The Bride of Frankenstein (5.13d)
Well-Dunne Wall; FA: John Dunne, 1998

When John Dunne in the late 1990s bolted what is now dubbed the Well-Dunne Wall, he admits to choosing the locale for its radically steep angle, not its rock quality. The Bride of Frankenstein required an honest man’s workweek of cleaning, prepping, and bolting before she would be tamed. “The natural holds were going to break off, so instead of having a hold that would break,” says the burly Dunne, “I creatively removed some rock so the natural fractures created holds.”  

The Bride, up a belly on the wall’s left, is Rifle’s most popular 5.13d power-endurance testpiece. It climbs like a well-set gym route — every move is pretty damn hard, but never desperate — and has been called the “poor man’s Living in Fear”.

Dunne explains that the “creative cleaning” he used on his three hardest Well-Dunne routes reflected the sport at the time. But his ethics evolved, and the last routes he bolted in Rifle were completely natural. Dunne can’t get enough of Rifle, which he calls a world-class crag: two years ago, he climbed 10 routes he hadn’t yet done, bringing his route count to 167, 20 of these FAs.