Jernej Kruder has made the second ascent of Pete Whittaker's Jøssingfjord trad route Crown Royale, 9a.

The route, which Pete established in September 2023, comprises 100 metres of hard crack and difficult face climbing. In an interview with UKC shortly after he made the first ascent, Pete said that Crown Royale was a route that required strength in both areas, stating 'if you had no jamming experience it'd be hard to recover in the jams (most of the rests on the route are jams), and likewise if you only climbed splitter cracks, you'd be lacking the strength for the face climbing bits'.

He further described the route as 'up there with the hardest bit of trad climbing I've done', before proposing a grade of 'very low end' 9a. Whilst he wasn't sure exactly how long he spent on the wall, he estimated that the route took him somewhere in the region of an hour to climb.

In a post last week, whilst working the first part of Crown Royale (Lille Krone, 8b+), Kruder described the route as 'one of his hardest pure trad climbing ascents'.

'Now, every day, I'm progressing on the upper part [Eigerdosis, 8c], which belongs to one of the hardest crack climbs in the world', he said on Instagram, 'The conditions were perfect in the beginning, but now it's getting a bit hot already'.

'Nevertheless, I'm doing very good link ups with a pre-placed gear and slowly starting to feel I should give it some proper goes. This 60-meter overhang monster [Eigerdosis] requires more than 50 moves just in the upper part, which are all at the pretty much same level of difficulty'.

'The key is to take good rests on poor hand jams and not to waste too much energy. I only have two more actual days to try it, and I hope I get the best out of it'.

Recording his ascent on 8a.nu, where he gave the route a grade of low-end 9a, Kruder said:

When everything goes perfect! Last day before the rain and my flight back home. It was my third day without rest, so the expectations were low. Barely crawled over the first crux, then somehow found a perfect flow. My body was getting extremely tired in sixty meters of overhang, but the wind was cooling me down'.

'I used sixteen pieces in 100 meters and it still felt super safe - just a bit of a run out at the top. Hats off to Pete for the vision and effort to make it possible to free! Great place, hope to return again for more'.

We spoke to Pete about Jernej's ascent, and here's what he had to say:

'Whenever people have come to Jøssingfjord, they've always tried the older and more well-known routes, like Ronny Medelsvensson (8b), and then obviously The Recovery Drink (8c+), which is the really well-known one'.

'So I'm really psyched that people have started coming and trying the routes that I've been putting up over the last few years. Obviously Jernjej was here, and Klaas Willems was also here as well, and made the second ascent of the first part of the route [Lille Krone, 8b+] which is like a route in itself. So yeah, I'm dead psyched that the people here are trying the routes'.

'Jernej is obviously like a proper World Cup strong boulderer, so it's good to get somebody who's really good on the climb. It was really cool to see him do the lower crux as well, because he made it look like a World Cup boulderer should. I think it's maybe like a font 7C or something, and he made it look about 6A. That was very cool to see'.

'It's really cool to see that Jernej has transferred from that World Cup bouldering scene and competition circuit into trad climbing. He's just actually really psyched for crack climbing and learning new things, he's always asking me to go on climbing trips or to come out to Slovenia to climb on this training bridge and things like that'.

'Both Klaas and Jernej seemed to really like the route, that was the main thing, that people just enjoyed it, and could see how good the Profile Wall is. An amazing effort to do it. I'm not sure how many days he was here, maybe twelve or thirteen, I think? To do it in that time is really impressive as well'.