Get Shorty - The 5 best miniature sport routes in America

“These days, sport routes are getting longer,” says the sport-climbing progenitor Boone Speed. Speed would know: he recently photographed Chris Sharma on his 250-foot mega-pitch Jumbo Love, a 5.15 in California that’s emerged as North America’s longest, most difficult stretch of bolted rock. As Speed says, ultra-marathon endurance, especially on steep terrain, has become all the rage: there’s Jumbo Love; the new 300-foot Ichiban, a 5.14 in Austria’s Zillertal; the 170-foot 5.15a La Novena Enmienda (a 65-foot 5.14c linked into a 105-foot enduro-pig 5.14b), at Santa Linya, Spain. The list goes on. … It would seem that top-level climbers are only now realizing the potential in piecing together monster pitches. But what about the little guys, the mini-routes with just a few bolts?

“There are still plenty of great routes that are short and sweet,” says Speed, a driving force behind some of America’s best short, bouldery climbs, many in his native Utah. (Think the 25-foot The Present (5.14a), near Saint George, or the myriad testpiece climbs Speed redpointed or established on the 30-foot El Diablo Wall, in American Fork Canyon, or his Ice Cream, a 5.14c in Hell Cave that’s in essence a bolted V12.) This is a genre Speed knows well.

Speed built on a tradition reaching back to the dawn of sport climbing — the early 1980s. Back then, executing wild, dynamic moves while roped seemed so new that it made sense to start small. Speed cites the venerable Chain Reaction (5.12c; FA: 1983; 40 feet), at Smith Rock; many of the 20- and 30-foot bulging testpieces in Germany’s Frankenjura; and the climbs on the Baby Apes Wall (trad), at Joshua Tree as prime period pieces. These were lines established just as the gymnastic movement favored by boulderers crept into the roped realm. The micro movement perhaps culminated in 1990, with Ben Moon’s Raven Tor route Hubble, the world’s first 5.14c. This two-bolt, formerly A0 start into a short 5.12d added a total of six moves: undercling-nightmare, bicep-ripping burly Beta out a limestone bulge so stout it’s seen only five repeats. Another high note was Dave Graham’s 2000 FA of The Fly, 15 feet of business at Rumney, New Hampshire.

These days, just about every local area boasts a famous, two-bolts-of-glory miniature climb — some appealing (though diminutive) piece of bolted stone. These climbs are particularly popular with boulderers, for whom the pump gong sounds, with finality, somewhere around move 10. To launch on your chosen mini-route, perhaps you pre-clip the first or even second bolt; next you bust some moves (trying not to tangle in the rope), tag one or two more clips, and then go chains. Or maybe you begin with the anchors pre-clipped and skip the lead bolts altogether. And once you piece it all together, the route might even feel easy — like one big boulder problem. It’s a genre that’s held fast, even as crashpads have made some of these routes viable — even “popular” — as boulder problems. Still, though a key part of our vertical heritage, short sport’s a genre we often take for granted.

“Climbers are forgetting there are thousands and thousands of famous, world-class routes in Zone 1 or 2,” says Speed, referencing John Bachar’s zone system. (Zone 1 means you can “safely” take an unroped fall — e.g., bouldering over a good landing; a Zone 2 fall is survivable, though possibly injurious — think boulder problems with poor landings, highballs, or short free solos; and a Zone 3 fall is fatal — i.e., you’re up high, in a no-falls situation.) And on a darker note, having bolts on Zone 1 and 2 climbs has, at times, so incensed other climbers they’ve removed the hardware. I would know — back in my teenage years, I helped equip two New Mexico sport areas so vertically challenged (30 feet max), the crag police stripped both in their entirety. (Can I have my hangers back, people?) The size argument has climbers up in arms to this day, a close cousin to the bolts-near-cracks debates that flame up on the Internet.

All controversy aside, with this feature, Climbing pays homage to five of America’s most wee (but beloved and unique) sport routes, from the granite of the Sierras, to the limestone of New Mexico, to the schist of Rumney. These climbs are King Lines in miniature, so aesthetically pleasing you don’t question the bolts, but not so tall you totally accept them, either. They’re also the tiniest climbs at areas not especially known for short routes — another key criterion to whittle down the selection. After all, it’s hard to measure the world’s tallest midget — even with a ruler as Ali G (Sacha Baron Cohen) proposed on season one of Da Ali G Show — in a room full of Little People. Which leads to our first climb: