Barbara Zangerl does first ever repeat of an E9 from 2001

Barbara Zangerl, one of the leading multi-discipline climbers, has made the first ever repeat of Dave MacLeod's Achemine E9, a testpiece from 2001. (c) Riky Felderer - I tried first in toprope and it took me some time to get a good solution for the crux. The day after I gave one first lead try and fall. And the third day on....I fell once on the really last hard move. On the second try I was lucky enough! The protection is really good! There is a runout about 13m from the last camelot to the top. So you really can't fall on the last meters. But the hard part is done before. If you take a fall there, you take a biiiiiiiiig whipper. E-grades is used in UK and is a combination of how difficult and dangerous the route would be to onsight! In practice this works very well on easier routes indicating which route to onisght. For the harder routes that are always redpointed it is very hard to estimate the onsight grade. Based on the converter scales available, a safe E9 should be around 8b+.