Interview: Balin Miller’s Bold Solo of 9,000-foot ‘Slovak Direct,’ Denali

Balin Miller spent 53 days on Alaskan glaciers this spring. And though he jokingly called the barren terrain a “hellscape” in hindsight, it also enabled an alpine-climbing season few could even dream of. The 23-year-old from Anchorage wrapped up his tenure just a few days ago, after making a historic solo ascent of the Slovak Direct (M6 WI 6 A2; 9,000ft) on Denali (20,310ft/ 6,190m) over three days.

Miller has known about the Slovak for most of his life. When the route was climbed in a single 60-hour push—no tent, sleeping bags, or enough equipment to bail from up high—by Steve House, Scott Backes, and Mark Twight in 2000, their ascent marked a new era of North American alpinism: A giant, steep face was climbed via the same lightweight means one might approach a multi-pitch in Yosemite.

“I definitely thought of it as being super duper hard,” Miller says. But when two separate parties climbed the face in under 24 hours in 2022, his perception of the route began to change. Matt Cornell, whose team dispatched the Slovak in 21 hours and 35 minutes, described it as “super chill,” with plenty of low-angle snow that could be climbed quickly. “I realized it was still hard, but it’s not, like, 6,000 feet of technical climbing,” Miller says. “The more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be a ton of fun to climb alone.”

“That said, while I liked the idea of soloing it, I definitely didn’t have to,” Miller notes. “If I’d had a partner I was getting along well with, who was also psyched, I would have done it with them in a heartbeat.”

On June 10, Miller skied away from his basecamp and gained 4,500 feet of elevation over 10 miles en route to Denali’s South Face. Cornell had warned him the heavily crevassed approach might be the scariest part of the whole endeavor, but thankfully a thick snowpack had formed secure snow bridges over the gaping cracks. Miller was intimidated on the ski in, but also comfortable in the landscape. He’d been in the area for over a month and a half by this point. “You definitely get desensitized out there on Denali—the scale is so big, it’s hard to really comprehend.”

The most impressive part about Miller’s ascent is how much he slept on route. He woke up at 9:30 a.m. on his first day, left camp two hours later, and climbed for just four hours before stopping to bivy at a prominent hanging glacier. He then hung out there for 19 hours. “I think I was just tired from the approach,” he explains. “I figured I would take a half rest day and sleep in. Normally you don’t have the luxury to do that. But I did have five days of good weather, so there was no rush.”

Miller expected to self-belay as many as six pitches with his rack, half rope, and Grigri, but Cornell assured him he’d only need to belay one—if he was comfortable free soloing up to M5/6 and WI 6, which he was. The route ended up being even easier than he dared to dream, and its fearsome reputation became less and less important the more he saw it for himself. “It’s not pumpy, sustained M5,” Miller notes. “It’s more like romping up M3/4 with a move of M5/6. And you’re not hanging off your arms, scratching around. You just need to do, like, a high foot and make a weird move.”

He found solid granite and stable snow low on the route, and then “sticky, fun ice” through the ice-crux corner system. Even the WI 6 pitches—labeled as “100 degrees” on the topo he’d been given—were only that steep for 20-40 feet and interspersed with lower-angle ice. “I was hoping for a [natural] ledge to set my pack on partway through the ice pitches, so I could haul my pack through them, but I didn’t see one and didn’t want to chop a ledge. So I soloed all the ice pitches with my pack on which definitely made the climbing feel harder,” he says. Despite the steep, physical free soloing, Miller describes his scariest moment as traversing a 5.6 slab that was covered in snow. He swung his axes into featureless rock numerous times before finding enough little edges to eventually connect to more secure terrain.

The one pitch Miller expected to rope up for was the technical crux of the Slovak: a series of steep A2 cracks that had been freed at M8. “It felt a little ridiculous to bring so many cams and a rope for just one pitch of aiding, but I was glad I had everything,” he says. “I might have been the first person to bring a Grigri up Denali!”

Above the crux headwall, Miller climbed one final pitch of M4 before connecting with the upper snow slopes of the Cassin Ridge and stopping for the night. “I was feeling the altitude at this point and I threw up a little bit. I bivied at 1 a.m. and started moving around noon the next day. Thankfully there was no more climbing, just snow, so I slowly hiked to the summit over seven hours. I ran into a friend who let me have some of his dinner at 14 camp, and then around midnight I left and walked all the way down to base camp. I got back at 4 a.m.”

Talking about the Slovak with Miller is remarkably underwhelming. I’ve had similarly subdued conversations with family members about their home reno projects, or manual labor. Yeah, hard work, but not too bad. I’m happy the Slovak was so firmly within Miller’s wheelhouse, but I also wanted some wider perspective. Colin Haley, a veteran of the Alaska range who has soloed both the Cassin Ridge and the Infinite Spur in record time, told me: “I think that Balin’s solo ascent of the Slovak route is very impressive, and the fact that he did it shortly after his solo ascent of the French Connection [M6 AI 6; 6,500ft] on the North Buttress of Begguya makes for a super badass, and I would even maybe say historic, trip to the Kahiltna.” Haley said Miller’s ascent of the Slovak is one of the greatest alpine-style solos ever done in the Central Alaska Range, second only to Renato Casarotto’s committing voyage up the Ridge of No Return on Denali in 1984.

And when Mark Twight—of that visionary 60-hour Slovak blitz—first heard about Miller’s solo, his first reaction was: “Holy shit.” Then: “Of course he did.” After all, the Slovak represented a logical progression from Miller’s free solo of the French Connection at the end of May. (At the time, Haley described that solo as one of the most impressive alpine-style solos ever done in the range.)

The French Connection climbs the long ice runnel—up to AI 6—of the French Route on Begguya (14,573ft/ 4,442m), also called Mount Hunter, before traversing hard right into the final pitches (M6) of the Bibler-Klewin. The crux of the route came at the very top of the North Buttress at “a section of slightly overhanging ice in a crack,” Miller describes. “It’s not super difficult, but it’s really awkward because the crack is narrow and steep. It’s hard to get your tools in there.” Although many parties stop at the top of the 4,000-foot North Buttress and begin rappelling, Miller continued up the extra 2,500 feet of snow and alpine ice to the summit, returning to camp in roughly 17.5 hours. (Of note: earlier this spring, with partners, Miller also climbed Deprivation (AI 6 M6; 6,500ft) on the North Buttress to the prominent “third ice band” and then returned two weeks later to take it to the summit.

Looking back at his nearly two months in the Central Alaska Range, Miller said he is happy with how much climbing he got to do, but is also looking forward to summer. “It was a very social season,” he says. “Despite all the soloing I was doing I was mainly hanging out with friends in base camp, and I had a lot of fun climbing with new partners on Hunter. There were only a few days I felt lonely out there, and those days were spread out between a lot of fun ones. Overall, it was a really special time.”