Ondra compares the crux of Silence with Soudain Seul

Chaz Ott has gotten an answer from Adam Ondra directly in the forum. (c) Petr Chodura

”If Ondra does read this, I'd love to ask him directly why he considers this boulder he sent in 5 days to be harder than the crux 1 on Silence. Crux 1 took around 3 years with dedicated training as I recall, begging the question. Thanks!”

Ondra: Good question! Crux 1 itself (from the very last not so good kneebar, around 14 moves) is definitely much easier than SS, even though it took so much time for me to do it. But there was so much time in beta finding and finetuning my flow and microadjustements. Just before sending, I could link the crux 1 pretty solid with very good margin. For me, adding around 6 moves extra (around 7B?) before (where the last very good kneebar is) added a lot more. That link (around 20moves) could be 8C+ for sure, but probably still a bit easier than SS? The reason why Silence takes so much time to send because it is possibly the most technical and weird climbing I have ever done. It is much more tiring and less efficient to try since you have to try it from the rope and not above the pads. And skin on your left pinkie is extremely limiting factor (basically making more than 2 tries a day without tape to link the crux is very untactical - since cutting the side of your pinkie is almost sure) - combined with extreme low-percentage character of the moves - it makes it hard to link the crux on low number of days. On the other hand, I was extremely tactical on Soudain Seul, very lucky with the weather, I had all the betas available, various climbers to share the sessions with. Number of sessions to send the boulder/route is not always the most indicating one.