Climbing Now Has Five 5.15d Routes. Why Haven’t Any Been Repeated?
On March 13, Spaniard Jorge Díaz-Rullo fought his way to the top of his four-year project, Café Colombia, in Margalef, Spain. Ten days later, he announced that he believed it was 5.15d (9c), the hardest grade ever suggested for a sport route.
Yet Díaz-Rullo’s announcement marked the sixth time in the world that a climber had proposed a route at the grade. One of those climbers, Alex Megos, saw his suggestion, Bibliographie, downgraded to 5.15c (9b+) after a 2021 repeat by Stefano Ghisolfi, but none of the other five proposals have seen a repeat. Instead, the climbing world is only getting more and more unconfirmed 5.15d’s.
The result? Sport climbing’s grade ceiling is wide but fragile. It’s a roof propped up by theory and trust. So why are climbing’s top climbers establishing their own 5.15d routes instead of repeating the ones that exist? Is it the financial pressure to churn out first ascents, a geographical inevitability, or something else? How did we end up here—and if none of these climbs have been confirmed, does 5.15d really exist yet?
I spoke with every climber who has proposed the grade to find out what’s really going on.
A black hole of time and energy
The first 5.15d in the world was Silence, a 150-foot roof route in Norway’s Flatanger Cave, scaled by Adam Ondra in 2017, nearly a decade ago.
It took three years for another climber to propose the grade (Megos with Bibliographie), and after that route was downgraded, it took still another year for the next 5.15d to appear, Sébastien Bouin’s DNA. In the years that followed, three more 5.15d proposals appeared: Jakob Schubert’s B.I.G., Sean Bailey’s Duality of Man, and now Café Colombia.
For the man who founded the 5.15d club nearly a decade ago, this sudden boom in isolated, unrepeated testpieces is a bit baffling. “It’s definitely surprising that none of the 9c’s in the world are repeated,” Ondra told me, laughing over an audio message.
For his part, at least, it’s not for lack of trying. “I’ve put a lot of effort into B.I.G.,” he admitted, sounding almost sheepish. “If you told me three years ago that I still wouldn’t have done that route by now, I wouldn’t have believed you. But here I am.”
Ondra’s words speak to the defining hallmark of 5.15d routes—they take a monumental amount of time and effort. “The through-line is that these were multi-year projects that took several seasons for people,” Sean Bailey told me. “It’s a big investment. It’s gonna take a long time.”
Flying across the globe to work on an existing 5.15d is much harder, and less realistic, than finding one in your own backyard. For Bailey, that meant a route in the southwestern U.S. (Duality of Man); for Bouin, in his native France (DNA); and for Díaz-Rullo, near his home in Spain.
But it’s not just about geography; it’s about style. At the absolute limit of human performance, the first route that a given climber can send is one that perfectly caters to their unique physical strengths.
Jakob Schubert, the Austrian Olympian who established B.I.G., has tried all of the world’s 5.15d’s except for Café Colombia. “Climbing a route at this level is a big commitment, a lot of time, energy, and effort,” he told me. “So you need to really love the route. You’re going to spend so much time on it. This is one of the reasons why Silence isn’t tried that much. It’s just not the most fun.”
Silence, he explained, essentially boils down to a few insanely difficult meters. “It’s like the weirdest boulder of all time,” he said. “You have to learn something completely new. I was watching Stefano [Ghisolfi] for months jumaring up and trying three meters over and over. That’s pretty tough, mentally.” As a result, Schubert believes his own route, B.I.G., is more approachable. “I would say B.I.G. is one of the most fun ones, so I think it will be repeated first. It’s not bad on the skin, it doesn’t have a disgusting move or hold.”
Ondra disagreed. “Quite a few people have tried Silence. My guess is it will be the first repeated, as Will [Bosi] and Stefano [Ghisolfi] are going to attempt [it] this summer, but we’ll see.”
Ghisolfi hasn’t proposed a 5.15d climb himself, but he was the first climber to repeat and then downgrade one (Bibliographie). He’s also spent as much time on Silence as anyone. He agreed with Schubert’s note that Silence really isn’t that fun. He also said it isn’t his style, but when he started trying it in 2022, there weren’t any other options: it was the only proposed 5.15d in the world.
“DNA was climbed afterwards, but it is probably a bit too morpho for me, from what I have heard from Jakob and Adam,” he said. “Now, with B.I.G., Duality of Man, and Café Colombia, I have a bit more options, but I’m too deep into Silence to change my project now.”
Ghisolfi’s predicament encapsulates one aspect of the 5.15d trap—it’s a sunk-cost fallacy. Even as the menu of world-class routes expands, the sheer amount of time required to climb one means a climber can easily become a hostage to their own prior investments.
The dollar signs on a first ascent are hard to beat
If logistics and rock style dictate where these super-routes are established, there is an equally powerful force driving why they are established: in 2026, elite rock climbing is a serious business.
“If there was no sponsorship, no social media, then maybe we would choose routes based on personal appeal,” Schubert admitted. “But for us, climbing is a job. There is so much publicity on a hard first ascent. You have a new route, a new story to tell, new footage to share. These things are worth a lot more, from a sponsorship and image perspective.”
However, successfully securing that first ascent also buys a climber a new kind of freedom. Schubert said that after establishing B.I.G., he’s ready for a repeat. “Now that I have made a first ascent of 9c, yes, I would rather repeat a 9c than establish a new one,” he told me. “But back then, before B.I.G., I wouldn’t have taken a second ascent of Silence over the FA of B.I.G. No way.”
Ondra agreed. “It’s just more motivating to have a project that has never been done than it is to make a repetition,” he told me.
