Jonathan Hörst ticks Mutation (9a)

Jonathan Hörst, standing at 190 cm and 85 kg, has completed Mutation (9a) at Wild Iris Main Wall. The 22-year-old did his first 8b+ at age 10.

Can you tell us more about the ascent and the process behind?
It was definitely a roller coaster ride. I first sent the 8b+ start when I was 11 but didn’t climb much on this wall until I was traveling over COVID. I remember watching BJ work this in the mid 2010s and it was such a crazy link to even imagine. Essentially this climb does the crux of almost every route on the wall climbing 100 feet diagonally, on a wall where all of the routes are 4 bolts tall. I progressed in the early 2020s doing some easier link ups on this wall, and in 2023 gave this 9a some serious effort, ultimately coming up short.

At the time I thought I was in the best shape of my life and fell off the last move (literally) at least 12 times and I took last year off from trying it to clear my head. Additionally, last year was a year off since finishing my undergrad and I got psyched to expand my styles of climbing.

This meant I put more emphasis on new objectives opposed to sport climbing with a lot of time trad climbing, up on big walls, up in the alpine or route developing. I haven’t trained in a gym since February and for most of the spring I was bolting at the Red River Gorge without climbing much on upper end difficulty. All of this contributed to me getting quite bulky and having a mental battle over how well I could climb after little specific focus on hard sending. Surprisingly I had a solid June of climbing at Wolf Point, and when that season closed I came back to the Rodeo Wave in Wild Iris to at least rage on Mutation.

My first day back I made a really good low point with some margin that 2 years ago was tough to make, and got pretty stoked. Another 2 days of working it and I got back to the same last move in 75% humidity and made a few beta tweaks. Then yesterday I came back, got blessed with perfect conditions and climbed better than I could’ve expected.

Its crazy to me not because I was convinced 9a was too much of a barrier but because so much felt like it wasn’t “perfect” especially compared to previous years (limited training, alot of non-limit climbing, sub optimal fitness, etc) which after falling off the end when all of these things were right, made this year feel like not much could happen. Evidently I was wrong! Moving forward since I’ll be moving to SLC I’m stoked to see how much more I can push my high end climbing, but I’ll also continue to put a lot of emphasis on the other styles I’ve become interested in. We’ll see how it plays out!