Nacho Sánchez about 'Crisis' 8C/+

Nacho Sánchez about 'Crisis' 8C/+

By Ignacio Sandoval Burón & Esteban Diez Fernández

Pic from Boreal webpage.

Last Friday, Nacho Sánchez sent his long awaited project in Crevillente, style="font-size: x-large;">'Crisis', grading it as an 8C/+. After two and a half years of efforts, he finished off this boulders 21 movements which in his blog he calls it a power-endurance problem.

It's the hardest boulder in his career and also in Spain, and this murciano (from Murcia) has stuck his neck out suggesting such a grade in a time when the need to be brave and suggest more than 8C is being discussed.  

We've made the most of this opportunity to talk to him. Don't miss out his impressions on his last achievement:

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- We’ve heard that you'd been trying this rig for some time now. Is that right?

More or less, two years and a half ago I was able to figure out and do all the moves separately and then, I started trying to link sections little by little. Last Winter I was able to do it except for the six first moves and finally yesterday I did it from the sit-down start from the very bottom of the cave.

I had to invest so much time to be able to do it, trying to optimize sequences and, in the climbing gym, training mostly body tension and power-endurance. In order to achieve this, Eva López's intermittent suspensions training method has been of a great help.

text-autospace:none">- How would you describe this problem? text-autospace:none">This is a power-endurance line with 18 super sustained movements until you reach the lip of the roof for a total of 21. It hasn’t got any extreme move, but you just can’t relax at any time and it deflates you at every second you’re hanging on. text-autospace:none">The 7th is a quite low percentage move and the rest to the 15th move is quite tense and sustained, with none specially hard, but with a lot of feet changes and unstable toe-hooks. You need to have everything super clear in order to be able to go fast, since from move 15th to the 18th there’s a super hard crimpy section which you need to get to relatively fresh.   text-autospace:none">After that, I had to rest a while on the lip of the roof to do the last 2 moves on the vertical section, since there’s still a lock-off where you could fail.  text-autospace:none">
text-autospace:none">- This would mean it’s the hardest boulder problem in Spain and one of the world’s hardest. Do you see yourself at the world's strongest boulderers level? text-autospace:none">There’s people way stronger than me, but I guess they don’t spend much time focusing on the same project. They are lucky to be able to travel a lot and do things super quickly in many different places, otherwise it doesn’t make sense that they have almost the same flash and redpoint level… Although, in that sense, there’s also the fact of the 8C range amplitude and the fear to propose 8C+. text-autospace:none">Maybe this one is just 8C and has taken me that much since I’m not used to doing long boulders, but I feel it’s quite harder than the others I have done or tried at that level. text-autospace:none">
text-autospace:none">Learn more things about what Nacho tells us in this longer Spanish interview.

More pics in Nacho's blog.