Elias Iagnemma needed more than 200 sessions for the first boulder ever proposed at 9A+. Adam Ondra made the second ascent in four days at Rifugio Barbara in Val Pellice and thinks the problem belongs in 9A.

In November 2025 Elias Iagnemma topped out Exodia, an old Christian Core project near the Rifugio Barbara hut in Piedmont's Val Pellice, and put forward 9A+. Iagnemma had started working the moves in June 2021 and spent well over 200 sessions on the line. Now it has a second ascent, and Adam Ondra needed just four days for it.

Iagnemma came out in September to show him the boulder and walk him through the beta. Then Ondra went down with a nasty cold and other commitments piled up. By the time he was fit to return, rain was in the forecast and he reckoned he had two days left before the season was over. He kept it together and, in his own words, executed very well “in some of the most memorable moments of my career.”

Ondra stuck to Iagnemma's sequence but held some of the holds differently, crimping more and pinching less. The steep roof opens with a hard 8B+ section into a no-hands kneebar rest and finishes with an 8C+ boulder. According to Ondra the kneebars are the easy part. What really counts is heel hooking, body tension and delicate positioning. The second half suits him even better.

On the grade he doesn't hedge. “I think the boulder is 9A,” he writes, though he won't say where in the range it sits. It felt harder to him than Soudain Seul, which he climbed in Fontainebleau in February 2025, and similar to Alphane or Mount Doom. He admits Exodia is very much his style and that others may well find it harder. With Iagnemma's track record and so many days on the boulder, Ondra says, he would have proposed 9A+ too. So the first confirmed 9A+ boulder will have to wait. A film about the ascent is in the works.

The area has its own page on climbing.place: Rifugio Barbara (Val Pellice).

Sources: 8a.nu, adamondra.com, PlanetMountain, Gripped, UKClimbing (2025)

Cover: Adam Ondra on Silence (9c), Flatanger, 2017. Photo: Pavel Blažek, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.