Pietro Vidi repeats Meltdown (5.14c/F8c+) in Yosemite
- Wednesday 12th November 2025
Italian climber Pietro Vidi has successfully repeated the cutting-edge trad-climb Meltdown (5.14c/F8c+) in Cascade Creek, Yosemite Valley, USA.
The route, first established by Beth Rodden in 2008, has still seen only a handful of repeats in the past 17 years and is regarded as one of the most challenging trad routes in the world.
Pietro first started trying Meltdown after his ascent of The Pre-Muir on El Capitan two weeks ago (read about that here). Adopting a head-point approach to working the climb, Pietro spent his first two sessions figuring out the individual moves before starting to link sections together on day three. It took a further two sessions of lead tries before Pietro finally clipped the chains, during his sixth day on the route and third day of lead attempts.
Pietro commented: “I started making some good links on top-rope on day 3, where I realised I would probably need to skip some gear in the first part and also a crucial nut placement on the second crux – in order to save energy. This made for quite a big runout, but still seemed relatively safe.
I made my first lead tries on session 4 and got through the first crux, only to fall right after, when I struggled to place a cam properly and got too pumped to continue. That afternoon, I actually watched a video on Ethan Pringle ripping the gear in the hollow flake, which is right below the nut I had decided not to place. He almost decked out. This made me quite nervous!
The following day, I tested the gear in the flake myself, almost breaking a nut, which I was convinced was bomber and thus, further multiplying my nerves. Luckily, I found that a bigger nut would fit, and my confidence slowly came back.
On day 6, I started up the route, feeling really confident, only to dry-fire right after the crux move and breaking the trigger wires on the cam. I managed to temporarily fix the cam with some tape and then sent the route on my next try, with quite a battle against numb fingers and pump!
Meltdown is, for sure, the hardest trad route I have climbed, apart from Tribe [Jacopo Larcher’s F9a trad route in Cadarese, Italy, which he did the third ascent of in 2024]. The climbing is super insecure with horrible feet, extremely technical, but still really physical. Beth’s first ascent, more than 15 years ago, was truly incredible and ahead of its time!”