UKC

Ondra's hardest routes

Yeah... as I've mentioned before, I'm working on a couple of articles on the subject of "hard routes". I asked Adam Ondra which routes he considers the hardest:

"Well, I think I have 4 routes, which are more or less the same hard - La Rambla, Action Directe, Weisse Rose and PuntX... The hardest I have tried might have been probably Open Air, but I tried just the moves, not the whole thing together. When I do so, I will be allowed to tell you comparison among others. I hope the weather will stay... :-) I did not try many more hard routes, but for me Jumbo Love is the hardest route on the world at the moment however I did not try it... Definitely! If you bare in mind the time spent on the route and so on...
Cheers,
Adam"

It's kinda interesting to notice that Adam thinks La Rambla (9a+) and Action directe (9a) are more or less equally difficult. Andreas Bindhammer, who made the 2nd ascent of PuntX, just a month ago, reckoned it was at least 9a+... So, if Alexander Huber gave Weisse Rose 8c+ because; "Action Directe was considered to be 8c+. Therefore I graded routes like Weiße Rose and La Rambla with 8c+ as these routes were not significantly(!) harder..."... This would mean that all these routes are either 9a, which would indicate that most 9a's are, in fact 8c+'s (this is exactly what Huber suggests), or, it could mean Action directe, and the other three should be given 9a+, and Open air, hence, and now I'm speculating a bit, could very well be 9b!

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Born in the Czech Republic, Adam Ondra has built up a decorated career since his early competitions, winning his first World Championships medal in 2009 in lead climbing. He was a favourite for Tokyo 2020 gold, but an...

Adam's Athlete Page 140 posts 51 videos



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