How does he do that??

It does look sweet. His feet? To tell the truth, they look like the kinda footwork moves we gotta do every stinking day on 5.8's and up, here on Devils Lake quartzite. I laugh when I find rock with any kind of friction out there in the 'real world' of climbing. I wish I could mail a small sample of our glass smooth rock out to each and every climber on this site to give you an idea of why I laugh.

i guess you had to be there. May seem mundane to you since you see it all the time but, i thought it was pretty sweet to watch. Probably what's missing in this pic, what you cant really see, is the angle of this route, it's blank face climbing, not really slab. the arete is more than 90 deg, he is palming it and his lower body is twisted to the left to leverage as much opposing force as he can get. his other hand is behind him on pretty much nothin. And he's LEADING it. This route is NOT on the north 40 where the ratings tend to be soft... but if you have some pix of 5.8's that are as hard as 5.12's i would LOVE to see em!

That I'm sure I can find in the files here. Will post up under 'trad' sometime over the holiday when I locate some wickedly smooth face climbs here. 5.7 to 5.10's that are 'real world' 12's for sure.