‘Burden of Dreams’ (V17) Just Got its Most Creative Ascent & More
There’s been a lot of news lately—more than we’ve been able to cover while also putting the finishing touches on our annual features-only print issue, Ascent, which heads to the printer in a few weeks and will be available to purchase on Outside’s Outpost in late May.
So, to play a bit of catchup, I thought I’d do a roundup of the most notable ascents of the past several weeks—with some thoughts on why each is important.
1. Wait, How Did Elias Iagnemma Just Do Burden of Dreams?
I used to think that the world’s first proposed V17, Burden of Dreams, was the incomparable apotheosis of a boulder problem: An almost featureless 45-degree wall with very limited options for beta creativity. Sure, early suiters like Shawn Raboutou and Aidan Roberts (neither of whom have actually sent yet), reported that they were working through different micro foot and finger betas. And, sure, Hukkataival himself played with doing the final move in several different ways. But it generally seemed (from the distance of my couch) like Burden of Dreams demanded climbers to approach it with more or less the same sequence. Either you were strong enough to do what Hukkataival did, or you weren’t.
But then Will Bosi, the boulder’s second ascensionist, came along and showed us (on livestream) that there was heel hook beta for the second move, though he opted not to use it on the second ascent. And Simon Lorenzi, who made the third ascent, used a drop knee to skip the second move entirely, reducing the boulder to a mere four moves. But these innovations were nothing compared to those made by 28-year-old Italian climber Elias Iagnemma, who made the fourth ascent this week.
Iagnemma, who logged some 25 sessions on the problem over the course of five trips to Finland (he estimates he’s spent 80 days in the country since his first trip in 2022), took a body-strength rather than finger-forward approach to Burden—one that involves a heel hook, a wild recycling sequence, and a paddle dyno… Only the first move (arguably the hardest in isolation) remains the same.
Though Iagnemma’s name may be new to U.S. readers, he’s one of Italy’s strongest climbers, having climbed Christian Core’s iconic V16, Goia, repeated numerous well-established V15s and V14s in Switzerland, and clipped the chains on two 5.15s.
Speaking to 8a.nu, he said, “[Burden of Dreams] is the perfect boulder. It is not about the grade. I live four hours from Alphane, but, instead, I have taken the plane and also traveled with my van to Finland. In the end, it was more like a mental battle. I know I had the power, maybe too much [power].”
I’ll say so.
You can see his method on some of his earlier attempts here:
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2. Bon Voyage sees its third ascent
After eight days of effort over three trips, Belgian Sébastien Berthe made the third ascent—after James Pearson and Adam Ondra—of Bon Voyage (5.14d/ E12), which is potentially quite dangerous if you fall on the hard moves after the crux. Like Ondra, Berthe applauded James Pearson’s vision. “The notion that, on this wall, a route could be free climbed on gear, is akin to a magic trick,” he told 8a.nu. “A big congratulations to the magician James, for having the vision and perseverance to see through his Bon Voyage till the end!” I find grade-talk very interesting, and it’s cool to see Berthe second Adam Ondra’s confirmation of James Pearson’s E12 proposal—a proposal that was fraught with anxiety thanks to the pretty ridiculous lambasting Pearson received after first proposing the E12 grade 15 years ago.
Everyone likes a good redemption story, and I’m no exception.
Don’t know much about Berthe? Read Anthony Walsh’s excellent story about the time Seb, who doesn’t fly for environmental reasons, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to try the Dawn Wall.
3. Matt Fultz Repeats The Big Z (V16) in Tahoe
Matt Fultz has climbed a lot of V16s. But none of them—not Hypnotized Minds, not Sleepwalker, not Grand Illusion or Creature from the Black Lagoon or Brace for the Cure or Moonlight Sonata or Vecchio Leone Sit—put up the same sort of fight as his latest project, The Big Z, which was first climbed by Shawn Raboutou in 2020. Fultz spent three years and over 30 sessions on the climb, which he considers his hardest by far.
“Honestly, this is the first time I truly understand the concept of a problem being bigger and more meaningful than just the number attached to it,” he wrote on Instagram. “This problem made me question myself and demanded so much more than I ever thought I would have to give. I actually stopped believing in myself. I felt serious imposter syndrome when people referred to me as a ‘pro climber.’ I’m not sure that will go away now that it’s done, but I do know that I am just really really grateful for the experience and the frustrations that allowed me to learn more about myself.”
He also wrote about how the boulder was totally anti-style for him—so much so that, during his first few sessions, he thought he’d never do it. But he decided that it was worth showing up simply to help him work his weaknesses, and, after ten sessions, he sorted out a method and was hooked.
In an interview two years ago, Fultz told me that he thinks his greatest strength isn’t his fingers (though they’re strong) or his power (he’s a powerful guy) but the fact that he simply doesn’t give up. “Hard bouldering, hard projecting, is like manual labor,” he said. “It’s about showing up and working it down to the littlest tiny bits and then piecing it all together. It’s like Daniel Woods spending more than 50 days on Return of the Sleepwalker in a season, just going back day after day. You can’t send it unless you show up, and you’ve got to keep showing up, you’ve got to keep building those specific strengths in those specific muscles. That was the realization for me. With Hypnotized Minds I was just like, ‘I’m just going to keep going back. It doesn’t really feel that possible to me right now, but I’m going to figure it out and I’m not going to give up on it until I do it.’ So, yeah, I just don’t really give up on things anymore.”
You can read the full interview here.
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4. Bronwyn Hodgins stepped off the big walls and did her first 5.14c
It’s almost cliche at this point to suggest that trad climbers and alpinists ought to train by bouldering and sport climbing—since many of them are MoonBoard fans who knock down 5.14s in between expeditions. But, because I’m old enough to have been told “sport climbing is neither” by someone who was serious, I still get a nice kick when I see big wall trad climbers exchange their nuts and portaledges for training plans and limestone caves. That’s exactly what Canadian wall-crawler Bronwyn Hodgins did recently: After eight months of training with a Lattice coach and two more months of hangdogging, she skipped 5.14b (she’d done only one 5.14a before that) and clipped the chains on La Rubia, a 5.14c in Southern Spain’s Villanueva del Rosario.
“I definitely felt like maybe I had dreamed a little too big this time,” she said in a statement afterward. “ I felt like I had some of the tools from big wall free climbing such as performing well under pressure and sequence visualization and execution, but I had no experience in sticking with a project for anywhere near this long. At the same time, I continued to make progress pretty much every time I tied in, which was super motivating.”
In addition to being pretty dang impressive—5.14c is hard—it’s also a fun lesson for all you recalcitrant trad climbers out there: go find out which training board is best for you.
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