8b+ Free Solo

In 8b+ Free Solo, Dave MacLeod drops you into a razor-edged moment from his film Echo Wall: a free solo of Darwin Dixit in Margalef, a route widely known as 8b+ (and once considered 8c). Framed as a “training exercise” for his bigger ambitions on Ben Nevis, this short, intense extract captures the mindset of a climber deliberately pushing the boundary between control and consequence. What makes it unmissable is how much it says in so little time: precise movement on steep rock, the quiet calculations behind committing above the last good stance, and the way confidence is built through purposeful exposure. With a raw, personal feel—filmed by Claire MacLeod on her very first climbing shoot—it plays like a distilled hit of commitment, focus, and the strange calm that can settle in when there’s nothing between you and the ground but your decisions.

Dave MacLeod · 5:31

An extract from the movie Echo Wall https://www.davemacleod.com/shop/echowall from 2008 where I free solo Darwin Dixit (8b+ but at the time graded 8c) as a bit of a training exercise to get my head around doing 8c on trad on my project, Echo Wall on Ben Nevis. The climb was filmed by Claire MacLeod. It was the first time she'd ever filmed any climbing!