Great ascents by Alex Puccio and Nalle Hukkataival
+ Jan Hojer verifies the grades.
As we wrote few days ago, Alex Puccio had chosen the Swiss area of Chironico as the location of her next boulder conquests. During her stay there, she has already done seven 8A’s and harder, including Teamwork and Kit Dynamite (the latter she decided to downgrade a bit to 7C+), as well as Roswell 8A+. Those who thought that would be it for the American athlete will now realize to what extent they were wrong. Alex has been continuing her conquest and in the last few days she made the ascents of Conquistadors and La Soucoupe, both 8A+. According to the 8a.nu portal, on the American’s list there are already 47 boulders graded 8A and harder!! High time she pushed herself on some nice 8B problem, don’t you think?
Alex Puccio (photo: up-climbing.com)
And now a short riddle for the enthusiasts of the Dosage series. Do you remember Dave Graham’s boulder project presented in Dosage 3 and tried by Chris Sharma in the following part of the series? Yes, you’re right, that’s the crazy project in Val Bavona! And you’re also right saying that it hasn’t been repeated yet… NOT!! The problem has recently turned out to be favorable to Finn boulderer Nalle Hukkataival :-) Nalle writes in his blog that Off the Wagon, as he named it, is one of the purest boulders he's ever climbed and that’s because - surprise, surprise – there are not many features on it. When it comes to grading, the Finn athlete comments on the difficulties as follows: “Although it’s my style, I’m extremely spanned out sticking the first dyno which makes the next campus move really hard. I must have fallen there at least eight times on the link, after sticking the first dyno. So based on my experience on the problem, I’m proposing 8C for it.”
Nalle Hukkataival on Off the Wagon (photo: blog.nallehukkataival.com)
NOOOOT! Young German, Jan Hojer became the second ascentionist of the boulder and questioned the grade, giving it the personal 8B+ which, however, can be related to his height, as he emphasizes the difficulty of the line for shorter climbers. It is worth mentioning that Jan has also already managed to repeat another new extreme problem by Nalle, Momentum 8C (Val Bavona) which he also decided to downgrade to 8B+. Big up!
Sources: 8a.nu, blog.nallehukkataival.com, up-climbing.com
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