In October, Mari Augusta Salvesen and Pete Whittaker both flashed Autobahn (5.14), Tom Randall’s 60-meter urban roof crack that slices like a hidden highway beneath the roaring traffic of Berlin. The brutal, dead-straight offwidth, echoing the legendary battle with Utah’s Century Crack, demands pure wide-pony wizardry as climbers grind inverted through a corridor of sharp, uniform concrete.

Randall made the first ascent in September 2024, climbing ropeless with only a harness, a bit of 6 mm cord, and two #5 cams to bump along. Whittaker’s flash is likely the second ascent, with Salvesen’s flash the third, and footage of their ascents has now been released. 

Autobahn is as bizarre as it is brutal: perpetually dirty, constantly flexing with traffic overhead, and ferociously abrasive, leaving climbers scraped and bloodied. It’s a line reserved for the very best offwidth specialists, a fitting playground for the Wide Boyz and Salvesen.

“60m wide pony shuffle under a bridge outside of Berlin,” Salvesen wrote, noting she completed the flash even after a shoelace came undone early on. Neither climber offered a firm grade; Whittaker simply labeled it “8?”, suggesting somewhere between 5.13b (8a) and 5.14c (8c+) on the YDS scale.

It’s the kind of line that turns strength into spectacle: a feral blend of power, composure, and utter refusal to let gravity have the last word. By flashing Autobahn, Salvesen and Whittaker didn’t just repeat a testpiece, they lit up its shadows with the kind of rock-and-roll audacity that makes the climbing world sit up and say: Damn, that’s how it’s done.

The Send