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13-year-old Mishka Ishi climbs Font 8C

© Mishka Ishi

13-year-old Japanese climber Mishka Ishi has climbed Dai Koyamada's Byaku-dou (Font 8C) in Horai, Japan. Only two women have climbed at this level before; Ashima Shirashi with her ascent of Horizon in 2016 and Katrin Lehmann who climbed Kryptos in 2018. Ishi is the youngest person to climb a Font 8C.

Ishi started climbing when she was six years old and has already climbed four 8Bs and an 8B+ (Nyu-Metsu). She has had 20 sessions working Byaku-dou over the past year. The problem is a near-horizontal roof which consists of roughly 22 moves. The first section is 8B and the second is 8A+ which features a dyno.

Dai Koyamada climbed Byaku-dou (which means The Road to Heaven) in 2003. At the time it was one of the hardest problems in the world and it wasn't until 2015 that Motochika Nagao repeated the climb and confirmed the grade.

I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more from Mishka in the future!


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Mishka Ishi became the youngest person to climb Font 8C with her ascent of Byaku-dou in Horai, Japan. Prior to that, the 13-year-old had already climbed four 8Bs and an 8B+.

Mishka's Athlete Page

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