Midnight Lightning (climb)
bouldering route, Yosemite, California
Midnight Lightning is a 7.62-metre (25.0 ft) high granite bouldering route on the Columbia Boulder in Camp 4 of Yosemite National Park. When first solved in May 1978 by American rock climber Ron Kauk, it was one of the hardest bouldering routes in the US. At that time, there was no universal grading system for boulders in the US. By the 90s when the "V" grades became dominant, it was graded V8. Even today, the route is still considered a "hard" V8. Midnight Lightning is perhaps the most famous bouldering route in climbing (along with Dreamtime), and its ascent is considered an important moment in the history and the development of bouldering as a sport in its own right.
History
It is believed that bouldering pioneer John "Yabo" Yablonski (the inventor of the sit start) discovered the line of a potential new bouldering problem on the Columbia boulder while wandering around Camp 4 in a drug-intoxicated state in early 1978. Yablonski showed it to Yosemite's two leading rock climbers, Ron Kauk and John Bachar. Bachar recounted: "It was Yabo [John Yablonski] who actually 'found' Midnight Lightning. He was sitting in front of it one day and came over to me and Ron Kauk and said he found a new boulder problem. He said it would go. We laughed and said it was impossible.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14683355. Authority coordinates are 37.742, -119.602. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Midnight Lightning (climb)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.