American alpinist Balin Miller is claiming to be the first person to solo the famous Slovak Direct climb on Denali mountain in the Alaska Range.
It's the first known solo ascent of the route, which leads to the right of the Cassin Ridge, and has only been completed 20 times in total since the 1980s.
Posting on Instagram, the 23-year-old Alaskan said: "My 53 day tenure in the central Alaska Range comes to a close. The most recent ascent I made was a solo ascent of the Slovak Direct. Fun times with high pressure on the south face. A more casual ascent at about 56 hours with 70% of that time spent sleeping. Incredibly excited for summer to start and be out of that hellscape."
The south face of Denali is home to some of the arduous climbing routes in the world, including the Cassin Ridge, Denali Diamond and Slovak Direct. Slovak climbers Blažej Adam, Tono Križo, and František Korl established the Sloval Direct route in 1984. It took them 11 days to complete as they battled difficult conditions.
The route is approximately 9,000ft (2,700m) long and graded VI, 5.9X, M6, WI6, A2. You can read more about just how hard that is in our guide to climbing grades here.
Earlier this year in May, as part of his Alaskan trip, Miller posted on Instagram claiming to have completed the first solo ascent of the French Connection North Buttress on Mount Begguya, a mountain in Denali National Park approximately eight miles (13km) south of Denali. However, this was rebutted in the comments by a climber who said:
"I definitely disagree with your claim of the 'first proper solo ascent of [the] North Buttress'." The commenter goes on to explain that Miller's solo route veered right to avoid the hardest parts of the North Buttress route, and other climbers had soloed more direct routes in the past.
"Your ascent is super duper badass as it is, and you don't need to search for a bigger 'first' claim for it to be recognized as such. Just call it what it is: first solo ascent of the French Connection."
Denali was controversially stripped of its indigenous name and renamed Mount McKinley by President Trump as one of his first moves in office.
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