Simon Lorenzi makes third ascent of Burden of Dreams
- Sunday 31st December 2023
Simon Lorenzi has made the third ascent of Burden of Dreams (Font 9A), Lappnor, Finland.
Originally climbed by Nalle Hukkataival in 2016, Burden of Dream has long been considered one of the world’s hardest boulder problems. Not only are the moves on Burden of Dreams amongst the most difficult, the small granite edge are brutal on climbers’ finger skin and – in generally – the weather conditions are poor; all things combined, Burden of Dreams was right up there in terms of difficulty.
Impressively, Will Bosi made the second ascent earlier this year having trained on a replica at the Lattice headquarters and then projected the problem itself for some 14 days.
Now, Belgian climber Simon Lorenzi has also been able to make an ascent of the classic testpiece. Lorenzi arrived in Finland in mid-November and began piecing the moves together. Like many of the world’s top boulderers that have travelled to Finland to try Burden, Lorenzi was hit by both bad skin and bad weather. By early December Lorenzi faced both heavy snowfalls and temperatures of minus 15oC.
By December 21st Lorenzi posted a ‘high-point’ video in which he dropped the last move. Remarkably, Lorenzi was using new beta on Burden of Dreams which eliminated one of the starting moves; he was climbing it in just four moves whereas others were also including a ‘matching’ move after the intital starting move. Then, three days ago, Lorenzi succeeded. Reporting his ascent on Instagram he said “From being something not even imaginable in my craziest dreams not a long time ago to the achievement of a life goal.”
Burden of Dreams is Lorenzi’s third Font 9A having previous made the first ascent of Soudain Seul (a.k.a Big Island Sit) in 2021 and repeated Alphane a year ago. Lorenzi is now the only climber to have climbed three Font 9A’s.