UKC

Aidan Roberts has repeated Alphane (Font 9A) at Chironico, in Ticino, Switzerland. The problem was put up last year by American climber Shawn Raboutou but it wasn't until this summer that he announced the ascent.

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Amazing stuff! Congrats Aidan

Let's hope that Will can jump on the send train as well.

I thought Soudain Seul was now established at 8C+? I would also be interested to see how he thinks this compares in difficulty to Superpowers and Isle of Wonder. 

Bring it on!

It's received two repeats, one suggesting 8C+ and the other suggesting soft 9A, so it's still 9A. Interestingly it's the only 9A to be repeated...or at least it was until now...

Let's hope that Aidan can get back to Finland to complete Burden of Dreams!

Amazing stuff, absolutely on the cutting edge of the most physical climbing, and only just getting into his prime

Seems strange to suggest that something can be soft for the grade when you've only ever climbed one of that grade?

Yeh, looking forward to see if he can get Burden done

Does anyone know why Shawn kept quiet about the original ascent?

Actually, Simon Lorenzi also tried Alphane quite quickly this summer and he said that Soudain Seul might be as hard as Alphane if not harder. 

https://planetgrimpe.com/simon-lorenzi-est-alle-essayer-alphane-le-nouveau-...

the article is in French but still quite interesting. 

However, I'm so impatient to see Aidan's progress in Burden of dreams. 

Not that it's anywhere near the same, but I've climbed a fair few 7Cs and only one 7C+. The 7C+ I did felt soft (to me), which is probably why I did it, but it still felt 7C+ because it was harder than any of the other 7Cs I'd done.

I guess the difference (other than the fact that what I did was a lot easier) is that I could obvioulsy try any number of other 7C+s because there's loads of them, hence it's far easier to get context. It's a lot less easy with 9As because there's so few of them...and they're all very, very hard...

Congrats and well done your legend!

Amazing effort beast!

Freakin awesome!

Sav on a comp prob

I assume they held off announcing it until the accompanying YouTube documentary was ready.

This is really good. 

As someone who doesn't really keep up with bouldering, I occasionally saw people like Aidan, Will, Jim, etc. putting up boulders with hard grades attached here and wondered how legit they were (are they really 8C+s? Like reeeally?). When you see videos of the American crushers putting up 8cs they always look amazing blocs. Super steep, tiny granite holds, desperate sequences with lots of shouting VS some grotty peak limestone that our climbers are often putting up eliminates and linkups on (none of the big international names are coming to repeat them, let's be honest). It's really good to see internationally recognised, top-end boulders getting knocked off by Brits. Puts a whole lot of weight behind their other FAs. 

Hats off. Get another 9A ticked and surely Aidan is up there with top 1 or 2 people in the world right now. 

That seems an unfairly harsh review. Have you not seen any of Aidans FAs in the Lakes? 

I did not mean it to come off that way; as I said I know very little about bouldering. What I basically mean is we dont have lots of international superstars queuing up to come and boulder in the UK so it's nice to see some UK boulderers doing things on a world stage. 

Fair enough, yes I agree it's great to see the homegrown crushers showing they can compete with the best on iconic International problems.