the long approach. And, of course, he started to connect the dots on the crux pitch. After one-hanging the crux, Vanoni realized he was ready to start trying the route from the ground.
Even with the newly added bolts, Vanoni found the lower pitches hard, runout, and taxing. By the time he’d freed the first five pitches—onsighting all but one 5.11—the crux splitter was in the sun. He tried anyway, and when he fell out of the painful locks he chose to top out and return to camp.
The next day Vanoni returned, soloing alongside Will Vidler up the West Ridge—a route that was now like an old friend—to rappel into the crux and write the conclusion of his Prayer chapter. “I one-hung it again on my first attempt, and found some slightly better beta. Afterward, I was sitting on the ledge in the sun with Will and I just knew it was time. I had that feeling. I put on Gold Lion, by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I just knew. I executed perfectly and got to this finger lock that marks the end of the difficulties. I sat there for a while, taking in the exposure, looking at the beautiful lichen, and smiling at Will. I couldn’t believe it.”
On paper, Vanoni’s ascent wasn’t perfect. He will be the first to tell you that. He was initially hesitant about even claiming a free ascent, thinking about Cahall, Berry, and the others that had put time into the route, and fearing sacrilege. “It was such a special line,” he explained, “that I didn’t want to marr it with any imperfection of style.” Not perfect, but, by all accounts, special (and technically imperfection, in this context, still included redpointing 5.14 ten miles into the backcountry). Vanoni warmly invites anyone interested to improve on his non-continuous style. For him, Prayer has served its purpose.
Sitting in his van in Yosemite Village, Vanoni concluded his reflections with this:
“If the rock climb was the sole motivator, I think Prayer would be really brutal. It’s sharp. It’s hard. It’s an amazing route, but it’s a lot of work. If I hadn’t had the mindset of just sharing this place with my friends and then climbing the route in the process, I would have had a very different experience.”