In light of Dan Varian's recent ascent of The Magna Strata (f8B+) (news report coming soon!) we asked ourselves - what is the hardest slab boulder in the world?
There aren't many Font 8B+ slabs, in fact, the only other boulder we could find at the grade was Kakusei, in Ogawayama, Japan.
Kakusei was first climbed by Tokio Muroi in 2007, and has seen just a single repeat in the subsequent sixteen years. Two years ago Yuki Miyashita climbed the boulder, and did so without pads as an homage to Muroi, who climbed it in the same style.
Speaking to us back in 2012, 8C+ boulderer and E9 climber Toru Nakajima told us that he had climbed both of the other hard slabs on the Ogawayama boulder, Banshosha and Huminsho, grading Banshosha at Font 8B, and Huminsho at Font 8B+.
At the time, no-one had made a third ascent of Huminsho, or a second ascent of Kakusei, which Nakajima described as the hardest of the three Muroi first ascents, and 'harder' than 8B+. Despite his efforts, Nakajima was unable to climb Kakusei.
© Redman
© Nakajima Collection
Banshosha, which Nalle Hukkataival repeated, and also graded Font 8B, is to the left of the line climbed by Miyashita in the above video. Even at the time of Hukkataival's downgrade to 8B (Muroi originally graded it 8C), Banshosha was one of the hardest, if not the hardest, slab boulder in the world.
You can see Hukkataival's ascent of Banshosha in the video below.
Are there any other slab boulders that can be considered hardest in the world? Let us know in the comments if you can think of any.
Comments
Whatever happened to Nalle Hukkataival? It seemed like not that long after he did Burden of Dreams he disappeared from the media.
This is an easy answer. The slab in Stanworth Quarry in Lancashire. Once you see it, it's obviously ridiculously hard.
He’s been travelling and climbing. Developped a really nice DWS near home (BD has a video about it, with the floating sauna), tried dawn wall a bit, developped new stuff in rocklands, and lately travelled and climbed stuff here in europe.
Is there not a Gaskins slab in Lancs somewhere?
Yes the slab in Stanworth.