Rio Negro 8c by Lulu Deubzer

Lulu Deubzer, who made her last 8a news in 2011 at age 17, doing an 8b, has done her first 8c, Rio Negro in Voralpsee. (c) DAV/Silvan Metz

I was, obviously, super happy that everything worked out in the end to send the route. Voralp is one of my favourite crags and the atmosphere that day was especially calm, with the deer roaring all day. Even though 8c is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, it’s exciting to see that breaking into new grades is still possible for me. All the more, since sport climbing hasn’t been my sole focus anymore in the last few years. Just before the send for example, I was multipitching in the Dolomites for 10 Days and over the summer in general I spent less time cragging and more time doing easy alpine multipitching and some mountaineering. Mixing it up a bit seems to work very well for me, both for motivation and in order to not be too bummed about the occasional small injury.

What are the hardest multipitches you have done and what is next?
In the winter I’ll hopefully do more dry tooling, ice and mixed climbing again (which I all completely suck at). Last winter I didn’t touch a climbing hold basically, just hangboarded and dry tooled and I was really surprised that I was way fitter in spring than I would have excepted because drytooling seems to address my weaknesses quite well. This winter I should have more time, so I'll try to still go bouldering a bit on the side.

The only harder multipitch I’ve tried/climbed was just now, Camilotto-Pelissier (around 7c+) with my friend Janina. That was definitely a good first experience in projecting multipitches and we had heaps of fun in the process during those 4 days.