Papichulo 9a+ by Said Belhaj

Said Belhaj has finished his longest project ever and done his first 9a+, Chris Sharma's Papichulo in Oliana. Full story on Said's website. (c) Walker Emerson - I don’t think I’ve ever had a route this dialed and rarely had to fight so hard. At the headwall, after the hardest sections, I knew that I could do it if I just didn’t hesitate. And if the 1st section is my anti style, up there I was in my element climbing a muerte. This is what I’ve done and trained for all my life: go fast, go 100%, let go of anxiety and totally tune in with the freedom of moving on rock. There is always a kind of magical feeling when you suddenly succeed with something you kept on failing on before. If I would to pick a route based on the grade (a phenomenon that I’ve noticed: people climbing grades, not routes), ”Papi” would probably be pretty low on the list. The whole first section is harder the shorter you are and I’m terrible on resistance on small holds. A steep route in a cave would’ve been more in line with ”what I’m good at”. But climbing has never been about that: we climb to challenge our selves, it has never been about making climbing easy. Climb routes that we find beautiful and some of them talk louder to us than others.