Estado Critico 9a by Štěpán Volf

Štěpán Volf has done his first 9a, Estado Critico in Siurana. The route is famous for Alex Megos onsight back in 2013. The picture is from a no-hands rest after having climbed the first 7c section. He stayed there for a minute and interestingly he had to take the knee pad off higher up in order to have the full flexibility bending his knee sitting while doing a move.

"Estado was a big challenge for me. For the past 3 years, I've been almost exclusively been bouldering, or done short bouldery routes, because the feeling of trying something for more time than three days was driving me crazy. I was really impatient. This year I've decided to change that and I wanted to choose the most challenging route for me (endurance based).

After five days of trying I knew that every attempt could be the ONE, but then the weather changed a lot. Strong freezing wind was making not the best conditions for climbing. So I've spent about two weeks of falling basically in the same move over and over again because my fingers were freezing really fast in these conditions, which started to effect my mindset. Fortunately, I've put myself together and climbed the route on the second day after the conditions improved. I was so happy so I even cried a bit. Funny thing is, that after my ascent it actually started to snow!"