'Fight Club,' Canada's most difficult rock climbing route, established in Alberta

Originally published August 16.

Alex Megos has just ascended the toughest rock climbing route in Canada.

The 23-year-old German man completed the newly-established route on Sunday in Raven Crag, located on Sulphur Mountain above the town of Banff.

"The route is an overhang, basically, from the bottom to the top and it's about 20 metres long," Megos told the Calgary Eyeopener on Tuesday.

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Lead climbing and harnessed into a rope, it took Megos five days and "at least" 10 falls to complete the climb in one go.

And so, it's fitting that he's named the route "Fight Club" after the 1999 Hollywood film which deals with issue of battling one's internal demons.

Megoshas been traveling around the world since 2012, climbing the world's hardestroutes.

It's a 5.15b

The difficulty rating of a climbing route increases as the holds (the cracks and holes climbers use to pull themselves up the rock wall)get smaller and further apart.

"There's a lot of climbing jargon that goes along with this stuff, and what we're talking about here is grades,"saidBrandon Pullan, editor of Gripped magazine.

Underthe Yosemite Decimal System, rock climbing grades start at 5.0 and once you hit 5.10 each number increasesincrementallyby letters (5.10a, 5.10b all the way to 5.15d).

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"Up until the early1990sthe hardestclimbsin the world were 5.14d and they were in Europe," said Pullan.

Today, the three most difficult sportsclimbingroutes in the world areDura Dura (Spain), Change (Norway) andVasil Vasil (Czech Republic) all of which are5.15c.

Fight Club is a5.15band is the first climb in Canada to be given that rating.

"For the world of climbing it's one of the biggest deals of the decade," said Pullan.

Old route given new life

The Fight Club is actually an extension of an old climbingroute.

In the 1990s, a mountain guide named Peter Arbic bolted the lower half of the route.

"But he stopped because he thought it would be too difficult," saidPullan.

In anticipation of Megos' visit to Canada, Canmore climberSonnieTrotter extended the route higher up doubling its length and increasing its difficulty.

Pullan said the new route will most certainlyputBanff National Park "on the map" for somethe world's mostelite rockclimbers.

Calgary Eyeopener7:10Alex Megos makes Canadian climbing history

We talk to a German mountain climber who has just made Canadian climbing history by scaling a challenging route near Banff.

With files from the CBC's Caroline Wagner and the Calgary Eyeopener