• You can read the original News Item on Adam's ascent of Tough Enough here: UKC News

• You can see a full UKC Destination Article on Madagascar here: Tsaranoro Destination

The precedent strong climbers who have tried the route didn't succeed to lead all the pitches in "one push" in a day. The level of the route (of course), and the skin of the fingers were involved. For you, what was the difficulty to climb all the challenge in a day? It is very difficult to say, but it should be comparable with a 9a or 9a+ single pitch for sure.

For you, what is the hardest pitch of "Tough Enough". The pitch which you have had the most important problems. And why? In the easier variation, the hardest single pitch was Frigo for me, it is a very awkward traverse under the roof and your foot can slip at any moment. Mora Mora I managed to onsight but it was an enormous fight, if I had failed to onsight this pitch, it would have been very hard to send the whole route that day. Gecko was slightly easier than Frigo for me, but it is psychologically demanding (not because of protection, but one doesn't want to fall after having climbed 50 meters) and on a one day ascent it is probably the crux.

In the original variation, the crux is obviously Chameleon, where it is required to make the hardest moves of the whole route.

You have done the route two times for climbing the original version of the 8th pitch, "Chameleon". Can you compare the two versions, what does it change? Well, it changes the whole route quite significantly. Chameleon is way harder than Mora Mora, but you are also more tired for the last two pitches, Gecko and Hercule. To be honest, Mora Mora is probably more logical and straight than Chameleon, but Chameleon is the original way, how the whole challenge was set by Daniel Gebel, and that makes it worthwhile to climb.

On the pitches you have onsighted/flashed, was it easy or was it a big fight? Speak about the type of rock and climbing style. Easy for you? On Mora Mora and Hercule it was a big fight, luckily it was chalked and I didn't make any mistake. In the lower 6 pitches, I was quite calm, but the grade doesn't exceed 8a+. The rock is just amazing. Face climbing on knobs, crystals, slopery crimps, some corners that are great fun to climb. To be honest, I had expected that it would be much sharper. Well it is sharp, but mostly you don't have to pull that hard, you often grab small knobs and crystals just with your thumb and you crimp hard only in the hardest sections. I am not sure if this exactly my style, but I can deal with it.

Speak about the other hard multi pitch route you have done, "Mora Mora". Can you describe the hardest pitch in 8b+/c? It tackles the 600 meters high east face of Tsaranoro Atsimo. It was opened by Francisco Bianco and Toti Vales in 1999, but two pitches had never been freed. The lower part involves some unnerving climbing on loose flakes, but as you climb higher, it gets better. The crux pitch is number 7. The start is not that difficult but it gets slowly harder and harder and the hardest section comes after 35m. This section involves about 5 meters constantly hard climbing on slopery crimps and crystals. The upper pitches are fantastic following an absolutely unique dihedral.

The Pou Brothers have recently repeated an alpine trilogy of hard multi pitches, "Solo per vechhi guerrieri" and "Pan Aroma" in the Dolomites and "Zahir" in Switzerland. Would this kind of challenge be of any interest to you? If I had more time, I would love to try these beautiful routes, but I would like to focus on sport climbing again now for some time.

"Tough enough" has 8 pitches in the 8th grade. Is it the hardest multi pitch you have done(compared to "Wogü")? The original way is probably a bit harder than WoGu, although the first pitch of WoGu might be slightly harder than Chameleon. Tough Enough is much longer and more continuous.

Do you believe you need to focus on one discipline to reach your full potential? Yes, but not necessarily for too long. If you combine everything, you can enjoy the diversity of climbing and get tons of new motivation. Additionally, my mind have rested in some way in Madagascar from all the competitions and it might help me in the last competitions.

How do you feel for the last part of international competition season with the last lead world cup? I have no clue how strong I am right now. I had thought I would be very weak, but after a few training sessions I feel quite OK. At least the bouldering power (I could see this weekend in Echolokace 9a) and finger strength are OK. Endurance? I am not so sure. I am aware that beating Ramon in the overall ranking is not very probable, but I will just try to do my best in those two last competitions and we will see.

• You can read the original News Item on Adam's ascent of Tough Enough here: UKC News

• You can see a full UKC Destination Article on Madagascar here: Tsaranoro Destination

Adam Ondra has several sponsors including: La Sportiva, Black Diamond, MONTURA and Beal