Climbs

A contender for the first 8C+.

Gioia has a slightly complicated history due to the fragile nature of the rock and the required reinforcements.

After a couple of repeats from Adam Ondra and Nalle Hukkataival, Daniel Woods and Dave Graham came to try the problem and discovered some new beta using a foothold that appeared after some rock broke. Christian then filled the new hold in to bring the problem back to it's original state. Speaking on facebook, Christian said:

After Daniel Woods and Dave Graham's attempts at sending Gioia, today I fixed the new foothold which resulted from the accidental breaking off of a piece of rock in a section of the boulder that had never been used before - section 2 of Gioia.

Now the line is back to its original state, exactly as it was when I first climbed it and when Adam Ondra and Nalle Hukkataival did their repetitions.

The original footholds are always the same; the new one was frail and would have easily broken again. I never use purpose made glue to fix these kind of issues, it's not a practice I like.

However, due to its acknowledged importance, Gioia deserved to be restored to its original line so that it could be again equal to every climber who has tried it in the past and will try it in the future. [1]

After this Woods and Graham lost interest in trying the problem.

References

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/climbing/comments/2yu9kn/after_a_foot_hold_on_gioia_broke_during_attempts/

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160930201429/https://theburrowfiles.wordpress.com/2015/03/10/varazze-journals-part-1/

[3] https://www.8a.nu/news/gioia-controversy-based-on-a-misunderstanding

Harder Faster is the harder, scarier direct finish to Gaia.

Seb Grieve:

Very wild climbing. After the 'easy' Gaia start, paste right foot high and layback. Repeat twice and arrive at ledge. Graunchy mantle that could easily go wrong. Top roped clean several times but could not bring myself to lead.

Stand start 8A+

A contender for the world's first 8C+ boulder.

A link up combining the lower part of Joe Blau with the upper part of La Marroncita.

The original line stepped left out of the gutter before making a couple of slab moves to the arete. An easier pop-to-the-top straight from the gutter was later discovered.

One of the hardest slab problems in the world. The impeccably smooth Fukano Slab ("impossible slab") was one of the last great problems in Ogawayama bouldering, initially solved by Toshimichi Kusano's Zutsu (8B), which starts centrally and traverses off left.

After many seasons of effort, climbing ground up and without a pad, Tokio Muroi filled the remaining lines on the slab Bansosha (8B) and Fuminsho (8B), before turning his attention to completing the obvious straight-up finish to Zutsu. He eventually succeeded in the wintery depths of December 2007, creating Kakusei – an achievement that went largely unnoticed outside Japan.

The problem came to wider attention in 2023 when other problems made claims to be the world's hardest slab and Yuki Miyashita's 2021 video of his extraordinary efforts to repeat the climb was discovered.

The line was subject of some controversy in Japan c.2020 after repeats were claimed where the climber drifted onto slightly easier ground to the left. It was later clarified by first ascensionist Tokio Muroi that a sloper on Zutsu was out. It’s not known if all the repeats before the clarification followed the strict line. [1]

References

[1] https://note.com/rockandcode/n/n5510ab78f582