On September 3, 2017, Adam Ondra came down from Flatanger’s Hanshallaren Cave and jumped straight into the Norwegian Sea with his clothes on. The 45-meter route, which for years he had called “Project Hard,” was a project no longer.
I had to look for a name that would be simple and easy to remember. If I came up with something complicated people would still call it Project Hard. I was surprised how quiet I was. I was so much in the rhythm and the harmony that it kind of felt silent. I usually feel at war when I am my limit.
Niccolò Ceria and Norwegian strongman Martin Mobråten have both repeated Bernd Zangerl's Shantaram, ~8C near Osen, Norway.
Ceria, who has done 8C before, did just use three days for his send and Mobråten some ten days. He has previously done some few 8B+ and thinks Shantarm should be graded likewise.
What was it then, were you touched or exhausted at the top? I would say both. (laughing) It was so different from how I had imagined it. I thought that as soon as I get to those last five good holds under the very top, I would start to celebrate, I would be releived, feeling great. It wasn’t like this, I was still totally concentrated, I was so scared that I was gonna loose it in that 6C boulder, which was the last thing between me and the top. In fact I was so concentrated, that even when I finally clipped the top I was still under pressure. Full of happiness and relief, but everything was inside me. (laughing) The only visible thing were tears in my eyes, that’s all. I was just hanging on the rope, unable to do anything else.
“I bolted it in 2013. Back then I only tried it for a few days and thought it was way too hard. Then last season I started again. Over seven trips to Norway, I guess I’d say I spent 40 or 50 days trying it.”
Interview with Czech climber Adam Ondra who on 3 September 2017 at Flatanger in Norway made the first free ascent of his Project Hard, a sport climb which the 24-year-old has graded 9c. Should this be confirmed, then the 45m line checks in as the first 9c in the world.