Aristoteles

Elevation: 10,827 ft

Location: Moon

Shared By: theDIHEDRAL¹ 

Description: Aristoteles is a large lunar crater named after the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. It’s located in the northeastern quadrant of the moon, near the Mare Frigoris and the Montes Alpes mountain range.  It is a 170 mile long wall surrounding the moon crater Aristoteles.  Most routes require only one piece of gear near the bottom to serve as an anchor in order to avoid floating off into space.  There is a lot of room for development.

Getting There: To get to the Moon, a spacecraft must first leave Earth’s gravity well; currently, the only practical means is a rocket. Unlike airborne vehicles such as balloons and jets, a rocket can continue accelerating in the vacuum outside the atmosphere.

Upon approach of the target moon, a spacecraft will be drawn ever closer to its surface at increasing speeds due to gravity. In order to land intact it must decelerate to less than about 160 kilometers per hour (100 mph) and be ruggedized to withstand a “hard landing” impact, or it must decelerate to negligible speed at contact for a “soft landing” (the only option for humans).

Aristoteles is located on the Southern edge of the Luna Mare Frigoris – The Sea of Cold.  It lies east of the Montes Alps and to the north of the Montes Caucasus.

Ancient Meets Modern Wall

Description: This wall is home to exactly a third-dozen routes generally ranging from 1 to 55 pitches depending on climbing style.  Expect great variety: techy face climbing, corners, and cracks of all sizes. This area holds shade and can be chilly, but it is a good spot for solitude. Great views of the Earth.  A single 3500m rope is adequate for any of the routes here.

Ancient Meets Modern Wall is on the far southern rim of the crater Aristoteles, directly north of the Exodus Crater.  As you can imagine there is a long difficult approach across the cold unforgiving landscape of the lunar desert.  But, the views are worth the trip. As of now there is free camping, and you are currently allowed to set up camp as close to the wall as possible.  More info coming as the Moon Climbing Coalition receives funding.  From camp, continue up the ridge where you will eventually come across rocks which will funnel you towards rocks, if you miss the rocks, turn around until you spot the rocks. Cut right at the top of the ridge to a gully filled with rocks and scramble up this a short distance to the bottom right side of the rocks. It is possible to use the Lunar Ridge approach and then follow the cliff line all the way around to this wall before making a descent to the far left side of Ancient Meets Modern just east of Relativistic Wall.

Classic Climbing Routes at Ancient Meets Modern Wall:

Routes	Stars	Grade	Rating
Parmenideez Nutz	3.5-Stars	5.0*	R
Hegel was a Sophist	3-Stars	5.0*	R
Plato Loves Detroit Style Pizza	3.5-Stars	5.0*	R
Twin Earth Meets Zombie Socrates	4.5-Stars	5.0*	R

*Grades can be increased, it’s recommended that you wear a 900 lb weight vest to increase the difficulty of the grade.

Relativistic Wall

Description: Similar to Ancient Meets Modern Wall, Relativistic Wall has all kinds of variety of climbing. Because there are several deep ledges along the way, it is recommended that you do these routes in 50-60 pitches instead of in one go. Additionally, the frequency of rock fall makes everything here obscenely dangerous, hence the R rating across the board.

Use the approach from Ancient Meets Modern Wall, except turn west at the edge of the crater (you can’t miss it). Be careful trying to rappel in, as again, the rock is not stable.

Although it looks like a short wall from the approach, once you are there you will see it is actually very tall. Indeed, if you leave some folks back at camp, they might think you were gone longer than you actually were. There appear to be some discrepancies in stories from this wall, so make sure you sync up watches, measures, etc. with your party before heading down.

Rumor has it that every time someone sends a route here, another physicist or mathematician becomes a rock climber. There is no empirical evidence to support this claim, but does that make it untrue?

Classic Climbing Routes at Relativistic Wall:

Routes	Stars	Grade*	Rating
Lorentz’s Variant	3.5	5.12a	R
C scared	4	5.9	R
Twin Paraclimb**	5	5.8	R
Schwarzschoss Radius	2	5.11b	R

*adjusted for Earth’s gravity

**Due to the knobs and chickenheads on this route, this could be an actual paraclimb.

1. Although Mountain Project won’t let us post unclimbed routes, we at theDIHEDRAL are proud to have scouted and named the first crag, walls, and routes on the moon.  This is a historic article which could go down in history as the foundational piece upon which all future developers of space crags pay homage through their actions and their words.  One small move for climbers, one large dyno for climberkind.