Ueli Steck, the talented and speedy Swiss mountaineer, has soloed the Ginat route (ED: V M4+ 85 degrees, 1000m), the classic north-face line on Les Droites (4001m) in the French Alps above Chamonix. Though the ice route has been solo climbed numerous times, Steck made the ascent on January 19 in what may be record time: 2 hours and 8 minutes.

Photographer Jonathan Griffith said that Steck climbed the route for fun, not speed. Prior to the ascent, Steck had neither alpine climbed for two months nor fully acclimatized. Griffith added that Steck's speed is particularly notable when considering that "the route was pretty inundated with powder, which made progress pretty slow for him at times."

"There was no track and the route had not seen an ascent yet this year," Griffith wrote on his blog. "Once up on the headwall Ueli picked up speed again and cruised through the difficulties. Thin ice on the final pitch of the headwall forced him to take the harder mixed variation which 1000m off the deck is a serious proposition. As we sat barely 100m away in a helicopter filming even Pascal Brun, the legendary heli pilot from Chamonix who must have seen everything there is to see in the Alps, commented about how amazingly agile and at home he looked on even this hard section."

Christophe Profit, the French alpinist famous for his difficult solo climbs and enchainments, previously held the fastest recorded ascent of the Ginat route with a time of 2:30.