"SPORT CLIMBING IS . . . I don't want to say mindless, but it doesn't feel complete to me," says Canadian climber Sonnie Trotter, 25. This past summer, Trotter, who counts among his climbing accomplishments Canada's first 5.14+ (just a notch below the hardest sport climb ever), knocked off the toughest trad route in history, the 5.14 Cobra Crack—an overhanging granite split in Squamish, British Columbia, that's been ejecting the sport's elite for decades. Whereas sport climbers rely on bolts drilled into cliff faces to stop their falls, trad (traditional) climbers jam wedge-shaped nuts and mechanical devices into naked cracks, clip in, and trust friction to save their lives. To pull off the 100-foot ascent, Trotter had to press his fingers against the inside of a narrow crack—like trying to open an elevator door—while keeping his toes balanced in and along the outside of the fissure. "An analogy," says Trotter, "would be if you were to bolt a vise grip to a very overhanging wall, line it with sandpaper, screw it shut on your fingers, and then do one-arm pull-ups." In some places, he had to launch himself upward and jam his fingers back into the crack before gravity could take hold. "It's intimidating," he says, "because if you fall, your fingers can actually get stuck in the crack. You have to be fully committed to going upward." Or maybe you just need to be committed?