Jessica Pilz does Kein Licht Kein Schatten in one hour of work!

Jessica Pilz, the overall Lead Cup winner 2023, has repeated Jakob Schubert's Kein Licht Kein Schatten (8c+) in Ötztal. Originally it was considered 9a but later an easier sequence has been found, ”3rd go, short and powerful, what a line!! thx Steff [Scherz] for the beta and belay :)” (c) Dimitris Tosidis

Scherz comments on Jessy's impressively quick ascent, " I’ve seen some strong guys trying this route and she, by far, looked the best on it I’ve seen yet. I did this route two years ago and it was a struggle😅. She made it look easy and even did it in one session. It’s a short and powerful route with some low-percentage moves. For her, the challenge was to hit some of the crimps perfectly, as she was pretty spaned out in most parts of the route. Nevertheless, once she got the moves dialled in, she just did it with no hesitation. She's got to look for some harder routes now!"

This was the first time since 2020, that Jessica has climbed a hard route outdoors. The 26-year-old has been one of the most active and successful competition climbers since 2011 when she won her first Youth World Championships. In 2018, she won the senior World Championship and in only the last three years, she has participated in almost 40 IFSC events as well as the the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Last weekend, she won the Austrian Lead and Combined Championship.

"I am super happy to win the overall for the first time. After the world champs in Bern my plans for the season changed a lot because I didn‘t have to compete in Laval at the European Qualifier. Instead, I set myself one last goal for the season to go for the overall. I definitely felt the pressure because I had to finish 4th at least at the last World Cup in China. My season finished last weekend with the Austrian championships. Now I try to go outside as much as possible and try some projects in Tyrol. In November we have a training camp with the national team in Turkey. And that‘s it for this year I guess."

Can you tell us more about the quick ascent? I watched a video of Jakob on the route and the moves looked super morpho, so I thought I won’t have a chance. But then Steff told me he has a different beta which could work for me. On my first try I managed to do all the moves. On my second I already linked the hard middle part, and on third try it went down surprisingly fast :)

It was also super helpful for me that there were many quickdraws close to each other, so I wasn‘t really scared and could check out the moves on my first try easily.