Roberts and Bosi add more hard blocs
- Saturday 29th April 2023
Two more hard testpiece blocs have been added by Aidan Roberts and Will Bosi to the list this week; The Lions Share (Font 8C+) and Wild South (Font 8C) respectively.
First to hit the news was Aidan’s bloc which he climbed earlier in his current Swiss trip. It’s Aidan's third first ascent on the Vecchio Wall in Ticino, Switzerland. Writing on his Instagram page Aidan spilled the bean on this bloc.
“This wall was in fact my first introduction to Ticino. At the time there were 3 obvious projects left unclimbed. On each trip since then (firstly 1 year ago in Spring, Autumn and now again) I had main objectives lying elsewhere but always found time to dedicate some to these projects. The first trip saw me climb Everything the Light Touches, the second saw me up Vecchio Sit and now, to conclude the more obvious climbs on this wall, this final project.”
Aidan described the moves on The Lions Share saying, “Slow and tensiony moves on awful crimps lead to slopier features and an unlikely foot walk before a very powerful slap, the one move 'Vecchio Brione', to finish.”
Following an earlier post by Aidan, there was some speculation that he might be not grading his problems going forward Aidan had this to say about the difficulty, “Regarding the grade for The Lions Share, I think it felt the most difficult of the 3 mentioned above. Though perhaps suits me a little less well than Vecchio Sit. Perhaps 8C+ feels fair for this one.”
Aidan hasn’t said anything as yet about what else he’s been working on during the trip so stay tuned as chances are it could be very interesting.
Will Bosi is back in the news again, this time with Wild South (Font 8C) at Raven Tor. As was pointed out in a comment on Will’s Instagram page, coming back from his first repeat of Burden of Dreams and then going straight to Ravens Tor shows real dedication!
Reporting his success Will commented, “Really happy to finally climb this project! I’ve lost count of days but I think somewhere around 20 sessions 😬 could be my longest boulder project.”
Will had in fact been trying the problem for some time and believed it might be “next level”. Although he was aware that there was the possibility of using a knee bar Will initially tried to climb it without. Once he returned from Finland and tried it with the knee bar – said to be more of a knee scum - he finished it off in three sessions. Talking about the knee scum and grade Will commented, “…to be honest I thought of the knee early on but never tried as I didn’t want it to work. Only took 3 sessions post-knee bar find. Although it didn’t end up being that next level, I think the moves are cool and hopefully, it will get some attention 😁”