Adam Ondra has established a new 9b, 'B je to!', in Vranjača, Croatia.
The route, a film of which is scheduled for release on Adam's youtube channel in November, is Croatia's first 9b, and is the country's hardest route.
Sharing news of the ascent on instagram, Adam said:
'A short trip to Croatia in between the training sessions results in the first ascent of the first Croatian 9b'
'We made a family trip to the Paklenica area in August. I bolted two lines in this massive cave of Vranjača and first ascended the easier one (9a/a+), which I called "A je to!" after my favorite Czech cartoon. I am glad my Croatian friends knew the cartoon as well! I worked on the sequences of the harder project to the right of "A je to!", but I ran out of time to finish it off'.
'A je to! is super power endurance route without super hard moves, whereas B je to! has a very hard crux that makes this route so hard. On the second the day of this trip, after a very hard fight in the crux, and still very close calls on the upper part, I clipped the anchor of this project'.
'Actually, I came up with this name ("B je to" means "it is b") even before I started trying. I was a little hesitant about whether it deserves the grade 9b or maybe a slashgrade fits better (then the name doesn't make any sense), but considering good conditions, crux that fits my style and pretty good sensations of my body recently, I propose 9b. If it ever gets downgraded, we might have to find a different name!'
B je to is Adam's twenty-fourth route at 9b, seventeen of which have been first ascents.
Comments
Why does he want to give everything slash grades these days?
Am I the only one who prefers calling it hard or soft over the slash?
My feeling is that a slash grade indicates uncertainty in that it could easily be well into either grade, whereas adding hard or soft would suggest a higher level of confidence in the grading.
Curiously, the whole + in sport grades emerged out of slash grades. What once would have been given 7b/c may now be given 7b+. And yes, I'm aware that this example pretty much contradicts my earlier point about uncertainty, but I think we're now at the point where grade granularity can't sensibly be further reduced, so slash grades are a lot less likely to be retained after further ascents than might have been the case 30 years ago.
A different example for using slash grades is UIAA grades, where for example 8+ ranges from 7a+ to 7b, as 9- is 7b+, thus adding 8+/9- helps to stay consistent between the systems.
The grade 8a does not exist in UIAA without making a slash grade of 9+/10-.