Did Janja Garnbret Just Flash 9a? It Depends.

Last week, the indomitable Janja Garnbret blasted her way up Pure Dreaming in Arco, Italy, clipping the sport route’s chains on her first attempt. Fresh off twin Boulder and Lead gold medals in the IFSC World Championships, Garnbret’s stunning effort led some to claim that the 26-year-old Slovenian had just made the first female flash of a 9a (5.14d) route in history.

Pure Dreaming consists of 100 feet of increasingly steep, endurance-based limestone. The route finishes with a bouldery roof crux, requiring climbers to lock in until the final moves. Bolted by Italian climber Alfredo Webber, it was first freed by Adam Ondra in 2018. At the time, the Czech climber called the route 5.14d. Stefano Ghisolfi, Alex Megos, Laura Rogora, Jorg Verhoeven, and Filip Schenk have all sent Pure Dreaming, but Garnbret is the first to flash it.

That’s a big deal, because only two people in history have flashed a 5.14d route: Ondra and Megos. If Pure Dreaming really is a 5.14d, this would make Garnbret the third climber to accomplish the feat, and the first woman. (The hardest female onsight, to date, is Rogora on Ultimate Sacrifice [5.14c] earlier this year in France.)

However, several of Dreaming’s ascensionists, including Megos and Verhoeven, have expressed doubts about Ondra’s original grade. They’ve suggested the route might be more accurately an 8c+ (5.14c). Perhaps most importantly, Ondra himself has changed his original estimate to 5.14c. But others routinely call the route 5.14d, including most recent sender, 15-year-old Yanik Chassain, who finished Dreaming just a few days before Garnbret’s flash.

So, did Garnbret really flash 5.14d?

Like any attempt to pinpoint a precise grade for routes at the upper tier, the task at hand is absurd. The smallest of stylistic decisions, micro-changes to the route, and climber size considerations might all prove arguments, to some, for adjusting the grade of this or any route. In the case of Pure Dreaming:

• High on the line, just before the crux, a tufa offers a solid kneebar rest. Some repeaters have used a kneepad to make this bar more comfortable. Difficulty: -1. 
• Garnbret did not use the kneebar, nor a kneepad at all. Difficulty: +1. 
• A hold has reportedly broken off the wall. Difficulty: +0.5.
• The temperature was optimal on the day she sent. Difficulty: -0.5.
• Garnbret’s beta was bad. Difficulty: +0.5. 
• She had recently cut off a single strand of her hair, shaving 0.93 milligrams off of her overall weight. Difficulty: -0.0001. 

You get the idea.

Michele Caminati, an Italian climber who gave Garnbret beta before her climb and then watched her send, told me he is “close” to finishing Pure Dreaming, but has not yet reached the chains. Of Garnbret’s ascent, he said that “apart from the first boulder, which she ended up doing with super hard beta, everything else looked quite in control.” In fact, he thought the effort seemed “more like a person onsighting something, finding her own beta while she was climbing, rather than a planned flash attempt.”

Caminati wouldn’t give an opinion on the grade, but both of Garnbret’s photographers, who admittedly have not climbed the route themselves, argued that it was a 5.14d climb. “Janja didn’t use kneepads, so the grade for her should be 9a,” Björn Pohl, one of her photographers, told me. “The beta she was given by Michele Caminati didn’t work for her height, so she had to figure everything out by herself … she more or less onsighted it.” The other photographer, Vladek Zumr, shared on Instagram: “From my view behind the lens, it looked every bit of 9a.”

Adam Ondra has a different perspective. Although he stressed that the main takeaway from Garnbret’s send is that “the performance is exceptional, and the [skill] level of Janja is crazy high,” he doesn’t believe Pure Dreaming is 5.14d. “The quality of the route is actually poor,” he said. “It starts with the lower half of Reini’s Vibes (8c), then goes directly across the blank roof, where the majority of the holds are chipped/glued.”

Ondra’s chief argument is that because the kneebar rest exists—regardless of whether or not a climber uses it or whether they’re wearing pads—the route should be 5.14c. Pohl, on Instagram, claimed that some routes, such as Pure Dreaming, deserve two grades, “one for ascents with kneepads, or whichever equipment you want, and one without.” He noted that “Change and Bibliographie are other examples—both first ascended without kneepads, later downgraded after repeats with them.”

Ondra disagreed with the two-grades philosophy. “The whole discussion about no kneepad or kneepad grades doesn’t really reflect the fact that kneebaring technique has progressed so much that there is no step back,” he explained. “Good kneebar rests are always okay to use even without kneepads, it is just not fun.”

Even if Garnbret’s performance—skipping a commonly used rest point and going in with beta that didn’t end up working for her—was phenomenal, and perhaps representative of a 5.14d effort, Ondra argues that doesn’t make the route itself 5.14d. “I don’t think there should be two grades for this route,” he said. “What Janja did is absolutely impressive, and physically probably closer to 5.14d than 5.14c, but grades should be based on the easiest beta.”

So the ultimate answer to the question, as ever, remains maybe. Or more accurately…no, for now.

If 10 little plastic-pulling gremlins march out of a cloud of chalk tomorrow and tick Pure Dreaming, and all declare it a solid 5.14d, then perhaps they’d outweigh the opinions of Ondra, Megos, Verhoeven, and others suggesting 5.14c. For now, though, it seems more likely that the route is 5.14c/8c+.

Garnbret’s agent indicated she may be able to give Climbing her thoughts later this week, in which case we’ll update this article. However, judging from her Instagram, she also seems disinclined to take the higher grade. “Wrapped things up in Arco by flashing Puro dreaming (8c+?),” she wrote. (When I decided I wanted to be a climbing journalist, I never imagined it would entail me investigating the myriad possible meanings behind a “” emoji.)

Pohl, whose photographs appear in this story, added that in his own talks with Garnbret, she gave him a similar impression. “She will say ‘8c+?’” he said. “The 9a flash will come, as will the onsight, and the 9a+ flash. Trust me.”

The post Did Janja Garnbret Just Flash 9a? It Depends. appeared first on Climbing.