19 January 2019

Is barefoot Charles' 9A the hardest boulder in the world?

Charles Albert has done seven 8C to 9A boulder problems but what is unique is his barefoot style. If he could go beyond his ethics, using one shoe, there are probably many more hard core boulders to be done, which could be unrepeated for several years. It would take any climber several months to learn and develop their toe strength, bouldering shoe less, but for Charles it is just to lace up. In regards his No Kpote Only FA in Fontainebleu, there are some ethics question to be answered before we could call it the hardest graded boulder in the world. The grade 9A suggest that when it comes to difficulty it can only be compared to Hukkataival's Burden of Dreams. The hassle is that it seem more like a constructed problem and not a natural boulder as the start seem contrived. Instead of starting in the first logical sit start position, three traverse moves have been added to the left. This is quite often done in bouldering in order to increase the difficulty. Creating harder challenges are just great but for me, they should be called problems instead of boulders. Further more, the problem finishes with some chipped holds. In route climbing, sit starts can be said to be the same constructed problems opting for a high grade. The dilemma is that we should not have the hardest and glorified routes and boulders as contrived chipped problems, as this could just popularize such ethics. So for me, No Kpote Only is not the hardest graded boulder in the world although it is the hardest graded problem. On the other hand, Charles is possibly the first contender to set up the world's first 9A+ if he started to use one shoe!
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