Janja Garnbret makes a double repeat of Font 8C
- Monday 13th May 2024
25-year-old Slovenian climber and serial World Cup winner Janja Garnbret has joined the small cluster of women who have climbed Font 8C with an ascent of Bügeleisen Sit in Maltatal, Austria. In doing so she became the first woman to climb the problem that was first opened up by Nalle Hukkataival in 2014.
She had made the first female ascent of the stand-up version of the problem, Bügeleisen Stand (Font 8B+), two years previously. The sit start adds three more desperate moves into the stand version and remarkably she only took half an hour to make the send. Not content with one repeat, she did it again on the same day after not being happy with the initial video of her first send.
By climbing Bügeleisen Sit this makes it her hardest boulder to date after Bügeleisen Stand and New Base Line (Font 8B+) that she climbed last year at Magic Wood in Switzerland.
She remarked on Instagram, “Dream boulder done. Two years have passed since I sent the stand start of the boulder and was just waiting for the right time to come back and get my revenge on the sit start. Today was the day!! Came back way stronger and moves felt a lot easier than they used to. Took me less than half an hour to get the moves dialled in and send the boulder. Proud to be the first woman to get this one done!:
Further adding, “Funny sidenote: wasn’t happy with the video Roman took of my ascent, so I actually went for another go and climbed the whole thing again ;)”
You can check out her repeat on her Instagram here
The other women who’ve climbed Font 8C are Ashima Shiraishi, the first to climb this grade with Horizon at Mount Hiei, Japan in 2016. Next was Kaddi Lehmann who climbed Kryptos at Balsthal in Switzerland in 2018. In 2019 Mishka Ishi climbed Byaka-dou in Jorai, Japan – she was 13 years old at the time! Jana Švecová made the first ascent of Nova at Holstejn in Czechia in 2023 and although she graded this at Font 8B+, Will Bosi made the second ascent and proposed a grade of Font 8C. Finally, in 2023 Katie Lamb climbed Box Therapy in Colorado, USA. She gave it a grade of Font 8C+ and a repeat by Brooke Raboutou reckoned Font 8C was more appropriate, a view shared by first ascensionist Daniel Woods.
Oriane Bertone climbed Satan I Helvete Bas Low in Fontainebleau in 2020 after a hold had broken but subsequent ascents say this is closer to Font 8B+ than Font 8C but the jury is still out on this.