Czech climbing prodigy sets new benchmark with astonishing ascent of ‘world’s hardest cliff’
Adam Ondra’s improbable 20-minute climb across the ceiling of the Hanshelleren cave in Norway came after more than 40 days of attempting the route
In the last few years the tiny world of elite rock climbing has fixated on a giant windswept granite cave in Norway, and the potential for one climber, Adam Ondra, to set a new benchmark in the sport.
Like a giant eye socket set in a hillside, the Hanshelleren cave in Flatanger – claimed by some as the world’s greatest climbing cliff – has become a summer mecca for the world’s best climbers who come to dodge the Scandinavian showers and pit themselves against its vast overhangs.
Now, after over 40 days of efforts spread across two years and seven visits to Norway, Ondra has completed what is being claimed as the world’s hardest single rope-length climb, both in terms of physical effort and technical difficulty. It is the first climb rated “9c” on a popular scale.
Monday’s climb – 45 metres long and forging its improbable way through the cave’s huge grey overlapping ceiling – marks the latest achievement by Ondra, 24, a prodigy who has dominated rock climbing in recent years in the same way Usain Bolt once dominated sprinting, consistently setting new levels of difficulty that others have struggled to follow.
For a so-called sport climb – in which expansion bolts are drilled permanently into the rock to clip the rope in to – climbers can spend months (sometimes even years) trying to complete their first ascents.