Megos, the second climber to propose the grade—although his proposal was downgraded—has also poured extensive sessions into B.I.G. He was blunt. “Of course, Jakob is right that a first ascent will get you more publicity and is more attractive for sponsors and media,” he told me. “And as a climber, establishing a new grade is way more appealing than repeating.”
However, Megos admitted that if the current trend of establishing 5.15d climbs continues, sponsors may soon change their minds about what’s most valuable. “Maybe soon the bigger prize will be to repeat a 9c instead of making a new one,” he said.
Other climbers, however, believe a hyperfixation on being first is actively hindering the sport’s progression.
“I strongly believe we should give less value to first ascents,” Ghisolfi told me. “Sometimes the only reason someone is the first to climb a route is because they are the only one to try it. We should give more value to the bolter of a route, and share the attempts with other climbers in order to reach new levels, and have the best possible beta as fast as possible. Who climbs it first is irrelevant to me.”
Díaz-Rullo echoed this sentiment, claiming he “didn’t choose [Café Colombia] to make a first ascent or for the exposure. When you commit to something like this for several years, you’re looking for something deeper and more personal than media attention.”
At first glance, no one exemplifies that deeper search better than Bailey. He kept his ascent of Duality of Man a secret for nearly a year—clipping the chains in March 2025 but waiting until January 2026 to announce it, shielding his achievement from the media machine altogether.
But Bailey isn’t immune to the mechanics of the climbing economy. He was just strategizing. In an exclusive interview with Climbing after his announcement, he explained that he withheld the news because a Mellow film about the climb was coming out the following year, and he didn’t want to dilute the buzz. “I think in today’s age, the hype moment only happens once,” Bailey said. “Trying to make sure that was decently close to the film coming out kind of made the most sense.”
But whether a climber is posting weekly vlogs or meticulously timing sparing media drops like Bailey, the fact remains: 5.15d routes consume massive, multi-year blocks of a professional climber’s prime. Which begs a question…
Why doesn’t bouldering have the same problem?
The first V17 (9A) in the world, Nalle Hukkataival’s Burden of Dreams, was proposed a decade ago, just a year before Silence, so bouldering’s grade shelf was moved up at the same time. But compared to the 5.15d grade ceiling, the V17 grade is both wider and thicker. There are more than a dozen proposed V17 boulders in the world, and nearly half have been confirmed by a repeat.
Ondra speculated that this is because hard sport climbing is simply more time-intensive than hard bouldering.
“It’s understandable that more people focus on first ascents on sport routes than boulder problems,” he told me. “Most [5.15d] routes just take more sessions to climb than a [V17] boulder.”
He added that unlike bouldering, where a climber can feasibly work a project solo with just a few pads, a sport climber usually needs a partner to belay them during every session. Many boulder problems are also just a handful of moves, so it’s easier to dial the beta. “You can watch a video, sit down, and copy those moves,” Ondra said. “Lead climbing is more beta-intense. There are many more moves, so it’s more likely that you need to find your own microbeta.”
Many of the climbers who could potentially project 5.15d or V17 are already working under a limited time, he added, because they spend much of the year climbing competitively on the World Climbing circuit. “Overall, it’s just easier to think of [new] boulder problems,” Ondra said.
The 5.16a conundrum
Whether driven by the logistical constraints of the rock, the financial realities of professional climbing, or the thrill of a first ascent, the result, for sport climbing, is the same: five isolated pockets of extreme difficulty await a second opinion that will either enshrine or dethrone them from the 5.15d pedestal.
In light of this, some of the 5.15d climbers, like Bouin, seem unsure if the 5.15d grade even exists. “A grade is a sum of a subjective opinion or vision from many people,” Bouin told me. “So, grades need multiple opinions. It is impossible to grade a route alone.”
Still, there’s no question that grade proposals matter. “Grades should not be the only inspiration for us when we pursue a project, but you cannot deny it’s important,” Bouin added. “Grade is the definition of what we are doing.”
This lack of consensus sets the stage for a dilemma. Does a climber need to repeat and confirm an existing 5.15d before anyone can legitimately propose 5.16a (9c+)?
“Why not?” Schubert told me, with a shrug. “Grading is subjective. If someone thinks they’re doing a [5.16a], what can I say? You have to decide for yourself.”
We may already be closer than we think. When Díaz-Rullo entered his estimation of the sequences on Café Colombia into the online grade calculator Darth Grader, the algorithm spat out a suggested grade of 5.16a, but he declined to use it.
Others, like Megos and Bailey, were unsure. “I hope we will not have to come across that dilemma,” Megos offered. “That would be very strange.”
If someone were to make the leap to 5.16a, Bailey argued, they would have to do an unprecedented amount of homework first. “I don’t necessarily think we have to have a confirmed 5.15d before we propose 5.16a,” he told me. “But we now have routes in a variety of styles that have that 5.15d grade associated with them. So if you were to do the sampling work, try all those routes, and find a rig that wasn’t just a fraction harder, but really felt like a definite jump, I think it’d be fair to go ahead and call it like you see it.”
While Bailey acknowledged that a climber could theoretically jump the gun if they did this, he also noted climbing’s history. “For the last four grades [5.15a-d], the first route of the grade has had a history of being pretty fuckin’ solid,” he continued. “So I really hope whoever proposes 5.16a takes that same type of care and respect.”
For now, the 5.15d club remains a collection of individual masterpieces, isolated by geography, stoke, and highly specific styles. But for the sport’s top grade to become concrete, the world’s best climbers will eventually have to stop building their own routes and start testing each other’s.
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