Ethan Pringle repeats Jumbo Love 9b at Clark Mountain

American climber Ethan Pringle has entered the highly esclusive club of those capable of redpointing a 9b sports climb with his repeat of Jumbo Love at Clark Mountain, USA. This long outing above Las Vegas had originally been discovered by Randy Leavitt who had split the journey into three separate pitches, while in September 2008 Chris Sharma managed to link them all into one single pitch. At the time Sharma had already sent numerous 9a+, such as Realization (Ceuse, 2001), Es Pontas (Maiorca, 2006), La Rambla (Siurana, 2006) and Papichulo (Oliana, 2008) and with Jumbo Love he raised standards another notch, creating the hardest sports climb in the USA and, at the same time, one of the hardest in the world.

Ever since then no one had managed to repeat Jumbo Love, despite the attention of numerous highly talented climbers. Pringle had actually first attempted the line before Sharma’s redpoint and over the course of the years he returned regularly, demonstrating for 8 long years am out of the ordinary grit, determination and dedication. Last week he managed to stick the crux for the first time - a fact that surprised he so much he fell immediately afterwards - while the yearned for redpoint came about on Sunday.

Yesterday on FB Pringle stated "I can’t believe it’s over. I say that half in a literal sense because when I sent it, it was almost like an out of body experience that I can barley remember happening."