5 March 2024

Bronwyn Hodgins completes La Rubia (8c+)

Bronwyn Hodgins has sent La Rubia (8c+) in Villanueva del Rosario. "WOWOWOWOW!!!! I can’t believe it!!! I chose this route a year ago as a lofty dream and trained for 8 months specifically at home, then lived in Villanueva del Rosario for 2.5 months this winter and managed to get the send on the final days of the trip!!! Definitely suits my style, hang on forever with a four limbs in a crazy 3-d cave. The crux was tough!!! But I do love crimps and I think it also suited me. The kilter board training was definitely for this!! By far my longest sport project. Send go was a fight at the top, I very nearly dropped that last move at the chains! SO PSYYYYYYYCHED!" (c) Julia Cassou

The Canadian climber is more known in the climbing world for her big wall free climbing and remote first ascents, but after three back-to-back big wall expeditions in 2022, Bronwyn was feeling burnt-out from expedition stress and logistics. A little lost for motivation she travelled to Spain to climb tufas and improve her Spanish, and soon found herself wondering how hard she might be able to climb if she put her intense focus into training and sport climb projecting...

"It was hugely intimidating arriving at La Rubia, having only climbed one 8b+ and a handful of 8b's. I definitely felt like maybe I had dreamed a little too big this time! But over the course of the season I slowly ticked away at more manageable chunks of the route until I was finally able to put it all together.

The mental aspect was really tough. I felt like I had some of the tools from big wall free climbing such as performing well under pressure and sequence visualization and execution, but I had no experience in sticking with a project for anywhere near this long. At the same time, I continued to make progress pretty much every time I tied in which was super motivating.
The route is 55m long, and steep with many knee-bar rests in the top half, which also gives a lot of opportunity to overthink things and get nervous. On the send go, I climbed super smoothly and faster-than-ever all the way up to the final bolt (where I'd fallen on my last attempt a few days earlier). I tactically skipped the final knee bar so that I didn't interrupt my mental flow and launched myself with all I had left for the big move just next to the chains. I still can't believe my fingers latched onto that hold!"
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